Samora Machel was killed by the Boers
and i mean THE BOERS.
Nongqawuse was not the first prophet to call for a cattle killing,
Makana ka Nxele did so way back in the 1820's, so did Mlanjeni in 1850
The idea of Cattle Killing and the ressurection of the dead emerged out of earlier male prophets ... a fusion of Christian ideas with Xhosa cosmology.
Some say the British tricked Nongqawuse, but that's unlikely (altho i'm not saying it didn't happen).
The British just took advantage of the Xhosa's who were dying of starvation.
In fact, some of the British seemed alarmed to me. The whole situation was just dire.
Blaming Nongqawuse has grown out of the fact that what happened in 1857 was the final straw for the Xhosa, the way some male black historians have written about her has been nothing but derogatory and patronising.
The problem was not even so much with the cattle killing, but with the fact that the women stopped cultivating crops.
that's what caused ma** starvation. anyway, way before Nongqawuse prophecied, other women prophets had already called for this type of spiritual remedy - stop cultivating and the white people will go back into the sea.
So, she didn't come up with these ideas, but unfortunately for her - King Sarhili took them up and he commanded they be followed. He definitely had more authority than she did.
