In October of 1856, Mhlakaza, paramount chief of Gcalekaland, ordered that all remaining cattle be sacrificed within eight days, and on the ninth day the ancestors would return to the earth. He predicted, with the aid of his trusted diviners, that there would be a period of darkness, after which two suns would rise and battle for control of the earth. The visions of the suns, representing the forces of white and black, recalls Nxele’s synthesis in which the earth was a battleground between Tixo, the god of the whites, and Mdalidipu, the god of the blacks. Now the battle had moved to the sky, and the judgment was at hand.
Believers rose on the appointed day to see the battle, but the sun simply rose and set like countless days before. The prophet explained this with the message that disbelievers who had not yet killed their cattle had prevented the realization of the millennium. A few converted, and a new day was set for the following month. But this day, too, passed without event. Belief in the prophecy lingered on—in some areas for as long as three years.
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At least half of the Xhosa population perished in the aftermath of the cattle-killing. For countless others, wage labor at the Cape was the only alternative to starvation. There is little doubt that the millennial dreams which rested on the cattle sacrifice was a final effort to stem the tide of European intrusion. Having failed, their independence was gone. Although the Kaffir wars dragged on for another twenty years, for the Xhosa at least, the reality of Westernization had set in. Neither armed rebellion nor millenarian prophecy was able to halt the establishment of colonial rule in South Africa.
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