The Great Cattle Killing Essay Example

literary, or other creative works. And it is intended to give researchers of the movement's history a jumpstart in locating relevant documents and sites of importance in the Eastern Cape.

Here, then, are some guidelines to using this website and researching the Cattle-Killing: •Read William Gqoba's account of the movement as published in Isigidimi SamaXosa in 1888. This is available on microfilm from many research libraries, and I hope to distribute it on this website in the near future. Gqoba's account is the oldest, most significant description of the Cattle-Killing by a Xhosa historian. If you have not studied isiXhosa (or isiZulu), you may also read the translation of Gqoba's text, which was published in A.C. Jordan's Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

•Read The Dead Will Arise, by Jeff Peires. It is still the only academic history of the movement written to date. And while its interpretations are continually critiqued, it remains the most important analysis of the history. •Check the list of "Key Texts" on this site for other important articles and books (some with primary source material). Helen Bradford's critiques of Peires's interpretations are particularly thought-provoking.