Prophecies

The Xhosa Cattle-Killing Prophecy of 1856-1857

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The Xhosa Cattle-Killing Prophecy of 1856-1857." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/prophecies/the-xhosa-cattle-killing-prophecy-of-1856-1857.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The Xhosa Cattle-Killing Prophecy of 1856-1857. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/prophecies/the-xhosa-cattle-killing-prophecy-of-1856-1857

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-xhosa-cattle-killing-prophecy-of-185,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The Xhosa Cattle-Killing Prophecy of 1856-1857},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/prophecies/the-xhosa-cattle-killing-prophecy-of-1856-1857},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The prophecy reported by the young Xhosa woman Nongqawuse from April 1856, that the Xhosa people's ancestors would rise and their herds be restored if the people killed their existing cattle, already dying of an introduced lung sickness, and destroyed their grain. Paramount Chief Sarhili believed it and it spread across the Xhosa chiefdoms of the Eastern Cape frontier. The final promised date, 18 February 1857, passed without event, and the resulting famine, among a people who had already destroyed most of their food supply in compliance, killed tens of thousands.

Facts

Disputed

Documented Response

The scholarly record is divided on how to weigh Xhosa religious agency against colonial pressure in explaining why the prophecy took hold and what followed it. Jeff Peires's standard history rejects both the colonial era claim that Xhosa chiefs had engineered the killing as a war plot and the rival claim that Governor Sir George Grey's administration had engineered it to seize Xhosa land, arguing instead that the movement grew from genuine religious conviction responding to a genuine crisis, a cattle lung sickness epidemic already destroying Xhosa herds since 1854, layered onto decades of frontier war and land loss. Peires nonetheless documents that Grey's administration, once the famine began, withheld relief from many of the starving and used the catastrophe to seize land and press survivors into colonial labor. Other historians, Helen Bradford prominently among them, have argued that Peires's own account still under-reads Xhosa agency and the internal social tensions, particularly around gender and generational authority, that the prophecy itself addressed, part of a wider critical re-examination of nineteenth century Cape frontier historiography, in the tradition of the colonial-agency method Julian Cobbing applied to other Southern African upheavals of the same period, that presses harder on colonial responsibility for precipitating the crisis rather than only exploiting it afterward. This record states both readings rather than settling between them. 2

Fulfillment

Claimed Fulfillment

That the ancestors would return, new and healthy cattle would replace the herds slaughtered in compliance with the prophecy, granaries would be miraculously replenished, and the British colonists occupying Xhosa land would be driven into the sea, restoring Xhosa independence and abundance. On 18 February 1857 the sun rose as on any other day, and none of what had been promised occurred. 1

Documented Response

Xhosa families had already slaughtered an estimated 400,000 cattle and destroyed most of their standing grain in compliance with the prophecy before the final date arrived. When it passed without event the resulting famine killed an estimated 40,000 people and displaced tens of thousands more; the population of British Kaffraria, the frontier territory the Gcaleka and other Xhosa chiefdoms inhabited, fell from about 105,000 in January 1857 to under 27,000 within two years. 1

Attributions

Tradition

Xhosa Traditional Religion, and the authority of Sarhili, paramount chief of the Gcaleka Xhosa, who believed the prophecy and lent it his political weight across the wider Xhosa chiefdoms of the Eastern Cape frontier. 1

Dating

Predicted Date

18 February 1857, the final date fixed for the ancestors' return after earlier dates had already passed; the sun was to rise red that morning as the sign the promise was beginning. 1

Date Attributed

April 1856, when Nongqawuse reported her first encounter with the ancestor spirits near the mouth of the Gxarha River; the specific resurrection date was revised more than once before being fixed at 18 February 1857. 1

Origins

Attributed Author / Compiler

Nongqawuse, who reported the visions from April 1856 onward, with her uncle and guardian Mhlakaza serving as principal interpreter and promoter of the prophecy to the Xhosa chiefs. 1

Sources

Primary Source

Colonial administrative and missionary records of 1856 and 1857, and oral testimony gathered from Xhosa survivors and their descendants, are collected and critically assessed in Jeff Peires's The Dead Will Arise, the primary scholarly synthesis this record relies on; Helen Bradford's 1996 article documents the historiographical dispute over how to read that same record. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections