The prophet undead: refigurations of Nongqawuse in academic, literary and digital discourses in South Africa, 1858–2022

Ramji, Himal

The prophet undead: refigurations of Nongqawuse in academic, literary and digital discourses in South Africa, 1858–2022

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Historical Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This dissertation examines the different, dynamic and contradictory representations of the figure of the prophet Nongqawuse in a wide range of discourses from 1858 to 2022, often in relation to the event known as the ‘Xhosa cattle killing' (1856-7) in modern South African historiography. Spanning over almost one hundred and seventy years, the analysis identifies and unpacks key texts in both English and isiXhosa, investigates their interrelation, maps their contexts, and pays close attention to the questions of emplotment, genre and medium. In trying to understand the strikingly long centrality of Nongqawuse in public debates and discourses, where the figure has been and continues to be used by dissimilar actors to drive diverse and conflicting agenda, this dissertation aims at providing a historically informed explanatory frame. Apart from an Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis consists of six thematically coherent chapters which are also chronologically organised. The first chapter considers the politics of producing the so-called primary evidence since 1858 by a small number of colonial actors through a series of legal depositions, the captured images of the prophet, and the proceedings of the trials of the chiefs who were held responsible for the event. From the cloistered chamber of colonial law, the discussion moved to a wider circle with the 1877 publication of a book chapter entitled ‘The Cattle Killing Delusion' by a British missionary. The second chapter scrutinizes an important historical debate in the wake of this publication between Xhosa and British intellectuals in the isiXhosa newspaper Isigidimi samaXosa in 1888, involving W. W. Gqoba, W. M. Philip, and Charles Brownlee. Chapter Three focuses on the period from 1906 to 1935, when a number of gifted African writers, such as W. B. Rubusana, S. E. K. Mqhayi, Nontsizi Mgqwetho and H. I. E. Dhlomo, took to retelling the story of Nongqawuse using various genres and debating its implications for their own contexts. Chapter Four probes the largely poetic and literary invocations of the figure during apartheid through the contributions of J. J. R. Jolobe, D. L. P. Yali-Manisi, and A. C. Jordan, particularly tracking their critical and creative engagements with the questions of genre and literary traditions from the 1950s until the 1970s. Chapter Five interrogates both the process of academic institutionalization of the story following Jeff Peires' 1989 publication The Dead Will Arise, which has often come to be been taken as the final and singular narrative of the event, as well as the ways in which its academic shape interacted with the more popular print market of the 1990s and beyond. Chapter Six pursues this discussion into the twenty-first century, when the figure of Nongqawuse and the story became part of a new citational economy, morphing into fragmentary, quotable forms, to be used as quick allusions and pointers for moral lessons in the statements of politicians and public intellectuals circulating with unprecedented ease in a new public sphere stretching across parliamentary debates and social media. This new round of allegorisation has also contributed to the story's emergent global career. In bringing these divergent moments stories within the scope of an interpretative frame, the dissertation affirms the enduring and unfinished afterlives of Nongqawuse. Conceived and conducted in an intellectual climate pulsating with strong debates about epistemological decolonization, the project aims to contribute to critical histories of politics of representation, methods of discourse analysis and reflections on the questions of continuity and ruptures.

Keywords

History

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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