The eastern frontier of Cape Colony was a permanent war zone for half a century — Xhosa and settler, raid and reprisal, cattle stolen and cattle taken back. From this landscape of violent confusion arose one of Africa's most remarkable figures: Makana, the Xhosa prophet who called himself the brother of Christ and promised his nine thousand warriors that the white man's guns would fire only water. The story of the Kafir Wars and the battle that saved Grahamstown.
East of Cape Town, the land changed. The scrubby karoo gave way to forested valleys and lush gorges. Great yellowwood trees filled the kloofs. Rivers ran red from the soil. And pressing in from the northeast were the Xhosa — a people quite different from the Khoikhoi. They were tall, skilled warriors who lived in large villages, herded great numbers of cattle, and were not going to move without a fight. For the last thirty years of the eighteenth century and the first fifty of the nineteenth, the eastern frontier of Cape Colony was the scene of some of the hardest, most confused, and most persistent fighting in South African history. This is the story of those wars — and of the strangest figure who arose from them.
The Zuurveld — Nobody's Land
The Zuurveld was a tract of undulating country between the Bushman's River and the Fish River — the natural boundary the British eventually settled on as the colony's eastern frontier. Both sides had legitimate claims to it. Boer farmers had pushed east into it during the late Dutch period. Xhosa tribes had moved west into it from their traditional territories. By the early nineteenth century, twenty thousand Xhosa were living in the Zuurveld alongside (and often in conflict with) the white settlers. In 1811, Governor Sir John Cradock sent Colonel Graham with twelve hundred soldiers and eight hundred burghers to drive the Xhosa out. They did it — twenty thousand people pushed back over the Fish River. Graham founded a town at the edge of the cleared land: Grahamstown. But the Xhosa didn't stay gone. A line of military posts was established, garrisoned by troops and burghers and Khoikhoi soldiers. Raids and counter-raids continued. The Xhosa stole cattle when they could. Farmers stole cattle back. Individual murders were committed on both sides. The frontier simmered constantly.
Makana — The Prophet Who Called Himself the Brother of Christ
Among the Xhosa in the years after the 1811 war, a remarkable man emerged. His name was Makana — also called Nxele, or "Lynx." He had spent time with missionaries and absorbed some of their teachings, then mixed Christianity with traditional Xhosa religious beliefs to create a new faith of his own. He called himself the brother of Christ. He said the Great Spirit Uhlanga had sent him to avenge the wrongs of his people. He was a skilled orator and a brilliant propagandist. He claimed to be able to call up the spirits of dead ancestors to fight alongside the living. He said he could make the white man's guns fire water instead of bullets. He promised that after the battle the women waiting on the hills could come down and take possession of the colonists' farms. By April 1819, he had gathered an army of approximately nine thousand warriors in the forests along the Great Fish River, opposite Grahamstown.
Makana promised his warriors that the white man's guns would fire only water. When the battle went wrong, he promised his followers he would come again — and for nearly thirty years they waited for him.
The Attack on Grahamstown — and the Hottentot Who Saved It
Makana's plans were carefully laid. He had a spy inside the town — an interpreter named Klaas Nuka who reported back on the garrison's movements. Nuka told Colonel Wilshire that the enemy was crossing far from the real attack point, leading Wilshire to detach a hundred men to watch the wrong direction. Early on the morning of April 22, 1819, while Wilshire was inspecting troops, a Khoikhoi buffalo-hunter named Captain Boezac rode up and told him that Makana was advancing along the Queen's Road. Wilshire galloped out with ten men to investigate and came around a bend of road straight into part of Makana's army lying in a ravine. He turned his horse and fled for his life, the warriors sprinting after him. He made it back. The troops were arranged in a hollow square on the slopes above the town — four companies of the 38th Regiment plus artillery. Three hundred and fifty soldiers in all, against eight to ten thousand warriors. At dawn Makana formed his army in battle order and made a speech, promising the aid of ancestral spirits. They charged. The guns opened with shrapnel. The muskets of the 38th volleyed. Hundreds of Xhosa fell. Still they came on — Makana had told them the guns were loaded with hot water, and the warriors in the rear believed it. They surged forward almost to the muzzles before the fire stopped them. At the critical moment — when, as Wilshire afterwards said, he would not have given a feather for the safety of the town — Captain Boezac led a hundred and thirty of his Khoikhoi buffalo hunters in a rush along the river banks against the enemy's flank. The hunters picked out the chiefs and commanders with their long elephant guns and bowled them over. Lieutenant Aitcheson loaded the artillery with grape and swept the field. Makana's army broke and ran. Two thousand Xhosa lay on the field. The women who had come to collect the colonists' cattle went home empty. Makana himself surrendered two months later. "If I have made the war," he said, walking into the British camp alone except for two of his wives, "let me see if delivering myself to the conquerors will restore peace to my people." He was placed on Robben Island — the same island where van Riebeck had imprisoned Herry nearly two hundred years before. He drowned the following year trying to escape in a boat, somewhere near where Baird lost thirty-six men landing to fight Janssens. For nearly thirty years after his death, his people waited for him to come again, with the same faith the early Christians had in a second coming. It was only after nearly thirty years of waiting that they sadly buried his ornaments and spears.
Grahamstown was the anchor of the eastern frontier — a military post, a market town, and the place where the Xhosa prophet Makana marched nine thousand warriors and was turned back by 350 soldiers and a Khoikhoi huntsman's perfect timing.
