Xolela Mangcu

Biko: A Biography


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prophesied the arrival of white people with a coin on one hand and a Bible on the other. Yet this had nothing to do with Ntsikana’s prophetic powers. As one of Van der Kemp’s earliest converts in Bethelsdorp, Ntsikana drew on his direct experience with the missionaries and on the Bible. Jordan also argues that in Ntsikana’s world divination was not uncommon, and could not be reduced to the influence of white missionaries. More importantly, Jordan offers a secular interpretation of Ntsikana’s significance, and it is within this intellectual trajectory that I seek to place Steve Biko. In his own way, Steve was, as Mostert observed, a beneficiary of a long tradition started by Ntsikana but also a critic of that culture. Here is how Jordan describes Ntsikana’s enduring legacy:

      The differences between Ntsikana and Nxele were more political than spiritual. When Ntsikana attempted to proselytise Ndlambe, the latter cautioned that “each ear will hear a different thing because I am still listening to Nxele”.

      According to Peires, notwithstanding the differences between Ntsikana and Nxele, both individuals were grappling with adapting to the “irruption of the European”:

      Relationships with Missionaries – Friends or Enemies?

      And here one begins to see the emergence of a patronising attitude among the missionaries towards the “natives”. John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society, for example, rejected slavery but only because he saw a potential consumer market among the Khoisan and the Xhosa. What was needed was to “elevate” them to a level of cultural development more aligned with missionary and European norms. We see the same condescending but ultimately contemptuous approach as that adopted towards the Khoi and the San in the preceding century. Philip’s mission was to: