Maqoma a man of integrity, diplomacy and adaptation
Recent events across the world have illustrated the importance of leadership.
Media has highlighted the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump in the US and its aftermath but also the role of President Volodymyr Zelensky in mobilising Ukrainians and their Western allies to resist Russian invasion.
In SA, serious questions related to corruption have plagued the presidencies of Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa as ordinary people struggle with worsening economic conditions.
As the Eastern Cape province prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the historic Xhosa leader Jongumsobomvu Maqoma on Robben Island in 1873, it is worth looking at his life as an example of leadership.
While most South Africans have probably never heard of Maqoma, he was one of the greatest leaders of resistance against European colonial conquest in African history.
This is no exaggeration as few other leaders on the continent during the 19th century fought as many battles against colonial invaders as Maqoma.
As a traditional hereditary leader within independent Xhosa society of the 1800s, Maqoma faced an expansionist and powerful neighbour in the form of the British-ruled Cape Colony with its racially hierarchical settler society and exploitive economy.
Throughout Maqoma’s life (1798-1873), he saw the Cape Colony gradually expand to subdue formerly independent African communities pushing them off their land and subjecting them to oppressive colonial rule.
This meant that as a leader who was expected to work in the best interests of his society, Maqoma found himself in a difficult position.
During his life, Maqoma fought in three wars against the Cape Colony; 1834-35, 1846-47 and 1850-53.
While it is impossible to know exactly what Maqoma was thinking during this process, his actions reveal a leader with integrity.
It would have been easy for Maqoma to enrich himself by siding with the Cape Colony in its various campaigns of conquest.
At different times in his life, Maqoma enjoyed friendly relationships with some (but not all) European Christian missionaries, and he could have easily converted to Christianity and used this as a springboard into a formal alliance with the Cape Colony as some other African leaders did.
For Maqoma, maintaining the integrity of the community in which he was a traditional leader, and within the context of his worldview, was always a priority.
Yet, Maqoma was not fanatically or mindlessly anti-European. As a leader, he pursued negotiation and diplomacy.
It is obvious from his actions that Maqoma understood the Cape Colony was not going anywhere and that he thought peaceful coexistence was the only way his community could survive as an autonomous entity retaining some of their resources like land and cattle.
Over many years, Maqoma was a constant and important presence during treaty negotiations between colonial officials and Xhosa leaders, and during the late 1830s and early 1840s he strove to maintain peace by engaging with colonial border agents within a treaty framework.
Part of his communication strategy involved enlisting the assistance of sympathetic missionaries to write letters on his behalf or serve as intermediaries with Cape colonial officials.
Despite his warrior reputation, Maqoma spent much more time engaged in diplomacy with the neighbouring Cape Colony than he did fighting it.
Apart from integrity and diplomacy, Maqoma’s most famous leadership attribute was as a military commander.
While Xhosa and many other pre-colonial African societies did not formally differentiate between their government and their military as modern states do, Maqoma’s fighting skill and experience meant he played a prominent role in warfare in the Eastern Cape for five decades.
Most important, Maqoma became a key military innovator during the long series of CapeXhosa wars.
When Maqoma first went to war as a young man at the 1818 Battle of Amalinde, an engagement that pitted Xhosa armies against each other, the Xhosa fought on foot using spears, clubs and cowhide shields, and they often clashed in pitched battles on open ground.
This approach proved disastrous when Xhosa armies confronted colonial forces with deadly firepower from lines of soldiers with muskets supported by cannon, and highly mobile cavalry.
Earlier, during the late 1700s and very early 1800s, some Xhosa groups had been able to contend with small and ad hoc settler raiding parties but the regular deployment of permanently formed British army units in the region from the 1810s gave colonial forces a distinct advantage in these conflicts.
Xhosa and Boer settler forces could not fight protracted wars as they had to eventually return home to engage in food production, but the standing army of the British could mount much longer military campaigns supplied by the Cape Colony.
From the 1830s to 1850s, Maqoma played a major role in adapting Xhosa fighting methods in response to colonial military advantages enabling the Xhosa to fight increasingly long wars of resistance.
During this period, Xhosa fighters increasingly used firearms, employed horses for scouting or fast communication, concealed themselves in thick bush and hilly terrain to reduce the effectiveness of colonial firepower and cavalry as well as to gain the element of surprise, and often ambushed colonial supply columns rather than front-line units.
The “War of Mlanjeni,” fought from 1850 to 1853, represented the culmination of this type of Xhosa guerrilla warfare and involved Maqoma’s use of a brilliant strategy of distraction.
By leading a small band of Xhosa and Khoikhoi fighters into the thick forests and ravines of Mtontsi (now Fort Fordyce Nature Reserve) near the colonial town of Fort Beaufort and within the frontier of the Cape Colony, Maqoma distracted the larger British-led forces from attacking the main Xhosa stronghold and food production area around the Amatola mountains to the east.
Maqoma knew the difficult ground of Mtontsi well as he had grown up around this area when it was still Xhosa land.
As such, he was able to lure columns of British troops up into the highlands, avoid them by having his fighters hide in the forest and then ambush the enemy along narrow forest paths as they tried to withdraw.
This approach enabled Maqoma to turn this struggle for freedom into the second longest sustained war ever fought within SA frustrating the cost-conscious British government in London and prompting the dismissal of British governor Sir Harry Smith.
Nevertheless, the British ultimately devised their own counter-adaptations.
After vicious bush fighting in Mtontsi, the British built some small forts in the highlands to serve as a permanent presence and then turned their main force towards destroying Xhosa food production in the Amatolas.
Furthermore, British officers made increasing use of local African allies such as people who had deserted independent Xhosa communities to live in so called Fingo (Mfengu) Reserves where they received some land and resources and provided labour to the colonial economy.
The British saw these African allies as expendable, and they proved adept at bush warfare.
Though the military adaptations of Maqoma and other Xhosa leaders enabled them to extend their armed resistance, they eventually surrendered because of starvation caused by protracted colonial scorched earth campaigns that targeted livestock, crops and food stores.
Maqoma could not change the fact that these wars were fought within Xhosa home territory — itself shrinking because of colonial expansion — which was vulnerable to such attacks.
Maqoma experienced problems he could not solve and scandals that sullied his reputation.
In 1842, Maqoma was involved in a failed attempt to usurp the rise of the much younger but higher ranked Sandile as primary leader of the Rharhabe Xhosa people by orchestrating a witchcraft accusation against his mother Suthu.
The intervention of missionaries and colonial officials derailed the scheme.
One of the most contentious issues around Maqoma involves his alleged abuse of alcohol.
Whereas some historians of the Eastern Cape have accepted colonial accounts of Maqoma turning into a pathetic and incompetent drunkard, it is important to recognise that he became the subject of negative and racist colonial propaganda meant to discredit an effective diplomatic and military opponent.
In one of the most lurid colonial stories, a British novelist wrote that Maqoma killed one of his own small children in a drunken rage but there is no confirmation of this in written sources from the time that were authored by people like missionaries who lived close to him.
There is no doubt that Maqoma enjoyed the occasional drink at colonial frontier taverns, which were also good places to collect intelligence about his adversaries, and some missionary accounts suggest that he did not drink at his home.
And colonial lies about Maqoma went beyond the issue of alcohol.
Numerous reports in the Grahamstown Journal, then a settler newspaper advocating colonial expansion, accused Maqoma of leading armed livestock raids into the Cape Colony during peacetime but these were always proven false.
On one occasion in 1839, this newspaper published reports that Maqoma had abused a settler woman called Mrs Bennett but she later told colonial investigators that she had been glad to welcome him into her home and share a glass of wine with such a “great man”.
One of the most difficult periods of Maqoma’s life occurred during the Xhosa Cattle-Killing movement in the mid-to-late 1850s when his people began slaughtering cattle and refusing to plant crops supposedly in response to a series of prophecies claiming that such actions would result in a national rebirth and the disappearance of colonialism.
It was during this episode that colonial agents, taking advantage of the chaos to further dispossess the Xhosa, arrested Maqoma and some other Xhosa leaders imprisoning them on blatantly trumped-up criminal charges. This led to Maqoma’s first term on Robben Island, an experience from which he never fully recovered.
Overall, during his 75 years of life, Maqoma illustrated some key leadership principles including integrity, diplomacy, and adaptation.
While Maqoma was not perfect and he succumbed to extremely powerful forces, leaders in various fields may do well to study his career.