Biko: A Biography. Xolela Mangcu
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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 is a place we wish to correct in this rendition of Ntsikana’s hymn because it does not make sense. The part in the last line that says, Lo mzi wakhona na siwubizile is false [and indeed not translatable into English]. It should actually read as follows: “We have also called the house of Khonwana.” The Khonwana he was referring to was the father of Jotelo (Tiyo Soga’s father) and Jiyelwa and others; he is a man of the Jwarha clan, a Mtika, from the line of Soga. Ntsikana was inviting this house to the gospel because they were from the amaCirha, and his in-laws because his wife from the Great House, Makhombe’s mother, was also from the Jwarha clan.
Tiyo Soga would become the most influential Xhosa intellectual of the 19th century.[59] He was taken in by Presbyterian priest William Chalmers who educated him at Lovedale College, the mission school established by the British John Bennie in 1841 to “civilise” the natives. The college was closed during the Frontier War of 1844. Fearing for his protégé’s life, Chalmers took Soga along to Scotland. They returned to South Africa in 1846 and Soga worked as a teacher and a missionary at Uniondale in Keiskammahoek.[60] Soga refused to be drawn into the Xhosa resistance. For example, he declined Xhosa warrior Maqoma’s request to translate the contents of letters that the chief had confiscated from the British. He told the chief that “he would not mix himself up in a context which carried death to his fellow creatures”.[61]
When another war broke out in 1851, Soga and Chalmers left for Scotland again to return only in 1856. While in Scotland, Soga enrolled for a theology degree, was ordained as a minister and fell in love with a Scottish woman, Janet Burnside. In keeping with Christian teachings Soga dissociated himself from African