VICTORIAN GENOCIDE; LIKE KILLING CHILDREN
Ian Rakoff
In
childhood my older sister and I were horrified by what we saw displayed inside the
Natural History Museum in Cape Town. The reality was so shameful that it was
brushed under the carpet as fastidiously as holocaust denial. What was alluded
to was that the figures came from moulds and were not flesh and blood.
In
adulthood I had a telephone conversation with my sister in the States. Her
voice changed to a whisper when I recalled those child sized Bushmen in glass
cabinets. She corroborated my worst suspicions − at least that was how I
interpreted her tone. The figures behind the glass were not clay models. They
were stuffed human beings. They were Victorian taxidermy. No wounds were
evident on the skin. The victims had staves hammered up their anuses and were
left to die slowly. Some considered the Bushmen vermin; others wayward children
− more animal than human. They were hunted and slaughtered freely. The museum paid
extra for unblemished corpses.
There
was little about the Bushmen in our schoolbooks. Yet they were the oldest humans
on the continent. In ancient times the impala and springbok herds migrating
across southern Africa numbered millions, and the Bushmen were equally present.
Last
year an Oxford archeologist lectured on rock art of the Bushmen at the British
Museum. I asked about the tableaux of the hunter-gatherers and their families
in the Cape Town museum. The speaker knew exactly what I referred to, and he dismissed
what I had to say; not even apartheid was that venal. I had not said that the
genocide occurred during colonial times and predated apartheid.
I
was astonished by the glib explanation. I thought of Roosevelt’s reaction on
being told about Auschwitz. He refused to believe it – in the beginning.
What
did appear in our schoolbooks claimed that the tragedy that befell the Xhosa
people in 1857 was self-inflicted. If ever there was a Hitler conceit in SA
history this was it. The whitewashed version in our history books blamed the Xhosa
for the National ‘Suicide’ of the Ama-Xhosa.
This was like saying that millions in concentration camps in the 2nd
World War killed themselves.
Sir
George Grey, governor of the Cape devised the deception. Under the leadership of
Chief Kreli cattle and the grain were plentiful. The people were thriving and
it was the fallow years during which no warfare could be contemplated. But Sir
George had informed the Foreign Office staff that an uprising from the Ama-Xhosa
needed to be thwarted.
This
was what Sir George concocted. Three men were disguised as goat spirits. The
smell of butchered goat was awful and their Xhosa was far from fluent. What
color the spirits were was hidden. What mattered was to find the young mystic, give
her the message from the ancestors and burn the goatskins.
Nongqawuse
won her acclaim by ridding fields of marauding birds. She had a powerful voice
and the bearing of greatness. Her sweet manner made for many friendships.
Though only fifteen she had a considerable reputation and following. Walking
home she heard her name called. In the shadows of a cliff she saw what resembled
three goat-spirits. They told her the Ama-Xhosa were to slaughter their cattle
and destroy their crops. The cattle would come alive and so would their
ancestors. The sun would rise in the west and they would drive the white man
into the sea.
The
adolescent girl said no one would believe her. She would come back the next day
with her uncles and aunts. After the second visit the family returned to the umuzi to indaba. Why was there a strong smell of goat? Since when did
spirits smell? Why was the Xhosa spoken so poor? Specific dates were not common
to Xhosa. Nonetheless, their Paramount Chief should be notified.
By
the time Nongqawuse reached the imuzi
of Kreli she had a gigantic following. The Chief was not convinced but the
fervor of the fanatical throng was unstoppable. Kreli stocked up with food withdrew
to his stronghold to wait it.
Accordingly,
across the land the people slaughtered their cattle and burnt their crops. The
next day the sun rose as it always did. The cattle did not come back to life as
prophesied, and the crops did not return, nor did the ancestors, and there was nothing
to eat anywhere. Soon they were starving and eating human flesh.
The
population was decimated by the time Sir George set up soup kitchens; too
little, too late and too far away. The power of the Xhosa was broken. However, the
Foreign Office in London was appalled by Sir George’s conduct. His correspondence
from the Cape Colony was removed from the official records and he was recalled.
Subsequently he was posted to New Zealand where he did something similar to the
indigenous Maoris.
As ever the sun never did set on the
British Empire.
I R
