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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Ingxoxo enkulu ngoNongqawuse (A great debate about Nongqawuse's era) |
Authors: | Bradford, Helen Qotole, Msokoli |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Kronos: Journal of Cape History |
Issue: | 34 |
Pages: | 66-105 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | historiography historical sources Xhosa cattle killing |
About person: | William Wellington Gqoba |
External link: | http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/kronos/v34n1/v34n1a04.pdf |
Abstract: | Black historians of South Africa have probably far outnumbered their white counterparts. Typically, however, they published in African languages and in the popular media arenas, which most scholars have yet to explore. This paper focuses on one such black historian: Mbaba, son of Gqoba, of Ngqika's people, otherwise known as William Wellington Gqoba. In the mid-1880s, this multifaceted intellectual edited a monthly Christian newspaper, 'Isigidimi SamaXosa'. In an 1888 issue of this monthly, he tackled a subject that remains controversial to this day, namely the so-called 'cattle-killing delusion'. In 1850, a millenarian movement erupted which peaked in 1856-1857 under the influence of a female teenage seer, Nongqawuse. On the spurious grounds that participants sought war by obeying her commands - which included a cessation of cultivation and eating of slain cattle - the movement's opponents, marshalled by colonial authorities, expropriated most of Xhosaland. Gqoba launched a blistering attack on the war-plot thesis in a two-part article in 'Isigidimi' in 1888. The present paper presents the text of this article in isiXhosa with an English translation as well as the texts of the reactions to Gqoba's article by two other contributors. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |