As white settlers from the then Cape Colony migrated northwards they eventually started encroaching on Xhosa land in the Eastern Cape, as it is known today. This lead to many skirmishes and the so-called Xhosa Frontier Wars. The arrival of the 1820 British Settlers, deposited by ship from England, was one strategy to create a buffer zone between the Colony and amaXhosa and consolidate land ownership in the process.

By 1854 the British had stripped most of the Xhosa chiefs of power and planted them as salaried functionaries in the colonial administration. The loss of power and land was devastating, materially and psychologically. The final blow came when their cattle became infected with a lethal lung infection, killing as many as 80% of some of the chiefs' cattle. (Some believe this was a new disease introduced to the region by means of Friesland bulls shipped in by the Dutch in 1853, the area around Alexandria is today a main diary producing region…) Their world order and sense of purpose collapsed and the Xhosa turned to their religion to find the reasons behind these disasters.

A sixteen-year-old prophetess, Nongqawuse daughter or niece of Mhlakaza of the Gcaleka chiefdom, claimed to have been in touch with the ancestors. She had a vision at a pool in the Gxarha River, located in what is today known as Nongqawuse's Valley or Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse in isiXhosa. She reported that the ancestors had called on Xhosa leaders to create a new beginning for their people. This, the ancestors said, could only be done by wiping out the old, and that meant killing the remaining cattle.

"You are to tell the people that the whole community is about to rise again from the dead. Then go on to say to them all the cattle living now must be slaughtered, for they are reared with defiled hands, as the people handle witchcraft. Say to them there must be no ploughing of lands, rather must the people dig deep pits, erect new huts, set up wide, strongly built cattlefold, make milksacks, and weave doors from buka roots…" The words of the spirits, talking to 16-year-old Nongqawuse, as recorded by W.W. Qqoba in his narrative of the Cattle killing, based on oral sources. Quoted by J.B. Peires, in his book The Dead will Arise.

The Xhosa people became completely divided over what to do. The amathamba 'soft' believers thought they must obey; the amagogotya or 'hard' unbelievers rejected the culling. In February 1856, the Xhosa began killing their cattle. A total of 400,000 were culled. 40,000 Xhosa died as a result of this and many of those that survived had to work in Cape Town or as labourers on farms.

"Every day King Williams Town was thronged and its inhabitants distressed at the sight of emaciated living skeletons passing from house to house. Dead bodies were picked up in different parts within and around the limits of the towns, and scarcely a day passed over, that men, women or children were not found in a dying state from starvation.

My consulting room was every day surrounded with emaciated creatures craving food, having nothing to subsist on but roots and the bark of the mimosa, the smell of which appeared to issue from every part of the body, and to whom it would be a mockery to say, you must seek employment, or proceed on to the colony." Dr. John Fitzgerald Founder of the Native Hospital, King Williams Town. Quoted by J.B. Peires, in his book The Dead will Arise.

While oppressed the amaXhosa were never before fully conquered by military means, but the great cattle-killing episode broke their backs. Large numbers of amaXhosa perished in the resulting famine. The British governor of the Cape Colony at the time, Sir George Grey, seized the opportunity and Xhosa territory was quickly appropriated into the Cape Colony.

Today the history of Nongqawuse and the cattle killing is still a source of great pain. Some elders and chiefs within the Xhosa community belief that Sir George Grey himself, or his agents, were in fact the people who spoke the young impressionable Nongqawuse from the reeds next to that pool and thus instigated the tragedy that followed. While most scholars agree that this is doubtful there is probably indirect truth in the allegation.

Such allegations may not be meant as statements of fact but rather of context. The context being that Christian missionaries have influenced the Xhosa belief system. The whole concept of resurrection from the dead was a Christian one. Desperation brought on by severe oppression, loss of land and poverty -mostly caused by the British- conspired with new (Christian) religious concepts to make the amaXhosa fertile ground for revivalist messages of resurrection. Whichever way one view this dark chapter in history, the fact remains that large sections of the amaXhosa is still suffering from its legacy and a long way from making peace with Nongqawuse or those ancestors who blindly followed her vision.

Sources: The Story of Africa - Southern Africa, BBC World Service; "Valley of the believers" - Zakes Mda (Sunday Times)