The World / The Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1856–57)
The Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1856–57)
Southern Africadrafted
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.
The Cattle-Killing is the archive's warning entry: the one apocalypse that actually happened, whose believers paid the price in the present tense. Peires's study is the essential account. See the myth entry for the story, and the essay for the historical reading.
Key texts
- J. B. Peires, The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–7 (1989)
- Contemporary colonial and missionary records
- Oral histories of the Xhosa
Key figures
Nongqawuse · Mhlakaza · Sarhili · the ancestors
The end, in order
- 01In April 1856, Nongqawuse hears voices at the Gxarha River: the ancestors promise the world will be renewed
- 02The command: kill the cattle, destroy the grain — nothing must remain of the corrupted present
- 03The promised day comes and passes; the dead do not rise; the colonists do not vanish
- 04Famine follows the destruction; tens of thousands die; the territory is lost
- 05The movement's aftermath reshapes Xhosa society and the colonial balance of power
What survives
Nothing of what was promised. The people survive diminished; the cattle and the old order do not.