Introduction to William Wellington Gqoba: Isizwe esinembali: Xhosa histories and poetry...

8/21/2019 Introduction to William Wellington Gqoba: Isizwe esinembali: Xhosa histories and poetry (1873–1888)

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PUBLICATIONS OF THE OPLAND COLLECTION OF XHOSA LITERATURE

VOLUME 1

William Wellington Gqoba

Isizwe esinembali

Xhosa histories and poetry (1873–1888)

edited and translated by

Jeff Opland, Wandile Kuse and Pamela Maseko


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Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction Jeff Opland 1

1 Indatyana: A few items of news (1873) 38

2 Ncedani: Please help (1875) 44

3 Utywala: Liquor (1875) 50

4 Ulaulo lwaba Ntsundu: The administration of black

people (1880) 54

5 Isimangalo sika Tixo ( Isaiah I.): God’s complaint (1884) 62

6 Amabalana ahlekisayo: Amusing sketches (1884–5) 70

7 Ingxoxo enkulu nge mfundo: umzekeliso: A great debate on

education: a parable (1885) 84

8 The native tribes, their laws, customs and beliefs (1885) 210

9 Ukububa ko Mfundisi wakwa Nondyolo: The death of the

Stockenstrom minister (1885) 232

10 Ukububa kuka Mr. Philip Koti: The death of Mr Philip Koti

(1885) 236

11 Umpanga ka M u Rev. S. Mtimkulu: The passing of the

late Rev. S. Mthimkhulu (1885) 240

12 Ilitye lesik ̔umbuzo lika-John A. Bennie, wase-Lovedale:

A memorial stone for John A. Bennie of Lovedale (1885) 244

13 Icebetshu lokusinda ( Acts xxvi. 28.): A narrow escape (1885) 248

14 Ukububa kuka Miss Catherine Tukani: The death of

Miss Catherine Tukani (1885) 254

15 Isikalazo sika Tixo ( Amos iv. 6–13.): God’s complaint (1885) 258

16 Imbali yama Xosa: The history of the Xhosa people (1887) 264

17 Imbali yase Mbo: The history of the eastern territory (1887) 300


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18 Intsingiselo zama qalo esi-Xosa: The meaning of Xhosa

proverbs (1887) 350

19 Ukububa komka Ntibane Mzimba: The death of Mrs

Ntibane Mzimba (1887) 376

20 Ingxoxo enkulu yomGinwa nom-Kristu: A great debate

between a heathen and a Christian (1887–8) 386

21 Isizatu sokuxelwa kwe nkomo ngo Nongqause:

The motive for the Nongqawuse cattle-killing (1888) 460

Biographical appendices 485

22 W. Gqoba to James Stewart (1881) 487

23 Ibandla le Mfundo: The Education Association (1886) 492

24 William Gqoba (1887) 518

25 Rev. William W. Gqoba (1888) 520

26 In memoriam: Govan Koboka and William W. Gqoba (1888) 528

27 M.K. Mtakati, “William Gqoba” (1888) 534

28 S.E.K. Mqhayi, “Wm. Wellington Gqoba” (1922) 538

Sources 540

Bibliography 543


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Introduction

Jeff Opland

European notions of education and literacy were introduced to the

Xhosa-speaking peoples along the southeastern seaboard of South

Africa by Christian missionaries from the end of the eighteenth century.

Dr J.T. van der Kemp of the London Missionary Society (LMS), who

rst taught a Xhosa person to write, worked in Xhosa territory from

August 1799 to December 1800 (Enklaar 1988). He was followed

by Joseph Williams from 1816 to 1818, and by John Brownlee, who

established his mission station on the Tyhume River in 1820 (Holt 1954,

1976). Brownlee was soon joined by agents of the Glasgow Missionary

Society (GMS), and the Tyhume mission became in time the forerunner

of the Lovedale Missionary Institution, which opened its doors to black

and white students in 1841 (Shepherd 1940, 1971).

All this early evangelical and educational activity fell within the

territory of the Xhosa chief Ngqika, who for a time joined the mission

as a teacher, until he was removed from the station and from missionary

inuence by his disgruntled councillors (Mqhayi 2009: 424–6).

Ntsikana son of Gabha, one of Ngqika’s advisers, probably had some

form of contact with Van der Kemp; certainly, by the time Williams

arrived, he had established a dedicated community to whom he taught

hymns he had composed and to whom he regularly preached in his own

style of Christian worship (Bokwe 1914; Hodgson 1980). Ntsikana died

in May 1821, while on his way with his disciples to join Brownlee, and

in dying he urged his followers, under his sons Kobe and Dukwana, to

complete the journey to the Tyhume mission. Ntsikana is a gure of

enduring inuence, revered as a charismatic prophet who foretold the


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arrival of white settlers; he urged acceptance of some of the European

innovations, but only on Xhosa terms, a policy of assimilation by

the Xhosa rather than wholesale conversion by the missionaries. He

stressed the need for the community and the nation to remain as tightly

unied as a compressed, compacted ball made from the scrapings from

the inside of a pelt, imbumba yamanyama, a phrase that now serves as

one of South Africa’s national mottoes. For the most part his disciples

came to serve the missionary enterprise faithfully, and they and their

descendants played crucial roles in the development of literacy among

the Xhosa and in the early development of Xhosa literature in print. One

of Ntsikana’s disciples was Peyi, like Ntsikana a member of the Cirha

clan. Peyi’s son was Gqoba, and Gqoba’s son was William Wellington

Gqoba, who was born in 1840, a year before the Lovedale Institution

commenced its mission.

Initially, under the principalship of William Govan, Lovedale offered

its students, both black and white, a non-discriminatory academic

education that included the study of Latin and Greek, geometry and

mathematics – the standard Victorian education of the day.1 Gradually,

however, the implications of this educational philosophy dawned on

the Scottish missionaries, and Govan was replaced by James Stewart

in 1870. Stewart introduced a differential system, with white pupils

following an academic curriculum and black students pursuing

vocational courses such as agriculture, wagonmaking and bookbinding.

As R.H.W. Shepherd, himself a principal of Lovedale from 1942 to

1955, put it, “Govan was sacriced because of his conviction that a

primitive people could best be educated rst by the highest education

of the few and Stewart took his place as Principal because he advocated

rst the elementary education of the many” (1971: 32). But the cat was

out of the bag. The Lovedale students of the 1850s, joined by graduates

of nearby Healdtown, a Wesleyan institution established in 1845,

formed an elite cohort who, by the 1880s, were mobilising for political

participation, press freedom and religious independence (Odendaal

1984, 2012).

1. On the development of the GMS philosophy of education in the eastern Cape, see

Williams (1967: 63–75) and, more generally, Ashley (1974).


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INTRODUCTION 3

William Wellington Gqoba was prominent among them, a wagon-

maker, missionary, teacher, historian, poet, folklorist and editor. For

much of his brief life he served on mission stations as a catechist, but

he was not a docile Christian who subscribed meekly to European

values; he gave as good as he got from his employer, the well-respected

James Stewart, and he confronted white misreadings of Xhosa history,

which he felt misled school pupils (see item 21 below). Like Tiyo Soga

before him, he sought to explain and in certain respects defend Xhosa

custom, a stance anathema to the missionaries, who were bent on its

eradication. Gqoba lived his life as a Christian, but never compromised

his pride in his Xhosa identity: in a speech at a meeting of the Native

Education Association on 6 January 1886, two years before his death,

Gqoba “concluded by saying that, from what he had seen, he was glad

he was not a white man” (wagqiba ngokuti ude uvuya kanye, kuba

ingenguye umlungu ngenxa yoko akubonileyo, item 23 below). For

over three years, from November 1884 to April 1888, under Stewart’s

eagle eye, Gqoba edited the Lovedale newspaper Isigidimi sama-

Xosa (the messenger of the Xhosa people), to which he contrived to

contribute subversive poetry outspokenly critical of Western education,

the European administration of black people and the social, economic

and political discrimination suffered by colonised blacks. In his all too

brief literary career, William Wellington Gqoba fashioned the gure of

the Xhosa man of letters; unrivalled in his time in the generic range

of his activities, he was the author of letters, anecdotes, expositions

of proverbs, histories and poetry, including two poems in the form of

debates that stood for over fty years as the longest poems in the Xhosa

language. In so doing he set a demanding example and exhorted his

peers to emulate him. In accordance with the philosophy of Ntsikana,

whom he revered, he sought his own Xhosa accommodation with

Christianity and European innovations, and nally it was not Jesus but

Ntsikana who appeared to him in a vision. In his terminal illness he

conded to a close friend:

Ndinento endiza kukuhlebela yona engaziwa bani kwabakufupi

kum. Ndiyafa, andiyi kupila. Indawo endiyityilelweyo yeyokuba

kwakusondela, ndiya kuvaleka umqala, ndikohlwe kukuteta.

Ndite ndakubuza ku T IXO ukuba kukutini na ukuba andenjenjalo


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akandipendula, koko wandibonisa umbono osimanga.

Ndingati ndityilelwe izulu, ndalubona usapo luka N TSIKANA

luqukene ndaweni nye kona, lutsho ngeziqaqambileyo ingubo.

Bendingamazi nje la N TSIKANA wembali namhla ndiyamazi.

(item 25 below)

There is a secret I am going to tell you, a secret unknown to

people close to me. I am dying, I am not going to live. What

I have been told is that closer to the time my throat will be

blocked and I will not be able to speak. When I asked God why

He allows me to be in that condition he did not reply, instead he

showed me wonderful visions. I might say I have been shown

heaven, and there I saw Ntsikana’s family gathered together,

dressed in bright clothing. While I never knew the famous

Ntsikana, now I know him.

Janet Hodgson has remarked of Ntsikana that “[he] was the one who

was rst able to be a Christian while remaining an African, and this was

his legacy to his disciples” (1986: 188). Gqoba followed Ntsikana’s

example.

The legacy of Ntsikana

After Ntsikana’s death at Thwathwa in May 1821, his disciples fullled

his dying wishes and joined John Brownlee at the Tyhume mission with

their families, where they continued to dress distinctively and held their

own services, which always included the singing of Ntsikana’s hymns;

the sermons were devoted to the life and prophecies of Ntsikana.2

Some, like Soga son of Jotelo, maintained contact with the mission

but lived nearby, pursuing a life in keeping with Xhosa custom, but

holding services twice a day in his homestead and attending services

at the Tyhume mission on Sunday. As a councillor to Ngqika, Soga

argued against involvement in Hintsa’s War of 1834–5 but, having lost

the argument, he supported his chief in the war and lost everything to

rampaging soldiers. He then embraced Western agricultural technology

and monetary systems and became a successful entrepreneur. Soga’s

2. For a collection of Ntsikana’s sayings, see Jabavu ([1952] 1953: 3–6).


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INTRODUCTION 5

independent frame of mind brought him into conict with the

missionary William Chalmers, who had arrived at Tyhume in 1827.

Hodgson explains:

A particular bone of contention was Soga’s following of

Ntsikana in his religious practice. Chalmers praised him for

holding regular prayer meetings in his village, but could not

approve of his making his own rules. No hymns but those

of Ntsikana were allowed, neither the Xhosa ones of the

missionaries nor those Festiri had composed. His Christianity

was not automatically identied with mission preaching and all

that went with it. His was an African response to God which had

yet to be fully worked out, but which was nonetheless authentic.

Soga was a thorough Xhosa nationalist and therefore sought

to integrate his leading of the independent peasant movement

with his African consciousness. Ntsikana provided him with the

necessary symbols for integration. (1986: 196–7)

Since Soga refused missionary injunctions to relinquish all but one of

his wives, his wife in the Great House, Nosuthu, who had been baptised

at Tyhume, separated from her husband, though she continued to live in

his homestead. Their eldest son, Festiri, established a school of his own

at Soga’s homestead and later became a mission teacher.

Noyi and Matshaya, both disciples of Ntsikana, were baptised at

Tyhume as Robert Balfour and Charles Henry, and dictated the earliest

Xhosa history and autobiography to missionaries who saw to their

transcription and publication;3 John Muir Vimbe, another disciple,

contributed historical articles to Lovedale’s newspapers. Ntsikana’s

sons Kobe and Dukwana were also baptised at Tyhume and worked

on the mission. Dukwana assisted the missionaries in printing their

early publications, including the rst Scottish periodical in Xhosa,

Ikwezi (the morning star).4 When Chalmers decided to appoint

3. Both documents are included in Bokwe (1914). The publisher’s rst gathering

of Noyi’s unpublished Xhosa history was reprinted in Opland and Mtuze (1994:

62–6); see further Opland (2004: 23–5).

4. For the history of Xhosa periodicals, see Opland (1998: ch. 11).


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an elder at the mission, Dukwana was unanimously elected by the

congregation as their leader. Soga opposed the War of the Axe (1846–7)

but, as in Hintsa’s War, fought on the side of his chief. Both Soga and

Dukwana were involved in hostilities in support of their chief Sandile

in Mlanjeni’s War (1850–3), during which the Tyhume mission was

destroyed and abandoned. After the war Dukwana settled with the

Tyhume refugees at Peelton Mission, which had been established by

Richard Birt in 1848. Finally, Soga and Dukwana yet again reluctantly

fought in support of Sandile in Ngcayechibi’s War (1877–8), during

which both were killed. Mqhayi notes that Soga’s bones were located

and transferred to Mgwali: “when peace was declared, his countrymen

collected his bones, identifying them from his old bracelet, and buried

him at Mgwali” (lite lakuxola amawabo awaco̔la amatambo ake,

ewabona ngesacolo sake esidala, – awancwaba kwase Mgwali, Mqhayi

2009: 378–9). The register at the back of the Mgwali minute book for

1877–92 records the burial of “The bones of Old Soga” in December

1883.5

Festiri’s brother Tiyo, the younger son of Soga and Nosuthu,

entered Lovedale in 1844 and became the rst Xhosa person to be

ordained as a minister.6 Tiyo spent two periods in Scotland, and

returned to South Africa with his Scottish wife Janet Burnside in the

aftermath of the disastrous cattle-killing episode of 1856–7 (Peires

1989). After reuniting with his parents, Tiyo proceeded to Peelton to

assemble the remnants of the United Presbyterian congregations of

Tyhume, Uniondale and Igqibirha – 172 men, women and children –

and moved them to Mgwali in 1857, where they formed the core of the

5. The Mgwali minister, Rev. M.A. Mhaga, kindly permitted me to photograph this

invaluable document in September 2010; a copy was deposited in the Cory Library

for Historical Research, Grahamstown. A report on Soga’s reburial in Isigidimi

conrms the date of the reburial as 12 December: “Idlaka lika Soga umfo ka

Jotelo”, Isigidimi (1 February 1884: 5).

6. The following brief account of Tiyo Soga bypasses recent assessments from a

Western theoretical perspective. For an engagement with scholars such as Attwell

(2005) and De Kock (1996), see Davis (2012: 95–124). Davis in turn bypasses and

discredits biographical treatments of Soga by Chalmers, but she does so largely

with regard to Chalmers’s framing narrative (Davis 2012: 188–224). The following

Afrocentric view of Soga is informed by Soga’s writings as quoted by Chalmers.

On Tiyo Soga, see Chalmers ([1877] 1878) and Williams (1978, 1983).


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INTRODUCTION 7

congregation at his new mission settlement. The rst service at Mgwali

concluded with Ntsikana’s hymn. Tiyo wrote in a letter:

We concluded by singing the hymn of Ntsikana, the father of

Dukwana. It was always a favourite with the Chumie people,

and the late Mr Chalmers, I remember, invariably concluded

the services of the communion, by giving out this hymn. I

scarcely think it will ever again be sung as it was sung in his

day. Our people since they left the Chumie must have had few

opportunities of singing it. The effect which it produced in our

little assembly was thrilling. It must have awakened memories

of the past. (Chalmers [1877] 1878: 161)

At Mgwali, four of the Tyhume elders continued to serve in that

capacity, including Dukwana son of Ntsikana and Festiri son of Soga.

Also living at Mgwali were Tiyo’s brother Zaze and Nkohla Falati, who

was married to Dukwana’s daughter Mary. Mgwali served as a direct

extension of the legacy of Ntsikana, through the physical presence there

of Ntsikana’s descendants and followers, and through the liturgical useof Ntsikana’s hymn.

Tiyo Soga’s biographer, his colleague J.A. Chalmers, describes

him as “the Kar patriot and the Christian missionary” (Chalmers

[1877] 1878: 440); he was both. True to Ntsikana’s model of absorbing

Christianity into a Xhosa world view, of becoming a Christian but

remaining a Xhosa, Tiyo Soga sought an accommodation between his

foreign faith and his native identity. On his death he left a notebook

containing 62 precepts to guide his children. The rst precept includesthis admonition:

I want you, for your own future comfort, to be very careful

on this point. You will ever cherish the memory of your

mother as that of an upright, conscientious, thrifty, Christian

Scotchwoman. You will ever be thankful for your connection

by this tie to the white race. But if you wish to gain credit

for yourselves – if you do not wish to feel the taunt of men,which you sometimes may be made to feel – take your place

in the world as coloured, not as white men; as Kars, not as

Englishmen. (Chalmers [1877] 1878: 430)


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The Scottish missionaries were committed to the eradication of Xhosa

custom. As Donovan Williams put it,

[polygamy], bride-price, the levirate, marriage ceremonies,

intonjane and circumcision were condemned and attacked with

a resolute dogmatism rooted in the early Victorian morality

of the Evangelical Revival as well as the conviction of the

superiority of Western European civilisation. Christianity, qua

Christianity, did not produce conict; it was when Christianity

attacked the customs and rites of the Kafrs that it became amenace to Kafr society and the chiefs in particular. (1967: 89)

But, up to a point, Soga was tolerant of Xhosa custom. He was not

opposed to circumcision as such, but sought a modication of some

of its practices, such as smearing the face and body with white clay.

Circumcision, he claimed, was “a civil and not a religious rite”. When

boys on his station at Mgwali, including the sons of two of his elders,

entered the circumcision lodge, he did not oppose them, but offeredthem guidelines; as he wrote, “If they wished to be men, they required

only to perform the rite, without adopting the other degrading customs”

(Chalmers [1877] 1878: 264). Against the run of missionary ideology,

he believed that missionaries entering the eld should not oppose Xhosa

custom out of hand, and that they should be concerned to respect the

authority of the chiefs. When the United Presbyterians were considering

expanding their missionary activities beyond the Kei, Soga wrote a

letter to Andrew Somerville, foreign mission secretary of the United

Presbyterian Church. In reprinting it, Chalmers distanced himself

from its sentiments in these terms: “although some of the statements

contained in it seem somewhat arbitrary, and such as many men in the

mission eld might decline to endorse, it is most valuable as expressing

his own view of the connection that ought to subsist betwixt the Mission

Board and its agents” ([1877] 1878: 312). Soga advised Somerville that

“[the] brethren must be prepared to identify themselves with the people,

on whose behalf they leave home and kindred. The knot of the Kar’s

prejudices and habits is not to be rudely cut, by the uncompromising

knife of civilized tastes. It must be patiently and cautiously untied”


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INTRODUCTION 9

(Chalmers [1877] 1878: 314). With regard to the Gcaleka king Sarhili

he wrote: “Kreli is exceedingly jealous of his power, and of his country.

The missionary must support this authority in all lawful things, and

recognise it among his future converts in secular matters” (Chalmers

[1877] 1878: 315).

On 30 October 1861, Tiyo Soga called on chief Sandile and spoke

to him, his wives and Oba the son of Tyhali who was, like Sandile, a

son of Ngqika. When Soga invited objections to his statements, an old

man spoke up:

“We have nothing to say; but it strikes me that in reference to

this thing (Christianity), the way in which it has come to us is

not right. I do not see how we can receive it; yet I do not say

it is not true. The Owner of it has cut the thing in the middle,

and done it by halves. You know that we are the remnants of

past generations of Kars. Why was the Word not sent to our

forefathers, so that we should have received it through them

in the natural course of things? We do not like the idea that

the thing which is considered so good for us should have been

withheld from them. They should have received it rst; we next,

through them.”

Soga offered a response in harmony with Ntsikana’s philosophy: Soga

does not denounce belief in the ancestors, but demonstrates how the

Christian message might be accommodated, absorbed and assimilated

into the Xhosa way of life. The two systems are not antithetical:

“That mode of arguing will not do. We cannot cross-question

God’s modes of dealing with His creatures. We may depend

upon it that He has done right to our forefathers, even as He has

done right to us in sending us His Word. We must take it, without

reference to its having been sent or not sent to our forefathers.”

I said, “See, you have on a blanket.” “Yes.” “Our forefathers

wore karosses.” “Yes.” “You dig your gardens with the white

man’s plough, and spade and hoe.” “Yes.” “Our forefathers dug

them with wooden spades.” “Yes.” “Well, but these things were

not sent to them; they did not get them. But, according to your


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mode of reasoning, you should have nothing to do with these

things. But you use them, because you see they are good for

you. You like them; they are protable to you, and you have

no scruples to use them, although in the time of Tshiwo and

Palo they were unknown.” At this point Oba had a hearty laugh.

“You must do the same with the Gospel,” I proceeded; “take it

on its own merits, on its own suitableness to your wants, on its

protableness to you as sinners, and not with any reference to

the generations of your forefathers.” This silenced my friend;

for, amid a shout of laughter, he exclaimed, “No, I did not mean

anything; I was only talking for the sake of talking!” (Chalmers

[1877] 1878: 242–3)

Tiyo Soga’s strategy was similar to that adopted by Isaac Williams

Wauchope, whose subversive tract on “The natives and their

missionaries” (1908) implies the Xhosa’s active acceptance of the

gospel and its absorption into their culture through his title alone: the

natives have appropriated their missionaries.7 As a student at Lovedale,

the poet S.E.K. Mqhayi, who regularly performed at Ntsikana Day

celebrations, also insisted on his own accommodation with his Xhosa

identity: in deance of his teachers he ran the risk of expulsion and

entered the circumcision lodge in 1894 prior to undergoing baptism at

Lovedale.8

7. Reprinted in Wauchope (2008: 39–74); see further Opland (2003). Like Soga,

Wauchope (1872–1917), an ordained Congregational minister, wrote on

ecclesiastical matters as well as Xhosa history and oral traditions; like Soga, he

was not blindly opposed to Xhosa custom. His commentaries on proverbs, the

rst philosophical writing in Xhosa, were designed to demonstrate the existence

of a coherent ethical system among the precolonial Xhosa: see Wauchope (2008:

245–311).

8. In 1907 the Mfengu community gathered at a milkwood tree near Peddie to repeat

the vows of loyalty they had made on arrival from Gcalekaland in 1835. This

annual celebration became known as Fingo Day. In response, in 1909 the Xhosa

community gathered for the rst annual Ntsikana Day celebration. On ethnic

tension between Xhosa and Mfengu, and the modern politicisation of Fingo Day

and Ntsikana Day, see Manona (1980: 97–121). For Mqhayi’s account of his

circumcision, see Mqhayi (1939: ch. 9).


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INTRODUCTION 11

Soga declined to condemn Xhosa custom, the common practice of

his missionary colleagues. Indeed, he devoted considerable effort to the

collection and exposition of Xhosa lore. Chalmers notes: “It was well-

known that Tiyo Soga, since entering the mission-eld, was collecting

Kar fables, legends and proverbs, fragments of Kar history, rugged

utterances of native bards, the ancient habits and customs of his

countrymen, and the genealogy of Kar chiefs with striking incidents in

their lives” ([1877] 1878: 343). Again, “[his] biographer has often seen

him seated in a Kar hut, adjoining his house at the Mgwali, when the

station people were asleep, sitting with pencil and note-book in hand,

jotting down what he expected to give to the world, whilst an old man

named Gontshi, as grizzled as the ancient mariner, with a well-lled

pipe, and a huge bowl of coffee before him, waxed eloquent in his

narration of incidents of Kar history, and of Kar fables” (Chalmers

[1877] 1878: 343–4). Soga contributed a number of articles to the

Lovedale newspaper Indaba (news), commencing with a contribution

to the rst issue encouraging readers to submit folklore to Indaba in

order to ensure its preservation. Indaba, Soga wrote, could be “a lovely

dish for holding safely the legends, news and sayings of the home”

(isitya esihle sokulondoloza imbali, nendaba namavo, asekaya, Indaba,

August 1862: 10). Chalmers quotes extensively from two of Soga’s

papers on Xhosa custom and belief, the rst on diviners (1878: 344–

54), the second on Xhosa creation myths (354–8).9

With his Scottish wife at Mgwali, Tiyo must have been the living

embodiment of Ntsikana’s creed of accepting the white man but

locating him within the ambit of an evolving Xhosa culture. There

must have been relatively easy interaction between black and white on

the isolated mission station and an accommodating impulse towards

European culture. Isaac Williams Wauchope particularly noted the

9. For an examination of Soga’s writings, see Davis (2012). There is considerable

disagreement about Soga’s contributions to Indaba. Williams accepted uncritically

J.J.R. Jolobe’s selection of eight items (reprinted in translation in Williams [1983:

150–77]), but only six of these articles can be condently attributed to Soga,

writing under the pseudonym UNonjiba waseluhlangeni (the dove of the nation),

or, once, simply N.W. In addition to the articles assembled by Jolobe, Soga himself

asserts that he contributed two articles on theft, the rst on its causes, the second on

its consequences and prevention (Chalmers [1877] 1878: 290).


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easy social intercourse at John Knox Bokwe’s wedding at Mgwali in

December 1895:

Zipambili zonke into zalapa, kodwa eyona nto intle kukuvisisana

pakati kwabafundisikazi nomtinjana ofundiswayo. Sifumene

umoya omhle kunene, obange ukuba singabi nakuxhalaba noko

sihlalelene intsuku ezininzi nabantu abamhlope. Kufudula

kunjalo ke kudala; kwanga kunga hlala kunjalo ke apa

Emgwali. (Wauchope 2008: 104)

Everything here is exceptional, but the most appealing thing of

all is the co-operation between the lady teachers and the female

students. We were received in a truly hearty spirit, which helped

us to relax even though we were to stay with white people for

several days. That used to be the way it was in the past; we

wish that it would always be as it was here at Mgwali.

The prevailing inuence at Mgwali of Old Soga, his son Tiyo andDukwana son of Ntsikana alone must have contributed powerfully to

the philosophy of the mission station. As Adrian Hastings remarks,

Dukwana, Tiyo, and old Soga are important, not just because

they were all three very remarkable people, but because they

represent in three different ways a single tradition. Old Soga

stands upon the one side, Tiyo upon the other, Dukwana

somewhere in the middle. A half-century after Ntsikana they

demonstrate that his legacy of a Xhosa Christianity spiritually

free of missionary control remained a reality, hard as that was

in the South Africa of the later nineteenth century.

The heritage of Ntsikana and the distinctive atmosphere at Mgwali,

in particular the example of Tiyo Soga’s contributions to Xhosa

journalism and his collection of Xhosa folklore, cannot but have exerted

an enduring inuence on William Wellington Gqoba, who joined the

Mgwali mission as a teacher at the invitation of Tiyo Soga.


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INTRODUCTION 13

The life of William Wellington Gqoba

In 1887 James Stewart, principal of Lovedale, compiled Lovedale

Past and Present , a biographical listing of over 2 000 students and

graduates of Lovedale, as a rebuttal to critics of missionary education.

The extended entry on Gqoba (item 24 below) claims that Gqoba was

born at Gaga in August 1840 and educated at Tyhume before entering

Lovedale in September 1853; in May 1856 he was indentured in the

wagonmaking trade and worked in King William’s Town for a number

of years, before accepting Tiyo Soga’s invitation to teach at Mgwali.

While William Wellington was working in King William’s Town, his

father Gqoba son of Peyi accepted Soga’s invitation to join the Mgwali

mission as an elder. Writing from Mgwali to Andrew Somerville on

9 February 1859, Tiyo reports that four new elders were appointed to

the new mission in September 1858, one of whom, Goba, had studied

at Tyhume under William Chalmers and “afterwards left the Chumie

for Cat River, when for long he held the post of Dutch interpreter

to the Fingoes & Kafrs, for the Messrs Read of Philipton – It was,

I believe under their ministry, that he came to the Knowledge of

the truth” (Williams 1983: 47–8). On 13 July 1864 the elder Gqoba

attended a church meeting attended also by Dukwana Ntsikana ( Indaba,

September 1864: 209–11); in the same year, the elder Gqoba’s son

Cumming was born at Mgwali. Tiyo’s invitation to William Wellington

Gqoba to join the Mgwali mission as a teacher, after some years’

service as a wagonmaker in King William’s Town, seems consistent

with a concerted effort to gather at Mgwali the children and followers

of Ntsikana and their descendants.10

Lovedale Past and Present provides an outline of Gqoba’s

subsequent career, until the year before his death. Gqoba served at

Mgwali, taught for a year at Lovedale, and at the end of 1868 returned

to Mgwali. In October 1870 he moved to King William’s Town to

teach, before transferring to Rabula in January 1873 as a preacher.

10 . In the following commentary, and in the notes to the texts, “Gqoba” will refer to

William Wellington Gqoba and “Gqoba Peyi” to his father Gqoba, son of Peyi.

It was acceptable practice at this time to refer to a Xhosa man by his given name

followed by the name of his father; the name of the father soon developed into a

surname for the European record. Thus, William Wellington took the name of his

father, Gqoba, as his surname, as did his children.


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14 W.W. GQOBA

He stayed at Rabula until the outbreak of Ngcayechibi’s War in 1877,

and in August 1878 took charge of the Peelton Mission in the absence

overseas of its founder, Richard Birt. In January 1880 he returned to

Rabula, where he cannot have stayed long, since an annual report on

the Lovedale Missionary Institution for 1880 lists him as a teacher of

English to the rst-year class (Christian Express, 1 January 1881: 2).11

His feisty letter to Stewart in January 1881 (item 22 below) suggests

that Stewart accused him of dereliction of duty, and Stewart might

well have terminated Gqoba’s services as a teacher at Lovedale, since

in February 1881 Gqoba apparently moved to Kimberley, where he

worked in the Post Ofce and the Native Registry Ofce. At the end

of 1884, seemingly reappointed by Stewart, he returned as a teacher

to Lovedale, where he succeeded John Tengo Jabavu as editor of the

Lovedale newspaper Isigidimi sama-Xosa.

At Lovedale Gqoba was active in educational affairs (he was a

prominent member of the Native Education Association, founded in

1879, the rst known African political organisation in the Eastern Cape)

and a keen member of the Lovedale Literary Society. His contributions

to a meeting of the Native Education Association in January 1886 (item

23 below) reveal him to be ever ready with a quip or an anecdote. In

June 1887, at a meeting of Free Church clergy in Grahamstown, Gqoba

“was now accorded the full authority (licence) to preach wherever he’s

been invited and permission to go and establish new congregations

anywhere there’s an opportunity and any congregation is free to invite

him” (unikwe ngoku igunya elizeleyo (License) lokushumayela apo

afunwe kona, nemvume yokuba aye kusiqalela iremente nokuba kupina

apo kuvuleke ucango kona, nokuba angabizwa nayiyipina iremente

emfunayo, Isigidimi, 1 August 1887: 58). On 30 January 1888 Thomas

J. Mbeia wrote a letter to the Editor of Isigidimi from Auckland

announcing that, in the indisposition of James Read Sr, his son, James

Read Jr of Philipton, had written to Gqoba inviting him to take charge

of the Auckland congregation as its minister (ucela u Rev. W.W. Gqoba

ukuba amncede, apate le yena i-Remente, abe ngu mfundisi wayo,

Isigidimi, 2 April 1888: 32), fullling a longstanding desire of the

congregation for Gqoba to come and minister to them (intlanganiso ize

11 . Gqoba is not mentioned in the annual reports for 1879 or 1881.


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INTRODUCTION 15

kukupa uluvo nomnqweno obuko kakade we Remente yase Auckland

wokunga u Rev. W.W. Gqoba angaba ngu mfundisi wayo). Gqoba was

never able to assume this appointment: the following issue of Isigidimi

reported his sudden and unexpected death on 25 April 1888. The

obituaries in The Christian Express, Isigidimi and Imvo zabantsundu

( Imvo 9 May 1888: 9, henceforth Imvo; items 24 and 26 below) were

unstinting in their admiration of his qualities;12 he was hailed as

um-Cirha omkulu, um-Xosa wama-Xosa kum-Xosa; i Lawu

lama-Lawu kuma-Lawu; um-Lungu kwabateta isi-Lungu; iciko

kumaciko; incoko kumancoko; into ebuso buhle kuwo wonke

umntu angamaziyo nomaziyo; umxoxi ezincokweni – ititshala

ezititshaleni, umshumayeli kuba shumayeli bendaba zika Kristu;

umvuseleli we Cebo lombuso wo Sombawo. (item 25 below)

a great man of the Cirha clan, a Xhosa’s Xhosa among the

Xhosa, a coloured’s coloured among the coloured, a white

man among those who speak the language of the white man, a

wise man among wise men, an eloquent man among eloquentmen, a man pleasant to strangers and to those he knows well, a

good debater, a teacher among teachers, preacher among those

who preach Christ’s message, one who revives the law of our

forefathers.

Gqoba was a lively editor of Isigidimi, free of the confrontation

and controversy characteristic of Jabavu, and as editor he presided

over an unprecedented eforescence of literary and ethnographiccontributions, many of which he provoked by his editorial comments

and his own writings. Jabavu’s Imvo was an explicitly political journal,

whereas Isigidimi, as a mission publication, was committed to a non-

political stance: shortly after Gqoba’s death, in December 1888, in the

face of competition from Imvo and escalating debts, Isigidimi ceased

publication after a run of eighteen years, the last of the nineteenth-

century Xhosa mission newspapers. Some thirty years after Gqoba’s

death, John Knox Bokwe, a colleague at Lovedale and himself a proliccontributor to newspapers, assessed Gqoba’s editorship in these terms:

12 . The Imvo obituary largely quotes the Isigidimi obituary.


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16 W.W. GQOBA

Thus the Isigidimi in the fourteenth year of publication was

in need of another editor. Happily, Mr William Wellington

Gqoba’s services were secured. He was a Gaika [i.e., Ngqika]

orator and a poet of no mean ability, with matured experience

not only of his own tribe but of other races in this land, having

by residence and travel come to be in possession of a fund of

historical knowledge, folklore, and interesting anecdotes of

nearly every South African Bantu tribe in the provinces and

adjacent territories. He was a uent speaker and writer of

several languages. Under Gqoba’s editorship the Isigidimi began

to assume a different tone in Sixosa literature. Notwithstanding

the fact that the majority of subscribers had been attracted away

by the new weekly and secular free lance in King William’s

Town with its less restricted outlook [i.e., Imvo], the Isigidimi

was gaining respectful and inuential recognition when, in

the eighteenth year of publication Mr Gqoba died after a very

short and unexpected illness; and with his demise the Isigidimi

Samaxosa ceased publication in December, 1888. From that

year the Lovedale Missionary Institution has revived no similar

vernacular general newspaper. (Bokwe 1920: 172)

In his accommodating attitude to Xhosa custom and tradition, and his

collection of Xhosa lore and history, Gqoba followed closely in the

footsteps of Tiyo Soga, extending considerably the range and volume of

Soga’s literary achievement.

Details of Gqoba’s family are somewhat sketchy. His brother

Cumming was born at Mgwali in 1864, and went to school at Mgwali,

Peelton and Rabula before entering Lovedale in January 1882. He

left Lovedale in March 1886 to become a telegraph messenger in

Kimberley, and in 1894 was working on the Lovedale Farm. Gqoba’s

son John Slater, born in 1866, followed a similar educational career,

and worked on the Lovedale Farm after studying at Lovedale from

February 1882 to December 1886. Gqoba’s elder daughter, Frances

Adelaide Alice, was born in 1868. In 1873 she entered school at

Mgwali, transferring to Peelton and, in 1880, to Lovedale. She left

Lovedale in 1886, but returned on the death of her father in 1888. She

travelled to England with the African Choir, was employed at Lovedale


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INTRODUCTION 17

by Mrs James Stewart, and by 1894 she was teaching at Mngqesha.

Gqoba’s second daughter, Elizabeth Ellen Jane, was born at Mgwali in

1870 and attended school in Peelton, Rabula and, from January 1881,

Lovedale. She left Lovedale in June 1888, and married Andrew Ross.13

The register at the back of the Mgwali minute book covering the years

1877 to 1892 records the baptism of an unnamed child in 1868, giving

the parents as Gqoba and Nomve. If this refers to Frances, then Gqoba’s

wife’s name was Nomve.

At the end of this book we have included a biographical appendix

containing seven items that record information on Gqoba’s life. These

include Gqoba’s letter to James Stewart, the notice in Lovedale Past

and Present , obituary notices, a later assessment by S.E.K. Mqhayi, and

two texts whose inclusion requires some justication. M. Klaas Mtakati

of Stutterheim contributed fteen poems to Isigidimi and Imvo between

1882 and 1890. His obituary poem on Gqoba (item 27) is included not

so much for its biographical information but to offer an example of a

contemporary poet writing in a genre Gqoba favoured. It is a somewhat

pedestrian poem, and shows the merit of Gqoba’s obituary poems

by comparison. Item 23 consists of the minutes of a meeting of the

Native Education Association in 1886, at which Gqoba was present. It

shows Gqoba interacting with his colleagues and contemporaries, and

reveals him as ready with a witty quip and a historical anecdote. The

Association has been noted as the earliest black political organisation in

the Eastern Cape (see Odendaal 2012: ch. 6), but details of its concerns

are still somewhat sketchy. The minutes of the 1886 meeting cast some

light on the organisation: not only were the members concerned with

relatively minor issues such as the imposition of nes for absence from

meetings or musical presentations at the meetings, they also dealt with

explicitly political issues such as title deeds for land owned by black

persons. The report, quoted in full below, mentions in passing the

committee the Association established to compile a Xhosa and Mfengu

history, on which Gqoba served, and, perhaps most interestingly, it

13 . Information in this paragraph is derived from Major W.L. Geddes’s annotated

copy of Lovedale Past and Present held in the Cory Library. Geddes served

as boarding master at Lovedale from 1920 to 1941. On the African Choir, see

Erlmann (1999).


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18 W.W. GQOBA

reveals the teachers, on their own initiative, free of white instigation,

addressing the weaknesses in the orthography of isiXhosa fty years

before W.G. Bennie’s unpopular revision of the spelling system was

imposed on teachers in 1937.

The Gqoba canon

Gqoba’s literary career effectively commenced after he assumed the

editorship of Isigidimi; he contributed religious poetry (especially

poems of consolation on the death of ministers and parishioners),

humorous stories, historical articles, explanations of Xhosa proverbs

and two extended poems serialised in 1885 and 1887–8. He is a major

gure in the history of Xhosa literature in print, even though no volume

of his work has ever been published. Twenty years after Gqoba’s death,

W.B. Rubusana included many (though by no means all) of Gqoba’s

writings in his anthology Zemk’inkomo magwalandini (1906, second

edition 1911), but Rubusana was a cavalier editor, selecting extracts

from longer works, and freely inserting his own alterations and

additions to the texts. In 1966, Lovedale issued an abridged edition of

Rubusana’s collection that excluded all the poetry. A revision of the full

1911 edition appeared in 2002 (Rubusana [1911] 2002), but textually

it merely updated the orthography of Rubusana’s texts. Another heavy-

handed editor, W.G. Bennie, included Gqoba’s “ Imbali yaseMbo” (the

history of the land to the east), which Rubusana had omitted, in his 1935

anthology Imibengo with the poetry excluded, as well as ve of Gqoba’s

commentaries on proverbs, taken from Rubusana’s selection, which

had been included in Zemk’inkomo magwalandini without ascription to

Gqoba (Bennie 1935). In 1935 Bennie also included a much shortened

version of Gqoba’s history of the Xhosa (item 16 below) in the “Senior”

volume of The Stewart Xhosa Readers (Bennie [1935] 1948). Given the

radical posthumous editing of Gqoba’s work, it is important to assemble

and establish the texts as Gqoba originally published them, so that his

achievement can be recognised and properly assessed, and for that we

must refer to the pages of Isigidimi, especially between November

1884 and April 1888, the years of Gqoba’s editorship. Unfortunately,

determining Gqoba’s canon is problematic.

In the rst place, despite his frequent literary contributions to

Isigidimi as editor after November 1884, none of Gqoba’s writings


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INTRODUCTION 19

throughout the year 1886 is available, since issues of Isigidimi for that

year are no longer extant. Furthermore, a poem by Gqoba included in

S.E.K. Mqhayi’s Imihobe nemibongo (Mq

ayi 1927), on the death of

John Angell Bennie (item 12 below), probably originally appeared in

Isigidimi, but the front page of the issue of Isigidimi for 1 July 1885

has a section that might have contained the Gqoba poem clipped out

of the Bennie obituary in the only surviving copy of that issue. This

is all the more frustrating since Mqhayi omitted two lines from the

sixth stanza, the omission indicated by asterisks.14 Finally, care was not

always taken to ascribe authorship to items in Isigidimi, or pseudonyms

or only initials were used, with the result that authorship must often be

established from external sources.

In the strictest terms, Gqoba’s canon can include only those items

positively ascribed to Gqoba. Unsigned editorials and regular columns

of news may well have been composed by Gqoba, but this may not

always have been the case and these items must therefore be excluded.

The judgements of editors working after Gqoba’s death are unreliable,

but fortunately an annual index to Isigidimi was issued, and this often

includes ascriptions for the items omitted from the published pages

of the newspaper. Thus, for example, the poem “Ukububa komka

Ntibane Mzimba” (the death of Mrs Ntibane Mzimba, item 19 below)

is anonymous, but the poem is ascribed to W.W. Gqoba in the index for

1887. Again, three instalments of “ Amabalana ahlekisayo” (amusing

sketches, item 6 below) appeared in 1884 and 1885.15 The rst instalment

was entitled “ Amabalana ahlekisayo” and contained two stories headed

by subtitles; it was ascribed to “G.”. The second instalment, which

appeared after an interval of three months, was entitled “ Idabi elikulu”

(a great battle) and is anonymous; it has no apparent connection to

the earlier two “ Amabalana ahlekisayo”, although it is placed below

14 . The asterisks were simply omitted from the second edition of Imihobe

nemibongo, edited by Tshabe in 1988 (Mqhayi [1927] 1988). Perhaps Mqhayi or

his publishers, Sheldon Press, felt the two lines were unworthy of publication in

a book intended for reading by school children, and this possibility of something

felt to be offensive in the two lines might also explain why the poem was clipped

from the only extant copy of the newspaper.

15 . These stories were not reprinted in either Rubusana ([1906] 1911) or Bennie

(1935).


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20 W.W. GQOBA

the second instalment of Gqoba’s “ Ingxoxo enkulu ngemfundo”, which

is ascribed to “G.”. Seven months later two more anonymous stories

appeared under subtitles, headed “ Amabalana ahlekisayo”. The 1885

index allows us to ascribe these ve light-hearted sketches to Gqoba

and to conrm them as a series, since the second instalment is included

with the other “ Amabalana ahlekisayo”, and both are ascribed to

“W.W.G.”. With one exception, all Gqoba’s contributions to Isigidimi

are signed “W. Gqoba”, “W.W.G.” or just “G.”. The exception is an

untitled letter addressed from Rabula Mission Station on 9 September

1875, condemning the liquor trade (item 3 below); it is signed “W.G.”.There is little doubt that this W.G. is Gqoba, since we know that he was

stationed at Rabula at the time, and the letter is preceded by two letters

to Isigidimi in 1873 and 1875 and followed by a fourth in 1880, all

signed “W. Gqoba” (items 1, 2 and 4 below).

There would be no problem about ascribing this one letter by W.G.

to Gqoba, except that a number of items in English signed W.G. that

appeared in The Kafr Express and The Christian Express in 1874 and

1879–80 have been claimed as Gqoba’s: “Notes from the Transkeiupon witchcraft” in three instalments; a pious poem, “Winter scene

in Fingoland”; and “Notes of cases, from Fingoland Dispensary”.16

To these may be added a fourth item by W.G., an article entitled

“Fingo homesteads, gardens, and water-furrows” (Christian Express,

1 July 1880: 5). However, it is clear from the content that the notes

on witchcraft were written by a medical practitioner. “Why should it

be,” he wonders, “that a man is able, as I have practically tested, to lie

down upon a form in my dispensary and permit me to cut out a tumour

from his forehead, and all the while never wince . . .” ( Kafr Express,

6 January 1874: 4). Moreover, this doctor is practising in Fingoland in

the Transkei, whereas we know that Gqoba was serving at Rabula in the

Ciskei in 1874, and was at either Peelton or Rabula in 1879 and 1880.

16 . W.G., “Notes from the Transkei upon witchcraft” ( Kafr Express 6 January 1874:

4–6; 7 February 1874: 4–6; 7 March 1874: 4–5); “Winter scene in Fingoland”

(Christian Express, 1 August 1879: 11); “Notes of cases, from Fingoland

Dispensary” (Christian Express, 1 April 1880: 5–6). For the claim that Gqoba is

W.G., the author of these items, see Masilela (2009) and Masilela (2010: 258).


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INTRODUCTION 21

“Notes of cases”, too, is self-evidently written by a medical practitioner,

and a white doctor clearly wrote the poem, in which on a wintry day

A tall, thin, aged man came here

To ask advice about his case

Impelled by suffering severe,

With pain depicted on his face.

The speaker treats him, and they fall to chatting. The speaker suspects

the old man is no Mfengu, but a Xhosa, which the old man conrms:

“’Tis true, good sir, the truth you guess,

I’m but a Kafr stranger here,

My native land’s a wilderness,

My chief is hunted like a deer;

And I too once lived merrily,

With wives and cattle, goats and sheep,

But war has robbed me bitterly,

And left me all alone to weep.”

The W.G. who contributed these English items was not William Gqoba

but William Girdwood, known to the Xhosa as Gadudu, who joined

Tiyo Soga at Thuthura after studying medicine in Scotland (Williams

1978: 78). As his obituary makes clear, Girdwood moved to Qolorha in

1870, but resigned as a missionary in 1872 to found the Fingo Hospital

and Dispensary in the Nqamakwe district of what was then Fingoland

in Transkei. He practised there until 1881, when he took up service as amagistrate in Tsomo and Centane, returning in 1884 to mission work at

Thuthura, where he died at the age of 68 on 5 February 1907 (Christian

Express 1 March 1907: 41–2). Girdwood signed his response to Bransby

Key’s query about the rst instalment of “Notes from the Transkei upon

witchcraft” ( Kafr Express, 7 March 1874: 5–6). Gqoba seems to have

signed himself W.G. only in the letter sent to Isigidimi from Rabula in

1875; his only attributed English contribution is his 1885 address to the

Lovedale Literary Society on “The native tribes, their laws, customsand beliefs” (item 8 below).

Gqoba wrote for publication in Xhosa. One letter in English is

extant, but it was not written for publication. It was addressed to James


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22 W.W. GQOBA

Stewart, the august principal of Lovedale, from King William’s Town

on 3 January 1881 and is now held in the Stewart Papers in the African

Studies Library, University of Cape Town (item 22 below). In it, Gqoba

responds forcefully but tactfully to criticism from Stewart of Gqoba’s

dereliction of duty as a teacher. The letter’s opening salvo runs as

follows:

In acknowledging the receipt of yours of the 30th ult, I

beg to state that I am long sorry that I ever entered into any

agreement with you at all; it was the least of my calculations

& of others that you would treat me the way you have hitherto

done.

You say my reason for being unhappy & uncomfortable

is because I did not attend regularly to my work, besides

being absent from my class, wh was frequently left in charge

incompetent parties & teachers. But my dear sir you know

as well as I do that such is not the case, & I do not intend to

say any more about any of the charges in this letter, but may

afterwards be forced to do so.

Neither am I going to say any thing in reference to the rst

& last parts of your letter. But I do not remember ever having

met with such treatment since I left Lovedale Inst in 1860.

Gqoba berates Stewart for his high-handed treatment of him, quoting

Paul’s Philippian epistle, and referring to both Stewart and himself as

“fellow pilgrims to one home, fellow workers in one garden, servants

of one master”. In conclusion, Gqoba adopts a more tractable tone,

suggesting that Stewart’s charge must refer to days when he was absent

through illness, and he ends:

Forgive any expression I may have made too much, but that

was not my intention for I must speak to you plain Dr Stewart, I

hate attery. You are our father, not of one or two but of all the

natives for whom you have come.

With kind regards

your most humble servant

W Gqoba


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INTRODUCTION 23

Gqoba was evidently not in awe of Stewart’s status: he gave as good as

he got. That should not surprise us since his debate poem on education

includes outspoken criticism of white discrimination against blacks.

His 1880 letter to Isigidimi, too, headed “Ulaulo lwaba Ntsundu” (the

administration of black people, item 4 below), is highly critical of the

hut tax and the pass system.

Apart from the four letters he submitted to Isigidimi, all of Gqoba’s

writings were published in Isigidimi while he was serving as editor of

the newspaper. Apart from his talk to the Lovedale Literary Society on

“The native tribes, their laws, customs and beliefs”, all were written in

Xhosa. Within the restrictions imposed by problems of authorship and

the unavailability of certain issues of the newspaper, we may classify

Gqoba’s extant literary contributions to Isigidimi in Xhosa as follows:

1. four letters to the editor;

2. nine poems on religious themes, six of them obituary poems;

3. two extended serialised poems in the form of debates;

4. ve humorous sketches;

5. commentaries on twenty-seven proverbs and expressions; and

6. three historical studies.

Gqoba’s contribution to Xhosa literature between 1873 and 1888, and

especially in the brief period from December 1884 to April 1888, must

take its place alongside that of other major contemporary literary gures

such as Isaac Williams Wauchope, whose literary career ranged from

1874 to 1916, and Jonas Ntsiko, who wrote as Uhadi waseluhlangeni

(The harp of the nation) between 1875 and 1916.17 Much of Gqoba’s

writing is dedicated to the recording of precolonial oral traditions perceived to be threatened, or responding from a Xhosa perspective,

often poetically, to the intrusion of British governance and imperialism.

Gqoba as poet and histor ian

Gqoba considerably extended Tiyo Soga’s efforts to record Xhosa

custom, lore and tradition. He produced a series of commentaries on

17 . A selection of Wauchope’s writings can be found in Wauchope (2008). Ntsiko

contributed some seventy items, many of them poems, to Isigidimi, Imvo, Izwi

and The Christian Express. On Ntsiko, see Jordan (1973: 91–6) and Mqhayi

(2009: 144–9).


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24 W.W. GQOBA

proverbial expressions and, in his published talk to the Lovedale

Literary Society, offered detailed expositions of Xhosa “laws, customs

and beliefs”; his humorous sketches are delightful, full of fun, and offer

insight into the social life of Xhosa people accommodating to white

mores. His major achievements as an author, however, lie in the elds

of history and poetry. Gqoba’s historical writings, “ Imbali yama Xosa”

(item 16) and “ Imbali yase Mbo” (item 17), constitute the earliest

serious attempt to compile a systematic account in the Xhosa language

of Xhosa and Mfengu history. Both are sustained, collaborative efforts

produced in response to a commission from the Native Education

Association. At the end of a century of frontier warfare that had

resulted in defeat and territorial dispossession, Gqoba was sustained by

a nationalistic vision of history: “My fervent desire is that our history

should be well known and brought into print because all nations who

possess a history, even if they are scattered far and wide, continue to

live and do not die” ( Imbali yakowetu asikuko nokuba ndinga ingaziwa

kakuhle ishicilelwe kuba zonke izizwe ezinembali ziba zihleli azile

noko sukuba zezicitakele, item 17). He was also concerned to confront

and correct white distortions of Xhosa history, as in his two-part article

on the motive behind the cattle-killing of 1856–7, “ Isizatu sokuxelwa

kwe nkomo ngo Nongqause” (item 21 below).

Gqoba’s historical and ethnographic writing came to fullment

in the publications of Tiyo Soga’s son, John Henderson Soga, and

his nephew, Tiyo Burnside Soga, the son of Tiyo’s brother Zaze.18

He himself stood on the shoulders not only of Tiyo Soga but also of

other predecessors who had recorded the early history of the Xhosa-

speaking peoples. Although literary historians tend to overlook

nineteenth-century developments, as well as historical, biographical

and ethnographic writing in general, much early literature falls under

these headings. In the appendix to his account of the life of Ntsikana,

John Knox Bokwe included narratives by Noyi and Matshaya, disciples

of Ntsikana, dictated to, translated and subsequently published by

18 . J.H. Soga (1930, 1931); T.B. Soga (1917). Only the rst part of T.B. Soga’s

Intlalo ka Xosa was published; the second part has been lost (Peires 1980: 75).

The original Xhosa version of J.H. Soga’s Southeastern Bantu (1930) has never

been published (Peires 1980: 77–8).


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INTRODUCTION 25

missionaries; a second appendix contains Xhosa narratives by John

Muir Vimbe, Zaze Soga, Makapela son of Noyi, and Jacob Mnxuma,

a grandson of Noyi (Bokwe 1914). Noyi’s narrative in John Bennie’s

translation was published in The Glasgow Missionary Record in

1848, but the original Xhosa version was intended for independent

publication, although only the rst gathering was set in print, by

G.J. Pike in Botwe in 1838; had it been published, Noyi’s Iziqwenge

zembali yamaXosa would have been the rst secular book published in

Xhosa (Opland 2004: 23–5). The Anglican missionaries pioneered the

publication of secular books in Xhosa in the nineteenth century; the

rst such book to be published, Kar Essays, and Other Pieces, was

written by students at St Matthew’s mission school in Keiskammahoek

and included an account of the seventeenth-century clash between

Hlanga and Dlomo (Greenstock 1861: 68–71). The third Xhosa book to

be published containing secular literature was Imbali zamam-Pondomisi

akwa-Mditshwa, three short Mpondomise historical narratives, which

appeared in 1876. Many contributions to early Xhosa periodicals were

historical – stories of Ntsikana, the Mfecane, the smallpox epidemic (as

well as English history) – and later in the century newspapers carried

signicant historical contributions by the likes of Pambani Jeremiah

Mzimba, Nathaniel Cyril Mhala, John Muir Vimbe, Isaac Williams

Wauchope, John Knox Bokwe and William Kobe Ntsikana (Ntsikana’s

grandson).

In 1885 Ibandla le Mfundo (the Education Association), founded

in 1880, established a committee to undertake historical research;

the meeting of the Association in January 1886 noted that “[there]

was insufcient time for the Committee established to research

black nations, consisting of Rev. P.J. Mzimba and Messrs Gqoba and

Ntsikana, to draft a report. It was decided that they should prepare it

for the next meeting” ( Ingxelo ye Komityi yokupendla imbali yezizwe

ezintsundu engo Rev. P.J. Mzimba no Messrs. Gqoba, no Ntsikana,

engabanga namatuba okuyibhala. Kugqitywe ukuba ize ize iyibhalile

ngentlanganiso elandelayo, item 23 below). As editor, Gqoba used

Isigidimi sama-Xosa as a vehicle for the interim product of this research:

a series of articles on Xhosa history commenced in January 1887, and a

second series on Zulu and Mfengu history in April. Gqoba contributed

the rst instalment of “ Imbali yama Xosa” in January 1887. The series


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26 W.W. GQOBA

was continued by William Kobe Ntsikana in subsequent issues, until in

October Gqoba responded to a correspondent’s query with a nal article

on the Gqunukhwebe. From April to August 1887 Gqoba contributed

ve monthly articles entitled “ Imbali yase Mbo”, a series continued by

Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba in three further instalments. Only Gqoba’s

contributions are included here. In his articles Gqoba is careful to

record his ignorance in certain areas, the subject of ongoing research.

Gqoba’s contributions to the history of the Xhosa people concentrate

in particular on the Mbalu and Mdange and, later, the Gqunukhwebe.

He connes himself to tracing the intricacies of royal lineages and

intermarriages. Even when he breaks into narrative, his accounts deal

with the qualities of individual chiefs and with royal succession. For

the Gqunukhwebe he offers the well-known story of their origin in

the reign of Tshiwo. His contributions to the history of the abaMbo,

however, are of a different order. Here, Gqoba offers a coherent

narrative focusing on the scattering of the nations. He starts with the

unprovoked murder of two mysterious white men, an action in deance

of royal decree that leads to regional restlessness, uprisings and military

clashes and serves as a leitmotiv for the entire historical narrative. He

moves from the Mthethwa under Dingiswayo, through Dingiswayo’s

patronage of Shaka to Shaka’s succession to the Zulu kingdom and

his defeat of Zwide of the Ndwandwe and the murder of Matiwane of

the Ngwane. All this is familiar territory. Gqoba then continues with

the Ngwane and their clashes with the Hlubi, once again initiating the

narrative sequence with portents of disruption. He devotes considerable

attention to Mahlaphahlapha of the Khabaludaka, an obscure group

about whom little is recorded, related to the Rhadebe. The Khabaludaka

seem to have been Bhele people, and one of the most striking things

about this section of Gqoba’s narrative is that he fails to mention the

recurrent claim about the Bhele: that they were originally cannibals. In

1909 Mabonsa kaSidhlayi told James Stuart that he had met the chief

and specically asked him about this; Mahlaphahlapha admitted to

cannibalism among his people, but denied his own involvement:

Dingana chased the cannibals away from our part of the country.

The great cannibal chief was Mahlapahlapa kaMnjoli of the

Radebe people. He lived near Glencoe Junction and Dundee.


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INTRODUCTION 27

I was once sent to Basutoland by Langalibalele to ask for

feathers. I there came across Mahlapahlapa himself, a big man

but with thin legs. He denied having ever eaten any people. I

spoke to him about the matter . . . “Oh, no,” he said, “I never

ate people. Only members of my tribe did so.” (Webb and

Wright 1979: 15)

Many of those who mention Mahlaphahlapha and the Bhele repeat

the charge of cannibalism, but Gqoba omits the sensational and the

salacious. He quotes the chief’s praises and refers to him as much loved

by all the Rhadebe; he puts in the chief’s mouth a linking reference to

the portentous murder of the white men; and he offers detailed accounts

of his clash with Bhungane, which led to the latter’s death, and his

engagements with his neighbours the Rheledwane and with the Ngwane

of Matiwane. Gqoba seems to be unique in recording these events.

Gqoba’s argument about the cattle-killing (item 21 below) has been

celebrated as a signicant Xhosa source of information on the disastrous

events of 1856–7. Rubusana took considerable textual liberties in

editing only the rst instalment for Zemk’inkomo magwalandini, which

A.C. Jordan freely translated in Towards an African Literature (Jordan

1973: 70–5). J.B. Peires made sensitive use of the complete article in

his account of the cattle-killing (Peires 1989), and recently Bradford

and Qotole have translated both instalments of the article as well as

the debate it provoked in the press (Bradford and Qotole 2008). The

article provides graphic details of the sequence of events, details for

which Gqoba is now the sole source, but Gqoba was unlikely to have

been an eyewitness. He was sixteen or seventeen at the time, probably

commencing his apprenticeship as a wagonmaker in King William’s

Town. In 1857 many of the victims were buried in mass graves in the

Edward Street Cemetery in King William’s Town, and Gqoba cannot

have been indifferent to the unfolding catastrophe; nonetheless his

motive in composing the article in the last months of his life was

not primarily to provide a historical record. His earlier two historical

pieces were composed from a Xhosa perspective, bypassing European

versions of Xhosa history. Here, however, he is concerned to confront

and contradict the dominant interpretation found in English history

textbooks, which Gqoba deplores for misleading youngsters in schools.


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28 W.W. GQOBA

His own account of events is designed to support his argument against

the European claim that the cattle-killing was instigated by the chiefs

in a plot to arouse a militant uprising against the white settlers. Gqoba

refutes this theory by appealing to logic, Xhosa customary practice

and Xhosa historical precedent. His is a rebuttal of white historical

misrepresentations of Xhosa history that eschews Western academic

argumentation in its deployment of a native Xhosa exegesis.

This volume contains nine religious poems by Gqoba, six of them

obituary poems, a form later to be developed by Mqhayi into high art.

More prolic and inspired as a poet than his contemporary, M.K. Mtakati

(item 27 below), who contributed thirteen poems to Isigidimi and Imvo

between 1882 and 1890,19 and just as socially and politically committed

as his prolic contemporary Jonas Ntsiko, Gqoba’s poetry, like that

of both Mtakati and Ntsiko, always adopts Western metrical forms

and structure: he never wrote in the poetic style of traditional Xhosa

praise poetry.20 His religious poetry ranges in quality from mere biblical

paraphrase (item 15 below) to moments that demonstrate high poetic

sensibility, such as the conclusion to his lament on the death of Stephen

Mnyakama (item 9 below):

Hay’ betu lomhlaba, yinen’ uyadlula,

Awunasw’ isigxina sentw’ esisi nyanya;

Zonke, zonke, zonke, zimhlambi wa ntaka

Zi ngondo zimayo, mat ̔unzi okuhlwa.

This earth’s sorrows are truly transitory,

lacking an ancestral spirit’s constancy;all things, all things, are a ock of birds,

hips stiff and motionless, shadows at eventime.

However, his greatest literary achievements are undoubtedly his two

extended, serialised debate poems (items 7 and 20 below), poems that

deserve to be recognised as among the highest achievements in Xhosa

literature.

19 . For an analysis of one of Mtakati’s poems, “ Izizatu ze voti yam” (the reasons for

my vote, Imvo, 6 December 1888: 3), see Moropa (2010).

20 . On Xhosa praise poetry, see Opland (1983, 1998) and Kaschula (2002).


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INTRODUCTION 29

In the last year of John Tengo Jabavu’s editorship, Isigidimi

rejected an article by Jonas Ntsiko, “a highly respected writer of

great intellectual integrity, widely read for that period in the literacy

of the Southern Africans” (Jordan 1973: 91), for being “too hostile to

British rule” (Jordan 1973: 96).21 No doubt Jabavu felt constrained by

the tight editorial policy of Isigidimi, committed as Stewart was to the

exclusion of political commentary from Lovedale publications; Jabavu

left soon afterwards to establish the rst independent black newspaper,

Imvo zabantsundu, and Gqoba succeeded him as editor of Isigidimi in

November 1884. Gqoba held strong political views of his own; he had

written a letter to the editor of Isigidimi in 1880 complaining about

such onerous aspects of white administration as the pass laws and hut

tax (item 4 below), which concluded, “Let those who rule us live off the

fat of the land for the moment. Let them enjoy it while it lasts. But they

will not inhabit this land forever” ( Aba lauli betu bangoku bayekeni ke

bax

amle, lento baya yibuka, kodwa ilizwe abakuli hlala unapakade),

and in 1887 his explication of the proverb “to be a stopgap” (Ukuba ngu

Qelazana, a temporary patch, item 18 below) veers into the political:

Kwakona namhlanje izizwe ezintsundu ebezi ngabanini

bomhlaba kudala zizo esezibonakala zingo qelazana kuwo

sezihleli njengentaka ecope esebeni, inga qinisekile apo

iyakulala kona ngomso, Zinje ngesiziba esinguqelazana

kulombuso wanamhla, ziqa̔qw̔a kalula emalungelweni ombuso

ezipantsi kwawo.

And today black nations who owned land in the past now seemlike stopgaps in their own land, like a bird perched on a branch,

uncertain where it will sleep the next day. With the present

government, they are like patches that are stopgaps, their rights

under this government easily unpicked.

As editor of Isigidimi, having clashed with Stewart over his conduct as

a Lovedale teacher in 1881, did Gqoba meekly acquiesce to Stewart’s

21 . Jordan gives an account of this incident, and the outrage the action evoked in

Isigidimi’s readers (1973: 91–102); for the editorial justication of the rejection,

see Isigidimi (1 May 1884: 3).


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30 W.W. GQOBA

restrictive editorial code? In the third month of his editorship, as early

as January 1885, Gqoba printed in Isigidimi the rst instalment of

his “Great debate on education” (“ Ingxoxo enkulu nge mfundo”, item

7 below), a poem of 1 150 lines serialised in seven instalments, and

the last issue of Isigidimi to appear under Gqoba’s editorship in April

1888, the month of his death, carried the fth and nal instalment of

his “Great debate between a heathen and a Christian” (“ Ingxoxo enkulu

yomginwa nom-Kristu”, item 20 below), which ran to 850 lines. In

response to Stewart’s controlling policy, Gqoba eschewed confrontation

in favour of subversion. The poems contain outspoken criticism of the

treatment blacks suffered at white hands, the strongest and earliest

protest poetry to be published in Xhosa – and in a mission journal at

that – in passages such as the rousing concluding lines of the speech in

the rst debate poem by Rauk’-Emsini (Singed By Smoke), who resents

the suggestion that blacks should be grateful to whites and condemns

the discrimination they suffer:

Nale voti ikwanjalo,

Kukw’ ik ῾ete kwa nakuyo,

Asivunywa kany’ impela

Tina bantu abamnyama . . .

Okuk ̔̔ona kukudala

Ungenile kweli gwangqa

Kokukona ungumki,

Kokuk ̔̔ona ungumzini . . .

Nawo onke lamasheyi,

Siwenzelwa em Lungwini?

Xa kulapo kuyinene

Sonke, sonke simanyene

Kuba sonke sik ̔at ̔ele,

Masiwal’ amagqebeqe̔

Nakwezo zi Palamente,

Ngokuteta ngezw’ elinye

Ukuk ̔̔asa zonk’ indawo

Zembulawo ezinjalo,

Asiboni mubulelo.


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INTRODUCTION 31

It’s no different with the vote,

rooted in discrimination,

we’re completely unaccepted,

those of us who are black . . .

Just as long as you continue

to have dealings with these white men,

just so long you’ll be a stranger,

just so long a rank outsider . . .

What about this rampant fraud

framed for us among the whites?

So then, I claim to speak the truth,

all of us, let’s act in concert,

since we’re all of us exhausted;

let’s oppose these machinations,

in those Parliaments if need be,

with one voice let’s do our talking

damning every single item

of destructive legislation.

We’ve no reason to be grateful.

How did Gqoba engineer this, under the beady eyes of Headmaster

Stewart, who in 1872 had set Jane Waterston to keep close watch

on Elijah Makiwane’s editing of Isigidimi during Stewart’s absence

overseas (Opland 1998: 239–40)?

Gqoba’s two poems are set in regular Western metrical form: the

debate on education is in octosyllabics, the debate between a heathen

and a Christian is expressed in four-line stanzas with each line

containing twelve syllables.22 They give the supercial appearance of

conforming to Western literary tradition. So, too, does the fact that

Gqoba frames the speeches in a debate between two opposing parties

under an elected chairman, with polite forms of address to participants

22 . Gqoba inserts traditional praise poems into his history of the eastern lands (item

17 below), but he does not himself publish poetry that he has written in traditional

form.


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32 W.W. GQOBA

and audience and each speaker taking his turn. Gqoba identies his

poem as a parable (umzekeliso) in his subtitle, and the characters are all

given allegorical names in the style of the popular Lovedale translation

of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress by Tiyo Soga (Bunyan 1868). The

chairman, Ungrateful (uBed’idlaba), announces in his opening address

that he is unconvinced gratitude is due to the whites for the education

they have introduced, but he closes the debate with a concession that he

has been won over by the arguments for the missionary cause:

Ndoyisiwe kupe̔lile,

Zinyaniso ndifeziwe,

Yon’ imfundo iyalala,

Ndiqondile ngeligala

Masifund’ ukubulela

Ndigalele ndancela,

Mna ke ndiyaqukumbela,

Zenixele emak ̔aya

Masitande amagwangqa,

Amabandla ape̔sheya.

I’ve been wholly crushed and beaten,

truths have vanquished my objections,

this education’s bounteous,

from this day I understand

that we must acquire gratitude,

I’ve poured it out to the very last drop,

and now I’m just wrapping up:

inform everyone at home,

let us learn to love white people,

who came to us from overseas.

The poem has the supercial trappings of a pious argument in support

of missionary education, a topic close to Stewart’s heart, which might

well have allayed any fears or objections Stewart harboured. However,

the debate form permits Gqoba to put in the mouths of those in

opposition powerful protest not only about education, but also about

white government and the administration of blacks. As Gqoba explicitly


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INTRODUCTION 33

informs his readers in announcing the conclusion of the poem in the

August issue:

Namhla iza kupela le “ Ngxoxo nge Mfundo ,” kule nyanga

izayo. Siyatemba ukuba yopela ibavulile amehlo abaninzi

ngenxa zombini, kuzo zontatu ezindawo zale ngxoxo – Imfundo,

u Laulo kwa ne Mpato. Nongak ̔ataliyo kuyifunda ngezi mini

zanamhlanje, ziyeza imini ayakumana ebuyelela kwakuyo,

abone ubunene benteto yayo ngenxa zombini. Kanjalo nina

lutsha lufundileyo, coselelani lengxoxo, yiyo enefa kuni, kune

cricket njalo-njalo. Okunye uti umntu xa anentluta, akohlwe

yeyona nto afuna yona, ati wumbi ac̔ite, ahilizele asel’enayo,

aze alambe kengoko. Wonke umzi ontsundu nopi, pantsi kolu

laulo lwaba mhlope, uyak ̔ala, uyateta, ngazo zonke ezindawo

zikuyo lengxoxo ipe̔layo namhla. ( Isigidimi, 1 July 1885: 51)

Today I will bring this “Debate on Education” to a conclusion

in the following month. We hope that it will end having opened

the eyes of many on both sides of all three topics of the debate

– education, government and administration. Even he who does

not want to read this in the present time, these topics will return

in days to come, they will see the truth of this on both sides

of the argument. You educated youth, take this debate to heart,

it will provide a greater legacy for you than cricket and such

things. Otherwise when someone is well fed he gets confused

about what he really wants, and others might discard and lose

respect for what he has already, and then he suffers hunger.

Black people everywhere under the administration of whites are

complaining, speaking about all these things in this debate that

is ending today.

The later debate between a heathen and a Christian involves only

two allegorical characters, Zwelizayo and Pakadelikoyo, World To Come

and Here And Now. Deploying the same device of a debate, Gqoba is

able to express criticism of the conduct of those who pay lip service

to Christianity, as well as support for Xhosa custom and tradition: as

Here And Now recurrently argues, this present world is just ne as it


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is (umhlab’ uyolile), without concern for the future. What distinguishes

this poem are two striking, sustained parables. The rst is a deft retelling

in verse of a folktale concerning a childless woman who picks up an

extraordinary baby, which transforms itself into a monster that eats the

woman. The dangerous baby to whom the woman shows misplaced

kindness can readily be seen to be whites and European culture, against

the unthinking adoption of which Ntsikana had warned. Whites were

commonly referred to as Oomasiza mbulala, those who help with one

hand and kill with the other.23 The second parable concerns two bridal

parties that are presented to the Xhosa people. The brides are deceiving

witches, and the bridewealth offered by the Xhosa is overgenerous, to

the point that the Xhosa lose everything of value, including their land.

The bridal parties are identied as the Mfengu from the northeast, and

the whites from overseas. Again, the debate ends with victory for the

Christian faction, but along the way such trenchant criticism is voiced

of social conditions that the angry female poet of the turbulent 1920s,

Nontsizi Mgqwetho,24 freely incorporated many of Gqoba’s lines into

her poetry forty years later, and used a number of Gqoba’s phrases as

titles of her poems.

Introduction to William Wellington Gqoba: Isizwe esinembali: Xhosa histories and poetry...

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