Interpretations of the

“Cattle-Killing”

Peires & Bradford

 Main Readings:

• Peires, The Dead will Arise, See especially Chapter 3

“Nongqawuse”

• Helen Bradford, “Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinking

the History of the British Cape Colony and its Frontier Zones, c.
1806-70,” The Journal of African History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1996)
Who was Nongqawuse
really?

Why these prophecies?

Oh! Nongqawuse!
The girl of Mhlakaza
She killed our nation

She told the people, she told them all

That the dead will arise from their graves
Bringing joy and bringing wealth
But she was telling a lie
William Wellington Gqoba
Xhosa historian and linguist
Born 1840- 17 at time of cattle-killing
1888- writes “Isizatu sokuxelwa kwe nkomo ngo Nongqause”
“The Case of the Cattle-Killing at the Nongqause period”
• Nongqawuse as seer
• Mhlakaza not the central figure
• Woman in fertile years
• Concerned with the pollution of the cattle
You are nauseating Nongqause, you are nauseating
You are indecent Nongqause, you are indecent
You are a murderer Nongqause, you are a murderer
You are a deceiver Nongqause, you are a deceiver
Hey! Wealth disappeared because of Nongqause
Chieftaincy shattered because of Nongqause
Pleasure disappeared because of Nongqause
Abundant food disappeared because of Nongqause
The nation spilt because of Nongqause
 Sir George Grey took our country
He entered in through Nongqause
The cattle died, the sheep died
The power of the black people was finished off
 Peires:
• Uses description of her by a secret serviceman who saw her at the Gxarha river in October 1856

• “A girl of about 16 years of age, has a silly look, and appeared to me as if she was not right in her mind. She was not besmeared with
clay, nor did she seem to take any pains with her appearance. ”
• Describes her as:
❖ A girl
❖ About 16
❖ Has a silly look
❖ Not right in her mind
❖ Not concerned with her appearance

• Sometimes too ill (he reads as confused & disorientated) to talk to people
• Peires argues that because of her youth, her gender & her affliction was impossible for her to direct the movement she had started.
• Credits Mhlakaza
“Nongqawuse was a visionary, through her youth and purity the chosen
recipient of the divine message. But her youth, her gender and above
all her affliction made it impossible for her to direct the movement she
had initiated. It was her uncle, Mhlakaza, who played the role of
organizer.”
Peires, The Dead Will Arise, p.369
Helen Bradford:
1. Not an appropriate name

2. Nongqawuse should be placed at the centre

3. Gender conflict lies at the root of the prophecies

• no discussion of Nongqawuse’s anti-imperialist politics
• Focus-inferior gender, silliness and deceit
• Critiques this representation of Nongqawuse & Peires’ explanation of
events
• Peires awarded her words and historical significance to a man
• misled by androcentric interpretation of events
• Nothing about impact on gender relations of the movement
• restore Nongqawuse’s role as central character
• women + production = radically different perspective
• destruction of grain, stopping of female labour in fields - more
significant cause of mass starvation than the death of male owned
cattle
• Women’s support for prophecies -greater than that of men- Peires
doesn’t take this seriously
• Naming
• "cattle-killing” obstructed our understanding of the events
• “U-Nongqause” -reconceptualised in colonial historiography as “The
Cattle-Killing Delusion”
• Cattle- male domain –19th cen Xhosa men asked why was slaughter of
stock being urged by “a mere girl who has nothing to do with cattle.”
• Bradford-
• an adolescent of marriageable age had everything to do with cattle
• Symbolic connection between women’s reproductive functions & the
cattle of the lineage
• incorporating reproduction, sexuality & marriage into analyses of
the cattle-killing movement is crucial
• focus on Nongqawuse herself
Who was she really?
• 1856- an orphan (about 15) living with her uncle Mhlakaza-an owner
of large cattle herds
• considered by male relatives as “the cattle of the family”
• not yet a wife- & secondary literature has little interest in single
women’
• undergone initiation ceremonies associated with puberty- new sexual
status as an “intombi”
• Gqoba- a woman in her fertile years who had adorned her face with
ochre, a young maiden
 An era of gender and generational turmoil
• pre-colonial system of political & social control through cattle
• frontier wars, drought, famine, lungsickness- wreaking havoc with old
ways of regulating sexuality
• Bridewealth had increased- out of reach for most homesteads
• Decrease in number of marriages, increased pre-marital pregnancies,
prostitution
• frustrations -inability to arrange marriages
• Inability to impose fines/penalties for sexual offences
• More unwanted pregnancies- In 1856 a magistrate claimed that
abortion, which supposedly defiled the cattle, was practiced quite
commonly
What about Nongqawuse herself?
• Bradford- male sexuality was on her mind
• Prophecy- Cattle to be slaughtered- “reared by contaminated hands
that were handling witchcraft & other things such as incests &
adulteries”
• Fornications fell under her definition of witchcraft
• Her explanation was connecting pollution of cattle to male sexual
offences
• Marriage, reproduction & sexuality are marginalised in this story &
the role of cattle as bridewealth is barely mentioned
• Nongqawuse’s concern with adulterous & incestuous men is side-
lined
• Peires follows a more traditional line of enquiry- a black man’s
oppression by the colonial order caused all this
• Peires focuses on Mhlakaza’s central role - Mhlakaza was William
Goliath argument
• Peires places a man at central stage – changed the course of history-
because of relationship with white employer & Christianity
• Bradford- Mhlakaza was not Goliath
• Gqoba- “The one thing that is just a mistake is this claim: The one
who was foremost in speaking of these things is Mhlakaza; as for
Nongqawuse, she is one who appeared, -vela-ed, to assist Mhlakaza.
There was never anything of the kind.”
• Nongqawuse challenging patriarchal power
• denounced male sexual offences & urged women to cease cultivation
• Refused to speak to powerful men, threatened them
• Not surprising many chiefs disliked her
• Focus on her deficiencies as a woman- an unruly woman, dishevelled
appearance, confused mind
• References to her attractiveness & intelligence are left out
• infantilised and rendered in need of protection- “a young girl” & “an
orphan girl”
• dismissed as a “Binqa”- a female & this was the sort of behaviour expected
from a “binqa”- the typical fantasies of a young girl
• Peires- “The implication quite clearly is that Nongqawuse’s visions were the
result of the unconscious sexual frustrations of an adolescent girl.”
• Bradford-
• an extremely independent adolescent- an intombi
• oral history accounts -Xhosa informants didn’t see Mhlakaza as lead
figure or male sexuality as unimportant nor Nongqawuse as a child
• Photograph depicts her as well-developed adolescent
• a central woman & a central event in Xhosa & SA history still needs a
gendered analysis
• The motives of Nongqawuse’s largest support base- women- has
barely been probed
• Jeff Guy -Was the movement partly an attack by women on existing
male structures and power bases weakened by cattle losses?
Peires’ response…
• Photo taken 2 years later
• No empirical support for Bradford’s insistence that she was an
intombi & a sexual being
• Was because she was pure, undefiled child that strangers chose her
• Gqoba- calls them amantombazana (very young girls) & not iintombi
• No proof she was sexually abused
• Cattle-killing wasn’t a women’s event. Was an event about all people.
Everyone stood to benefit
• Still insists on Christian aspects inserted by Mhlakaza