Written by In April or May of 1856, a fifteen-year-old Xhosa girl went to fetch water from a pool near the mouth of the Gxarha River.
When she returned, she told her uncle that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors.
The spirits had given her a message for the Xhosa people. If the people destroyed their crops and killed their cattle, every last head of livestock, the foundation of their wealth and their food, the ancestors would rise from the dead. New, uncontaminated cattle would come. New grain would fill the empty storehouses. And a great wind would rise and drive the British settlers into the sea.
The people would be free. The land would be restored. Everything that had been taken would be given back.
Her name was Nongqawuse.
And the story of what happened next is one of the most complex, most devastating, and most theologically significant events in the history of African prophetic tradition.