← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Eendracht Maakt Mag
Thread ID: 7272 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-06-11
2003-06-11 17:46 | User Profile
The new Cape governor, General Cathcart, briskly finished Sir Harry's task of subduing, for the eighth time, the blacks, then was recalled to England to serve in the Russian War (1854), where he died. In the middle fifties, the settlers around the Xhosa reserves fearfully awaited a ninth Kaffir War.
The frustrated natives, unable to defeat the whites, sought victory via supernatural intervention. Young women had visions, and the witch doctor Mhlakaza interpreted their hysteria. The long-dead chiefs and heroes of the Xhosa lore had risen from the dead and were vengeful, according to Mhlakaza. They were called "Russians" and had killed their late oppressor, Catchcart, in the land beyond the sea. Now they were coming to the homeland and would drive out the whites forever. *But* they required, in advance, great evidence of their peoples' pledge of belief in their supernatural powers. As in many religions, this was to be accomplished by the rite of sacrifice in acknowledgement and exchange for the greater God-given good.
The witch doctor announced that all cattle were to be slaughtered, no crops were to be planted, and any food stores remaining must be destroyed before August 16, 1865. If the nation purified itself by that date, the great chiefs would return, bringing with them bigger, better cattle, corn, guns, and wagons. Two suns would rise and a mighty whirlwind would sweep the white race into the depths of the sea, Mhlakaza prophesied.
Because of the presence of agents in the reservations, the Cape government knew of this phenomenon early on and strove to defeat the superstition. Agent Charles Brownlee rode tirelessly among the tribes, emphasizing so vehemently that the prophesies would *never* occur, that the natives nicknamed him Napakade (never!). He achieved partial succcess; the cattle killing went ahead by tribes. Some killed zealously, others held off. In August, English troops were moved into visible positions to show that they had not been wiped out by the Russians, and to keep order should there be turmoil on the Great Day.
August 16 was a witch doctor's dud. The chiefs had not come, Mhlakaza declared, because the Xhosa had not thoroughly shown their worthiness. After consulting two young seeresses, he set December 31 as the new apocalypse. Hunger was appearing among the people, and some unbelievers guiltily killed their cattle. Still, the new year came in unevenentfully, and, finally, on February 10, 1857, Mhlakaza raged that the ancestors were very angry because their children were holding back on them. They had eight days-or never!
Desperately, the very hungry Xhosa believers "stabbed their cattle to the very last one and left their carcasses as for for vultures and wild dogs." They dug new corn pits to receive the promised bounty and tied down thatched roofs so they would not blow away in the whirlwind. But Frebruary 18, 1857, was another blue-sky summer day; no miracles disturbed the sun's passage from horizon to horizon. The witch doctor said that the chiefs had quarreled among themselves and therefore had not come. And he shut up.
Near and real, starvation enveloped the Xhosa reserves. The government offered relief, but it was far from sufficient for the very many. Mrs. Brownlee wrote of the "breathing skeletons" who thronged their government station:
Daily, as these spectres came in crowds and crawled along, one might have imagined that the prophet's prediction had come to pass, and that the dead had indeed risen from their graves.
During 1857, the population in the district of British Kaffraria pummmeted from 104,000 to 37,000. Of the missing, at least a third were recknoned dead. However, out of the Xhosa disaster, the colonists gained two windfalls; the end of cohesive Xhosa tribal threats; and the immigration into the Cape Colony of about thirty thousand very willing laborers.
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Source: K. C. Tessendorf, Along the Road to Soweto: a Racial History of South Africa, p. 84, par. 5 - p. 85, par. 4.
My note:
The mindless humanitarianism which seems to be so much a character of the white race may be its greatest downfall. Other races do not see white benevolence as kindness, but rather as a weakness which they can, and do, exploit. To let the savages starve may, in the end, have been a far better alternative, as the Xhosa Bantus are currently the most numerous and powerful tribe in South Africa, the source of such delightful personalities as the communist terorist Nelson Mandela.
2003-06-11 20:03 | User Profile
The mindless humanitarianism which seems to be so much a character of the white race may be its greatest downfall. Other races do not see white benevolence as kindness, but rather as a weakness which they can, and do, exploit. To let the savages starve may, in the end, have been a far better alternative, as the Xhosa Bantus are currently the most numerous and powerful tribe in South Africa, the source of such delightful personalities as the communist terorist Nelson Mandela.
Absolutely right. White intervention prevented the Bantus from taking first-place in that year's Darwin Awards. Little did the Whites know that by preserving those living fossils, they'd be poisoning their own future.
As I read through the story, and saw that the Bantus were wiping out their food supplies, I knew at that moment that the Whites would inevitably swoop in and save them (thread title aside). I know my people that well, and they don't seem to change, even though they'd better change because that sort of altruism is suicidal.
2003-06-11 20:29 | User Profile
** The frustrated natives, unable to defeat the whites, sought victory via supernatural intervention...
The witch doctor announced that all cattle were to be slaughtered, no crops were to be planted, and any food stores remaining must be destroyed...Two suns would rise and a mighty wirlwind would sweep the white race into the depths of the see, Mhlakaza prophesied. **
Looks like the recipe based on becoming dependent on the whitey's guilt trips and altruism has worked.