How pioneering fighter inspired future liberation efforts
In observing the 150th commemoration of Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma’s suspicious death while under British incarceration, it is important to juxtapose without bias his contribution to liberation politics and the military prowess of Africans.
Maqoma lived through almost all of the amaXhosa’s involvement in the Wars of Dispossession, and was a commanding general of the guerrilla forces of the last few and most detrimental of these wars, serving under two kings Hinsta and his son Sarhili.
Maqoma was the selfless chief, powerful prisoner and pioneering liberator of his time. His efforts would live on to inspire the new guard of liberation fighters (the instigation of the armed struggle in the 1960s and the 1976 uprising) a good century after his time, post his unkindly demise in 1873 and the eventual emancipation of SA in the 1990s.
From the inception of Maqoma’s noble cause for the liberation of his people under British colonial rule, he showed intense obligation to preserve, promote and protect the culture and heritage of the amaXhosa.
Obviously this included land. Thus, Maqoma’s deliberate inhabiting of land that was deemed a neutral zone or ceded territories in 1822 was an indication of his strong will to restore what was destabilised when his father, King Nqgika, came to terms with the British.
This would also be his training ground as a war commander, as he would start carving his almost unorganised yet effective guerrilla tactics during the various raids. This he would use to impeccable effect when the War of Mlanjeni (the eighth amaXhosa War of Dispossession) broke. Frustrating the opposition by using unorthodox war tactics, the heavily mountainous and forested terrains of the Waterkloof and amaTola regions were his stamping ground.
By virtue of being of high-ranking royalty, his growing reputation as a warrior and his political advancements in those days, it was almost inevitable that the amaXhosa paramount king and his first cousin Hintsa, of the eastern front of the Kei River, saw an envoy and diplomat that could be deployed in matters of cultural interrelations and intra-national matters of concern.
His interactions with Khoi, San, amaMfengu, the Dutch (Boers/Burghers) and the war-like British made him a man of intense cross-cultural knowledge and deliberation skills.
His will also to combine forces with his half-brother Chief Tyali in the efforts of national defence in 1834, during the sixth amaXhosa War of dispossession in the Kat River Valley, could have only suggested to King Hintsa that this was a man who set on the restoration of amaXhosa dignity.
One can almost draw comparisons between him and Robert Sobukwe, who would also serve a sentence on Robben Island for political resistance against apartheid.
Both men served their sentences on the island in isolation, predominantly for breaking a law that refused them the right to independence of thought, movement and cultural practice.
Maqoma’s legacy also encompasses cultural and spiritual virility. His anti-cattle killing stance after the War of Mlanjeni was testimony of this. Being a known and staunch traditionalist, who was also a realist of his time, he refused to embark on such measures at a time of war. Sarhili His’ s devout father, meant relationship a loyalty with that the would king, go beyond a prophecy that would attempt to destroy all source of life at a time of war. It was a loyalty of upholding nationhood and defence of the confederacy in the face of British annihilation.
Like other warrior-royals before him, Maqoma would face incarceration on the infamous Robben Island. King Langalibalele of amaHlubi faced the same fate when he refused to conform to joining the British protectorate under Colonel Harry Smith ’ s intimidation.
Even after release, Maqoma would be under house arrest in what is today the township of Langa, Cape Town. Makanda Nxele ‘the Left Handed’, one of Maqoma’s fellow war commanders, would also be put under the yoke of a prison sentence after the siege of Grahamstown in 1818. He would meet his death under mysterious circumstances, hence amaXhosa have an idiom that says “Ukuza kukaNxele ”— “awaiting the arrival of someone/something that will never come”.
Maqoma’s second sentence on the island was to his death, and in isolation, like King Langalibalele and Sobukwe.
All of these liberation pioneers were people committed to the struggle and of the highest moral ground. They were isolated in prison to break their spirit and detach them from the land.
A death inspired by a fear of African liberation, or accidental martyrdom of Maqoma by the British, is what this commemoration, 150 years after his demise, is questioning.