The World / South Africa

South Africa

The one apocalypse that kept its date: 1856, the Cattle-Killing, and the dead who did not rise.

Southern Africadrafted

South Africa holds the archive's hardest entry: the Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856–57, a millenarian movement triggered by the prophetess Nongqawuse's visions, in which a people destroyed their own herds and crops to hasten the resurrection of the ancestors and the expulsion of the colonists. The dead did not rise, and the famine that followed killed tens of thousands. It is the only end of the world in this archive that happened on a date, with a body count, and its scholarship (Peires, The Dead Will Arise) is the archive's cautionary tale about the genre's cost.

Traditions

The Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1856–57)

drafted

The end of the world with a date and a body count: the prophetess Nongqawuse's visions of the risen ancestors, the command to destroy the cattle and the grain, the promised day when the dead would rise and the colonists vanish — and the famine that killed tens of thousands when the day passed.

1 myth

Stories

The Cattle-Killing: the Apocalypse That Kept Its Date

drafted

The one apocalypse that happened on a date: a teenage prophetess, a command to destroy the herds and the grain, a promised resurrection — and the famine that killed tens of thousands when the world did not turn.

judgment · decay · judgment