ON THIS DAY: 23 October 1998 – Several thousand people assembled at Khulile, a small village near Debe Nek in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Xhosa prophetess, healer, and black nationalist, was officially buried 60 years after her death. Nontetha had died 600 miles (960 km) away in 1935 while incarcerated in a mental institution.
With no formal education, Nontetha, a widow and mother of ten children, trained as a sangoma, a traditional healer who treated physical ailments and warded off evil spirits by means of herbal remedies. Although she never formally joined a Christian church, she had been exposed to Christianity through missionaries.
In 1918, the 43-year-old Nontetha contracted the Spanish flu, which ravaged the world and killed a quarter of a million South Africans. During her illness, she experienced visions from God and Jesus, who told her that the epidemic was a punishment for people’s sins and neglect of the Christian faith. Upon recovering, she began preaching against witchcraft, adultery, alcohol, eating pork, traditional dancing, and circumcision. She encouraged the black tribes to unite.
In 1921, the Bulhoek Massacre occurred when 800 armed police stormed a millenarian sect, the Israelites, gathering for the prophesied end of the world. This resulted in the deaths of 183 Israelites and the wounding of 123. The sect’s leader, Enoch Mgijima, was seen as a threat by the authorities for uniting black Africans. Nontetha’s teachings also alarmed the Union of South Africa’s authorities, especially after the Bulhoek Massacre. Eighteen months after the massacre, Nontetha was arrested for preaching and incarcerated at Fort Beaufort Mental Hospital.
In 1923, the Church of the Prophetess Nontetha was founded by her followers. She prophesied that God would send a plague of locusts as punishment for their sins, but the insects should not be killed. When the locusts arrived, the government ordered their extermination, but Nontetha’s followers refused to comply, resulting in over 100 arrests. Nontetha was sent to the Weskoppies Mental Hospital, over 600 miles away, to limit her influence.
Pilgrimages of hundreds of her followers campaigned for her release, but they too were imprisoned. After years of ill health, Nontetha died of liver and stomach cancer at the age of 60 on 20 May 1935.
Four years after a black majority government came to power in South Africa’s first free elections in 1994, Nontetha’s remains were returned to her hometown and reinterred at Khulile in the Eastern Cape. Over 7,000 people attended the ceremony. The Church of the Prophetess Nontetha continues today, with its headquarters in King William’s Town and over 20,000 followers.