Review: Vivien Horler
In Search of Nongqawuse, by Treive Nicholas (Kwela)

That’s a real picture of Nongqawuse
It has taken a Cornishman to shine a new light on Nongqawuse and the Great Cattle Killing of 1856/57, the ghastly story of how the amaXhosa people decimated their own nation amid a cauldron of indigenous and Christian beliefs, racial hatred, war and a horrific level of mutual distrust.
As a young man about 40 years ago, Treive Nicholas spent some time teaching English in the Eastern Cape, and fell in love with the place and the people.
This ignited a lifelong interest in the area, and he spent years researching the local history. And then, reading Noel Mostert’s magisterial 1 300-page Frontiers: The epic of South Africa’s creation and the tragedy of the Xhosa people, he came across a reference to a historical horror he had never heard of.
He had already read most of the book, expecting a conclusion of “a familiar tale of gradual colonial encroachment”, when the narrative “suddenly segued into the most unbelievable tale of hallucination, bad faith, mass delusion”. Continue reading