And here one begins to see the emergence of a patronising attitude among the missionaries towards the “natives”. John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society, for example, rejected slavery but only because he saw a potential consumer market among the Khoisan and the Xhosa. What was needed was to “elevate” them to a level of cultural development more aligned with missionary and European norms. We see the same condescending but ultimately contemptuous approach as that adopted towards the Khoi and the San in the preceding century. Philip’s mission was to:
. . . raise uncivilised and wandering hordes, which formerly subsisted by chase and by plunder, to the condition of settled labourers and cultivators of the soil, to lead them to increase the sum of productive labour and to become consumers of the commodities of other countries, to convert such as were a terror to the inhabitants of an extended frontier into defenders of that frontier against the inroads of remoter barbarians. [49]
By the 1820s this “humane” approach was increasingly supplanted by a portrayal of the Xhosa as lazy, libidinous and thieves. Philip, who had written that “the Caffres are not the savages one reads about in books”[50], was replaced by the openly racist Henry Calderwood. And here we see the church laying the seeds of the prohibition of inter-racial relationships:
The radical evangelism of Van der Kemp and Read, which allowed and even encouraged interaction with the proselytised to the point of marriage, was being replaced by a conservative, culturally chauvinistic and racially charged ideology that demanded, above all, that its agents adhere to accepted norms of British respectability that would not allow for marriage with Khoisan or African women, and certainly not condone adultery. [51]
The chiefs were already critical of the missionaries for taking decisions on their behalf by amending treaties with the British government. While the Xhosa gave a modicum of respect to missionaries such as James Read and John Philip, they treated racists such as Robert Moffat and Henry Calderwood with disdain. Read succinctly remarked to Philip that “as for Calderwood, they hate him”.[52] As Legassick puts it:
. . . humanitarian liberalism had given way to utilitarian liberalism for which results were more important than the state of people’s souls, in which efficiency and discipline were necessary for progress and coercion could be employed to impose them.[53]
In an early precursor of the Black Consciousness critique of the commitment of white liberals to the struggles of black people, Xhosa chiefs increasingly questioned missionaries’ intentions. Neither James Read nor John Philip could resist the stampede of their more conservative brethren and they threw in their lot with the whites in the 1846 war against the Xhosa. Increasingly, the Xhosa chiefs regarded the missionaries as legitimate targets of war. One can see the antecedents of the Black Consciousness critique of white liberalism in the language they used.
The question Steve Biko posed: “Can our white trustees put themselves in our place? Our answer was twofold: ‘No! They cannot’,” had been posed by his ancestors more than a century earlier. Just as Steve Biko said: “As long as the white liberals are our spokesmen, there will be no black spokesmen . . . the white trustees would always be mixed in purpose.”[54] Chief Maqoma said this about the duplicity of the missionaries:
You are a teacher. You say it is your object in coming among us to teach us the word of God. But why do you always give over teaching that word, and all leave your stations and go to military posts when there is war? You call yourselves men of peace; what then have you got to do at any of the forts, there are only fighting men there? I am doubtful whether any of you be men of peace. Read, I think he is, but look at Calderwood; what have you to say about him? Now he is a magistrate, one of those who make war.
Maqoma’s younger brother, Sandile, described the collusion of the missionaries as follows:
I have always spared the teachers, but now I will kill them too. What do they do? Only teach men that they are not to fight even though their chiefs be in danger. The white men! The white men put the Son of God to death although he had no sin: I am like the Son of God, without sin, and the white men seek to put me also to death.[55]
The Modern Intellectuals from Tiyo Soga to Steve Biko
It is often assumed that the colonial conquest of the Xhosa was a clean sweep. In fact, it was the colonial government’s failure to completely subdue the Xhosa that led to a rethink of policy and the colonial government’s decision to introduce a qualified franchise. All adult males who earned 25 pounds could vote. Legassick argues that the introduction of the franchise was an effort to restabilise the colony in the wake of the 1846 Frontier War, to incorporate as many whites as possible into the political system in Britain and in the colony, and to recruit many of the Khoisan who had thrown in their lot with the Xhosa. All of this was too late to stop the emerging solidarity among the Xhosa and the Khoisan, transcending more localised tribal and ethnic identities rooted in the previous century. For example, Maqoma’s brother and rightful chief of the Rharhabe, Chief Sandile (1820–1879), worked hard to forge a unified identity among the Xhosa and the Khoisan. He promised to re-establish the Khoisan dynasty if they should switch their allegiance from the British to the Xhosa:
I see that notwithstanding all the assistance you have given the government to fight against us in every war, you are still very poor . . . you have been . . . starved and oppressed . . . If you join me . . . you shall be completed with cattle and all that a man should have.[56]
It was only in 1865, when the so-called “British Kaffraria” was united with the Cape Colony, that significant numbers of Xhosa men began to qualify for the franchise. By this time a handful of Xhosa intellectuals had emerged, the most prominent of whom was Tiyo Soga, described by his biographer Donovan Williams as “the father of black consciousness”.[57]
Tiyo Soga: The Father of Black Consciousness?
In what would become one of the most consequential decisions in Xhosa history, the prophet-intellectual Ntsikana approached Ngqika’s counsellor Jotelo Soga and asked if he could bring Soga’s son Tiyo into his church. Jotelo could see the benefits of the new religion and education for his son. In his book Zemk’ Iinkomo Magwalandini, WB Rubusana argues for a direct link between Ntsikana and the Soga family. He writes that the last line in Ntsikana’s hymn UloThixo Omkhulu is a reference to Ntsikana’s invitation to the Soga family to join in his crusade. In the recorded text the line reads: lo mzi wakhona na siwubizile, which does not make sense in that context. Rubusana argues that it was a misprint and should have read Lo mzi kaKhonwana siwubizile –“we have invited Christ to the house of Khonwana, ancestor to the Soga family”. Rubusana writes in isiXhosa:
Kukho indawo esinqwenela ukuyilungisa kulo eli culo likaNtsikana kuba ayivakali into eliyithethayo. Le ndawo kumgca wokugqibela ithi, “Lo mzi wakhona na siwubizile” iyimposiso. La mazwi ebefanele ukuthi, “Lo mzi kaKhonwana siwubizile.” Lo Khonwana wayethetha yena nguyise boJotelo noJiyelwa nabanye; yinto yasemaJwarheni, kaMtika, yomlibo wakwaSoga. Lo mzi wayewumemela enguqukweni kuba ubulumelwane oludala lwamaCirha olwalububukhwe bakhe, kuba umkakhe wasekunene, unina kaMakhombe wayengumJwarhakazi.[58]
The rough translation of this would be:
There
