| dc.description | Born in 1798, Maqoma was the eldest son of Ngqika, king of the Rharhabe division of the Xhosa nation. Repulsed by his father's ceding of the land between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers to the Cape Colony, Maqoma became committed to regaining his homeland. Moving west from Ngqika's kraals, he slipped back into his former territory in 1822 to found a new chiefdom on the banks of the Kat River. Despite taking every effort to placate the whites, Maqoma was hounded continually by colonial cattle and labour raids and finally expelled from his territory in 1829. Since Ngqika died while his heir, Sandile, was still an uncircumcised minor, Maqoma was made the regent. Faced with increased aggression from the colony, Maqoma, in 1834, had no alternative but to fight in order to allay further dispossession. Although the Rharhabe were conquered by colonial invasion in 1835, by 1837 a cost conscious colonial office had withdrawn British troops from Xhosaland. After Sandile entered manhood in 1840, Maqoma attempted to usurp this weak and sickly heir but was foiled by European missionaries. Orthodox history maintains that after Maqoma accepted the supremacy of Sandile, the former fell into alcoholism, dropped out of mainstream Xhosa politics, and retired early from Sandile's war against the colony in 1846 because of a burning desire for liquor. These assumptions are absolutely false. Throughout the 1840's Maqoma effectively ruled his personal subjects, strove to maintain peace with the colony and objected to Sandile's resistance because he knew it would lead to devastation. The imposition of colonial rule over the Rharhabe followed Sandile's surrender in 1847 and once the British set about destroying chiefly authority, Maqoma had little choice but to resist. From 1850-53 Maqoma's guerilla campaign in the mountains, forests, and valleys of the Waterkloof frustrated the most skilled British officers. Ultimately, war-induced famine, aggravated by a colonial scorched earth policy, forced the Rharhabe to abandon their strongholds and submit to European domination. While Maqoma has been described as a deluded believer in the millenarian Cattle-Killing prophecies of 1856-57, this previously misunderstood catastrophe was actually a movement of frustrated Xhosa commoners who sought to oust their discredited aristocracy. Maqoma's covert attempts to undermine the Cattle-Killing failed and with the complete loss of Xhosa power which followed the British imprisoned him on Robben Island for twelve years. Paroled in 1869, the chief attempted to settle on his stolen land but was re-banished to the infamous island prison where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1873. Despite his extraordinary tenacity, flexability and political and martial skills, Maqoma became the tragic victim of an advancing colonial juggernaut. | en_US |
