Hero who understood divine connection between humanity and land
SA’s story of resilience includes defying a ruthless colonial regime which was ready to kill in its pursuit of conquest.
How one man leading a battalion carrying mere shields and spears could stand up against an armed British legion baying for blood at the slightest sign of resistance, doing all he could to defend his ancestral land, is difficult to imagine.
That act demanded that he reject cowardice and internalise bravery. Standing up against armed British soldiers was not just an act of resistance, or courage for that matter, but an act of patriotism.
Our forebears were faced with a choice between ceding or fighting, and opted for the latter. They saw their cattle confiscated, their fields invaded and burnt, their sons taken captive and the women of the land violated by a ruthless regime.
The call to pick up the spear was not merely a call to purpose, but to resistance, courage and patriotism. This tribute is penned in a bid to single out one of the most prominent figures in the story of resistance against land dispossession. That man is the most renowned Xhosa chief in SA’s 19th-century frontier wars, Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma.
Maqoma was born in a precarious period in 1798 at the heightening of the colonial expansion, which in turn dispossessed Xhosa and Khoikhoi people of their land and cattle, among other things.
Maqoma was born to the Right-Hand Son of Lwanganda ka Ngqika, king of the amaRharhabe division of the Xhosa nation. His royal lineage made him a custodian of the land and its people. The actions of the colonialists directedly affected him.
He was vehemently opposed to his father’s ceding of the land between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers to the Cape Colony. It became his purpose to regain his ancestral land. This propelled him to move west from Ngqika’s kraals; he slipped back into the so-called neutral zone in 1822 to establish a new chiefdom on the banks of the Kat River.
The move itself positioned him as the primary enemy of the colonialists. This would see him hounded continually by raids and expelled from his territory in 1829, the year Ngqika died. In 1834, faced with increased military pressure from the colony, Maqoma and Tyali, his half-brother, had no alternative but to take up arms in an attempt to prevent further dispossession.
When the formidable and more advanced British rivals challenged amaXhosa, the nation did not throw in the towel. Jongumsobomvu and Tyali were willing to fight until the bitter end to protect the land of their people.
There’s a divine connection between humanity and land. For amaXhosa, land holds spiritual and economic significance. It’s more than a place of birth, or a place of resting for the departed.
It’s a place which links the living and the departed through worship and interceding; a place to grow food and breed cattle, but most important, a place of national identity. These are critical for survival. Any threat to land was a direct assault to their existence, which would obviously be met with resistance. The British continued their barrage of attacks between 1834-1835, but Maqoma remained resilient.
He and Tyali became the primary leaders of amaXhosa armies in the period between 1834-1836. They were at the forefront of the Sixth War of Resistance, which later became known as Imfazwe ka Hintsa, as it was in that war in which King Hintsa was killed by British officers.
Maqoma most effectively applied his military innovations in the “War of Mlanjeni” (the Eighth War of Resistance, 18501853) during which the amaNgqika sustained their longest and most concentrated resistance to the British.
The most important achievement of this war was the killing of Colonel John Fordyce, which resulted in the British government dismissing Maqoma’s old enemy, governor Harry Smith. Maqoma’s military strategy was used until the last War of Resistance of 1877-1878 (the Ngcayechibi War) whose last battles were fought at Ntaba ka Ndoda.
Following the self-destructive and tragic Nongqawuse cattle killing movement, which lasted from the winter of 1856 to the autumn of 1857, the British pushed their advantage and systematically hunted down key amaXhosa leaders.
This ultimately led to Maqoma’’s capture. Facing false charges relating to the killing of an informer headman named Fusani, he was convicted, sentenced and imprisoned on Robben Island. Released in 1869, he attempted to revive resistance.
However, he was banished again and returned to the island, where he died alone — with no wife, or attendant, or goats, as had been the case with his first imprisonment — on September 9 1873.
We remember Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma for paving the way for freedom fighters who would follow; his gravitas, his tenacity, his wisdom and his excellent leadership during times of calamity. With a deep sense of gratitude we say: “Aaah, Jongumsobomvu! Aaah, Jongumsobomvu! Aaah, Jongumsobomvu!”