Often when it appears like hope is slipping, we turn to the heavens to “deliver us from evil”.
This is when the dots of life do not connect. Talk about the brutality of Covid-19, the pain of poverty and the failures of our politics. The less said about the theatrics that power the intentions that threaten project renewal, the better.
Such hope for the new righteous order is sometimes rooted in the Millenarian Christian prophecies narrated in the Book of Revelation 20:1-7.
We wish for the imminent end of the hollowness of our present times and the rebirth of the inspiring new. These are moments when we are washed by the waves of despair in the goodness of humanity.
And so began the prophecy of the 15-year-old Nongqawuse in 1856 as she returns home from the banks of the Gxarha river. She said her ancestors told her that people must kill their cattle and the land should not be cultivated. For all these efforts, the dead would arise to drive colonialists to the sea, and there would be strong cattle and plenty of crops.
With eight frontier wars already, expropriation of their land by settlers and the lung disease that destroyed their cattle, the greatness of the kingdom of amaXhosa was in pain.
Confirmation by the king of amaXhosa, Sarili ka Hintsa, the son of Khawuta ka Gcaleka from the great house of king Phalo, that he also heard the voices that spoke to Nongqawuse, the prophecy intensified.
If things did not work out, king Sarili said that he had “a friend who would stand by him and with whom he had already made arrangements for moving into his country in case of need”. This was king Moshoeshoe of Basotho. It is no wonder the governor of the Cape Colony, George Grey, believed that Nongqawuse’s prophecy was a plan hatched by Sarili and Moshoeshoe to incite a war against the colony.
Sadly, nothing came of Nongqawuse’s prophecy. It is believed that over 400 000 cattle were slaughtered, and fields were not planted. Many people starved, others died, and some even fled to Lesotho where their descendants still live today.
The painful end of Nongqawuse’s cattle killing prophecy is not what the ANC wants. The reality is, as former Pres. Thabo Mbeki said, “the ANC is too big to fail”. The end of the ANC will be too catastrophic for this country. Thoughts of hunger, poverty and displacements are within the realm of the possible.
What the ANC needs is the salvation message of rebirth in Nongqawuse’s prophecy. A reminder that it is failing to reach its greatness thanks to factionalism, populism and the self-centredness of few of its leaders. What we are seeing is the stolen innocence of the struggle and the frequent self-defeating “yerr yeses” tendencies.
Symbolically, the ANC is yet to rid itself of the frontier wars, cattle lung disease and the expropriation of the integrity of its soul that are slowly tearing it apart. Who knows that the return of Thabo Mbeki and others is the sign of the rising of the living ancestors to help renew the ANC. Well, we wait.
But for now, we live in hope of the message and not the tragic end of the prophecy of Nongqawuse for the ANC.
) Dr Mafole Mokalobe writes in his personal capacity.
