AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
No sooner was peace restored than a lethal cattle disease, lung sickness
(bovine pleuropneumonia), arrived from Europe and spread rapidly, inten-
sifying the anguish of the battered, impoverished, and humiliated Xhosa.
They responded by trying to control the movements of infected beasts and
by holding individuals responsible for these calamities and executing them
as witches. But to no avail. All chiefdoms were affected; some lost more
than 80 percent of their cattle-their
most valuable possessions.P
Conquest and lung sickness turned the Xhosa world upside down.
People wondered how they could account for these unprecedented events
and how they should respond. They naturally sought: answers in their
indigenous concepts of witchcraft, pollution, sacrifice, and the powers of
the ancestors; but they also adapted concepts of sin and the resurrection
from the teachings of the missionaries. If they erased the pollution that had
caused the calamities by a massive sacrifice of the remaining cattle and the
grain, they might eradicate witchcraft and their ancestors might return and
restore "a happy state of things."16
Several prophets gave expression to these ideas-most
notably, a six-
teen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse, who lived in the country of the