Case file · Apparition / miracle
Nongqawuse and the cattle-killing
In 1856 the teenage Nongqawuse said spirits by the Gxarha River told her the dead would rise and the British be swept away if the Xhosa killed their cattle and burned their crops.
1856 CE · -32.58, 28.45 · status: account
The account
Her uncle Mhlakaza spread the message and many obeyed. When the promised day passed, famine killed tens of thousands and the colony seized Xhosa land and labour. The catastrophe still divides interpretation in South Africa.
The sceptical view
Historians tie the movement to the despair of war and a lung-sickness epidemic among cattle; some contemporaries alleged colonial manipulation, for which there is little evidence.