Johannesburg – On April 9 1907, while hunting game, the spirit of God enabled Enoch Mgijima to see a vision of three unequal mountains representing the different people he was required to evangelise.
Thus started his journey as a prophet.
His grandparents were apparently among the Mfengu clans who, as a result of the combination of Mfecane wars and colonial encroachment, took the long trek from the foothills of Ukhahlamba down to the Kamastone area, Eastern Cape, where they settled in the early 1800s.
There, Jonas Mayekiso Mgijima and his wife MaKheswa converted to Weslyan Methodism. There they raised their nine children, the youngest of whom was Enoch, who was born in 1868.
Typical of the amagqobhoka (Christian converts) of the day, the Mgijimas ensured that their children received the best missionary education available. But severe and recurrent headaches forced Enoch to abandon his primary school education in Lovedale, sending him back to Ntabelanga, where he owned land and engaged in game hunting.
Later, he married MaMthembu, with whom he had seven children. Enoch was 39 years old when he received the calling to become a prophet in 1907. Five years later, he joined up with an African American church, the Church of God and Saints of Christ under the leadership of William Saunders Crowdy. Enoch established his own group of followers as a local branch of the same church, branding his as the Israelites.
This move revealed what his Pan-African vision of African liberation was. Fourteen years later, in Ntabelanga, the very place where he was born and bred Enoch, wearing a red robe, witnessed the massacre of up to 200 or more members of his church by the Union police. There are differing accounts of what actually happened.
What is undisputable is that whatever attempts the Israelites made to ward off the Union police and to defend themselves, they stood no chance against a police force armed with assault rifles and cannons.
Also undisputed is that while a few police members incurred minor stab wounds, up to two hundred members of the Israelites were killed and buried in three mass graves, on the very land they were denied ownership of in Ntabelanga.
Historian Robert Edgar describes the actual massacre thus: “In twenty minutes of fierce fighting over the two-and-a-halfmile front, several hundred Israelites were killed and nearly 130 wounded. Of those killed, 66 were from the Queenstown area, 37 from the Transkei, and 66 from other areas.
“The rest were unidentified. Of the prisoners taken, 75 were Mfengu, seven Basotho, 23 Thembu, 18 Ndebele, two Gcaleka Xhosa, five Ngqika Xhosa, one Khoikhoi, and 26 other Xhosa.” Enoch, his brother Charles and at least 141 Israelites were arrested. Charles died in prison. Enoch was released in 1924 and died on March 5 1928.
Astonishingly, in respective editorials, John Tengo Jabavu’s Imvo Zabantsundu and the chamber of mines-sponsored Umteteleli wa Bantu berated and blamed the Israelites for the massacre, even calling them “demented”.
One hundred years later, we must do better. Part of what we need to do is appreciate the deft and comprehensive leadership of Enoch, who as a prophet took upon his body, spirit and soul, the trauma, the fears and the hopes of ordinary people.
In his 60 years on earth, he had seen too much loss and too much death – he lived through World War 1, the enactment of the 1913 Land Act, the devastation of Umbathalala (the influenza epidemic).
With all his God-given talents, he tried what he could to plant hope in the breasts of the people.
The demonisation (which is a form of “killing”) and the actual killing of prophetic leaders cannot and should not be allowed to go on. Together with Bob Nesta Marley, we must ask: “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?”
The massacre of people whose only sin is to protest is a crime against humanity. Because for 100 years South Africa has been in denial about this, it has actively allowed history to repeat itself several times.
The 1921 state-sponsored killings at Bulhoek have been repeated in Sharpeville (1960), Soweto (1976), Boipatong (1992), Bisho (1992), Marikana (2012) and Life Esidimeni (2016), among others.
More than 11 South Africans died allegedly at the hands of the police and army during the Covid-19 lockdown last year.
Clearly, the state has not lost its thirst for blood. All relevant facts considered, I would not bet against another Marikana coming to a “theatre” near you soon.
By Tinyiko Maluleke.
• Professor Maluleke is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre of Advanced Studies. Follow him on Twitter @ProfTinyiko
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
