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The Memory of Maqoma: An Assessment of Jingqi Oral Tradition in Ciskei and Transkei

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Timothy J. Stapleton
Timothy J. Stapleton*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Extract

Dominated by a settler heritage, South African history has forgotten or degraded many Africans who had a significant impact on the region. The more recent liberal and radical schools also suffer from this tragic inheritance. Maqoma, a nineteenth century Xhosa chief who fought the expansionist Cape Colony in three frontier wars, has been a victim of similar distortion. He has been characterized as a drunken troublemaker and cattle thief who masterminded an unprovoked irruption into the colony in 1834 and eventually led his subjects into the irrational Cattle Killing catastrophe of 1856/57 in which thousands of Xhosa slaughtered their herds on the command of a teenage prophetess. Recently, the validity of this portrayal has been questioned. Alan Webster has demonstrated that, throughout the 1820s and early 1830s, Maqoma attempted to placate voracious European raiders by sending them cattle tribute. Only after the British army and Boer commandos had forced his Jingqi chiefdom off its land for the third time did this ruler order retaliatory stock raids against the colony in late 1834.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 20 , 1993 , pp. 321 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1993

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References

Notes

1. The settler portrayal of Maqoma began in both Godlonton's, RobertThe Irruption of the Kafir Hordes (Grahamstown, 1836)Google Scholar and his Narrative of the Kafir War of 1850-51 (Grahamstown, 1851).Google Scholar As editor of the pro-settler Grahamstown Journal, Godlonton had a vested interest in creating a negative image of Maqoma so that the Cape Colony administration would endorse settler expansion into Xhosa territory. This impression was continued in Brownlee, Charles, Reminiscences of Kaffir Life and History (Lovedale, 1916)Google Scholar, and perpetuated in modern works such as Meintjies, Johannes, Sandile: The Fall of the Xhosa Nation (Cape Town, 1971)Google Scholar, and Toil, A. E. du, “Maqoma” in Dictionary of South African Biography, 2: 439–41.Google Scholar

2. Webster, Alan, “Land Expropriation and Labour Extraction Under Cape Colonial Rule: The War of 1835 and the ‘Emancipation’ of the Fingo,” M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 1991.Google Scholar

3. Peires, J. B., The House ofPhalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (Johannesburg, 1981), 243–44.Google Scholar Peires presents the evidence but leans toward the conclusion that Maqoma was an unstable alcoholic. For Calderwood see Council of World Missions, box 16, Philipton, 28 June 1839, Calderwood to LMS, and Blinkwater, 30 December 1839, Calderwood to LMS. For Stretch's correspondence see Cape Archives, LG 396-401.

4. For the orthodox version see Peires, J. B., The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856-57 (Johannesburg, 1989).Google Scholar For a revision of it see Timothy Stapleton, J., “Reluctant Slaughter: Rethinking Maqoma's Role in the Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1853-57),” IJAHS (1993).Google Scholar

5. Peires, , House of Phalo, 175.Google Scholar

6. In Xhosa tradition the Great Son, or heir, of a chief is the first male child from the senior-ranking wife. Since precolonial chiefs tended to take a Great Wife after they were well-established, it was common for a Great Son still to be a minor when his father died. Regencies became frequent.

7. Interviews with Chief Wati Maqoma, near Balfour, 17 October 1991, and Chief Lent W. Maqoma, Bisho, 22 October 1991. Unless otherwise indicated, all interviews were conducted by me and tapes and transcripts have been deposited in the Cory Library, Rhodes Univeristy, Grahamstown.

8. During precolonial times a ruler's Right-Hand son was usually his first born who, on reaching adulthood, would often break away to form a semi-autonomous chiefdom.

9. This synopsis of the contemporary Jingqi situation derives from personal observations during my fieldwork.

10. For a general discussion of Xhosa oral tradition see Peires, , House of Phalo, 170–75.Google Scholar Peires identified problems such as “transposition of setting, aetiological error, lack of time depth, telescoping and contamination from written sources.”

11. Although unimportant during his father's lifetime, Tini Maqoma became a leader of the last Xhosa rebellion against colonial rule in 1878. See Cape Parliamentary Paper A52 of 1878, Correspondence and Other Documents Relative to the Expedition Against Tini Maqoma.

12. Interviews with Chiefs Wati and Lent Maqoma. Makrexana was adopted by Charles Lennox Stretch, diplomatic agent to Maqoma, in 1837 and raised in a westernized environment. He eventually went to work in the Cape Colony, but returned home to fight against the Europeans during the revolt of 1878. See (Cory Library) MS 6286, 24 August 1837, Niven to Stretch. For Transkei see the interview with Chief Freshman Spanele Kona, Gqungqe Location, Kentani District, 25 October 1991.

13. For instance, see interview with Jamani William Ngqabavu, Alice, Alice District, 17 October 1991.

14. Opland, Jeff, “Praise Poems as Historical Sources” in Beyond the Cape Frontier, ed. Saunders, C. and Derricourt, R. (London, 1974), 4–6.Google Scholar

15. For Mali see interviews with L. Fani, Tini's Location, Fort Beaufort, 10 October 1991, and Tanzana Mali, Ntselamanzi Location, Alice District, 16 October 1991. See also interview with J. Mncono, New Brighton Township, Port Elizabeth, 19 October 1991. Well versed in Jingqi history, Mncono, who is over seventy, was the only informant to know more than one of Maqoma's praises.

16. For “Hena” see The Home and Foreign Missionary Record for the Free Church of Scotland, 2/4 (April 1845).Google Scholar

17. Rubusana, Walter B., Zemk'iinkomo Magwalandini (London, 1906), 257.Google Scholar The one praise known to a few literate informants is “the leopard of Fordyce” and this is probably because they have read it in Rubusana. See also Peires, , House of Phalo, 244.Google Scholar

18. Interview with Walter Mpisekhaya Gqirhana, Msobomvu Location, Alice District, 16 October 1991. Gqirhana, Mncono, and Lent Maqoma all agree on the origin story but give different versions of who presented the bull to Maqoma. It must be noted that Nothonto is the only woman with a significant role in Maqoma's amabali.

19. Interview with Sesiwe Cecilia Maqoma, Port Alfred Township, 18 October 1991. Also see interviews with Chief Lent Maqoma and Mr. Gqirhana.

20. Interview with Chief Lent Maqoma.

21. Interviews with Gqirhana, Ngqabavu, and Lent Maqoma. For the cause of the Amalinde war see Peires, , House of Phalo, 61–63.Google Scholar In the early 1820s Rev. W. R. Thomson, a missionary with the Rharhabe Xhosa, noticed that Ngqika was afraid of Maqoma's growing power; see (Cape Archives) CO 165, Tyume, 10 June 1822, Thomson to Scott. This missionary also observed Ngqika executing Maqoma's subjects for witchcraft; see (CA) CO 165, Tyume, 29 November and 7 December 1822, Thomson to Scott.

22. For the interview with Chief Gladstone Maqoma see Peires, , House of Phalo, 89Google Scholar, and interview with Chief Freshman Kona.

23. For documentary evidence see Statement of the Chief Tyali, 14 April 1842, British Parliamentary Paper 424 of 1851, 116; and Grahamstown Journal, 19 May 1842. For oral evidence see interviews with Gqirhana, Ngqabavu, and Lent Maqoma.

24. Interviews with Mncono, Ngqabavu, and Lent Maqoma. For a documentary account of Maqoma's participation during the war of 1846-47 see Eastern Province Herald, 16 May and 24 October 1846, and 25 September 1847. Also see Mqhayi, , Ityala lama Wele, 100.Google Scholar

25. For not very knowledgeable informants who could relate stories of the Mtontsi campaign see interviews with Chief Wati Maqoma and Tanzana Mali. For more detailed accounts see interviews with Chief K. B. K. Ntsele, New Brighton Township, Port Elizabeth, 19 October 1991; Whiskers Tukushe, Gqungqe Location, Keniani District, 24 October 1991; Sesiwe Cecilia Maqoma, Chief Lent Maqoma, and Gqirhana and Ngqabavu. For a corresponding documentary account see Mackay, J., Reminiscences of the Last Kafir War (Cape Town, 1871).Google Scholar

26. Interviews with Mr. Gqirhana and Chief Lent Maqoma. Also see (CA) BK 69, Donne, 11 August 1856, Brownlee to Maclean.

27. Interview with Chief Lent Maqoma. For all these stories see Mqhayi, S. E. K., Ityala lamaWele (Lovedale, 1931), 91–103.Google Scholar For the white trader see The Grahamstown Journal 21 November 1846. The newspaper report actually relates to an incident in 1838. Since Sarili was born around 1815 and Hintsa died in the War of 1835, the second story must have occurred in the early 1830s, when Sarili was a teenager. See Soga, John H., The Ama-Xhosa: Life and Customs (Lovedale, 1931).Google Scholar For the dating of the Kama story see Yekella, Drusilla, “The Life and Times of Kama Chungwa,” M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 1989.Google Scholar

28. Interview with Cecilia Maqoma; Hummel, Chris, ed., Rev. F.G. Kayser: Journals and Letters (Cape Town, 1990)Google Scholar

29. See interview with Mr. Gqirhana; and Cape Argus, 12 September 1871.

30. Interviews with Sesiwe Cecilia Maqoma and Chief Lent Maqoma. See also (CA) CO 972 Lunatic Asylum Robben Island, 10 September 1873, Surgeon Superintendent to Colonial Secretary.

31. Interview with Wellington and Walter Kona, Gqungqe Location, 23 October 1991; interview with Whiskers Tukushe; Group interview with Freshman, Wellington, Walter, Mzoli, and Thuthuzela Kona, Bongani Mgweba, and Whiskers Tukushe, Gqungqe Location, 25 October 1991. Mqhayi, , Ityala lamaWele, 91–103.Google Scholar

32. Interviews with Ngqabavu, Gqirhana, Mncono, and Lent Maqoma

33. [Peires, ], “Ethnicity and Pseudo-Ethnicity in the Ciskei” in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, ed. Vail, Leroy (Los Angeles, 1989), 395–413.Google Scholar

34. Interviews with Denver Webb and Mlandeli Vizi, Ciskei Department of Information and Tourism, Bisho, 25 September 1991, and Chief Lent Maqoma.

35. I will not embarrass these individuals by naming them.

36. Interviews with Cecilia and Lent Maqoma.