Akuko Ntaka Inokubhabha Ngephiko Elinye ( No Bird Can Fly on One Wing): The 'Cattle-Killing Delusion' and Black Intellectuals, c1840-1910
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2008
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African Studies
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University of Cape Town
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The agenda was set a century and a half ago. In a war zone in southern Africa, bureaucrats manning the states of the Cape Colony and adjacent British Kaffraria were witnessing – and transforming – what they deemed an extraordinary event.They coined names for it: ‘Cattle-Killing mania’, ‘Cattle-Killing’, ‘delusion’. They delineated its spatial boundaries: the mania was confined to Xhosaland and colonised Thembuland. They periodised it: the delusion lasted a year, beginning one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six years after the birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. They defined its racial and gender dynamics: the central actors were black men (who virtually monopolised cattle); they were inspired by a male prophet, Mhlakaza, assisted by his niece, Nongqawuse. Subsidiary pathologies were noted, including goat-killing, a ‘non-planting mania’ and preparations for an apocalypse, when the English would be replaced by peace, prosperity and black rulers, headed by resurrected forefathers bearing resurrected cattle.
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Bradford, H. (2008). Akukho Ntaka Inokubhabha Ngephiko Elinye (No Bird Can Fly on One Wing): The ‘Cattle-Killing Delusion’and Black Intellectuals, c1840–1910 1. African Studies, 67(2), 209-232.