Ask anybody today, especially high-school children what was South Africa’s biggest massacre, then almost everyone will answer “Sharpeville” in 1960 when about 150 policemen opened fire on about 10,000 violent and heavily armed protesters who marched on their police station. Afterwards about six tons of weapons ranging from pipes and machetes to firearms were picked up.
Today we are told that the protestors were unarmed when photos of the time clearly proves it to be a lie. Sharpeville is often used to vilify the National Party government of the time. It is used as a stick to beat Nationalism in general and “prove” how “repressive” Nationalism is. Since 1994 the 21st of March is celebrated as “Human Rights Day” in South Africa and UNESCO marks it yearly as the “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination”. Thus, year after year, all over the world we are reminded how bad white South Africans were...especially those evil Afrikaner Nationalists. But Sharpeville was not South Africa’s first massacre, neither was it the biggest...most importantly; the National Party was not even the biggest villains in the story of South Africa. The Bulhoek Massacre: South Africa’s Waco. What liberals do not want you to know Let me take you back 90 years to 1921 when the Liberal, former Boer General, Jan Smuts, who almost singlehandedly wrote the United Nations Charter, was Prime Minister of South Africa. During this time a Black Xhosa prophet appeared on the South African scene by the name of Enoch Mgijima. Today, very few white people in South Africa know anything about this man. ENOCH Mgijima,was one of nine children. He was born in 1868 at Bulhoek, about 25km southwest of Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. In Xhosa the place is called Ntabelanga (‘The Mountain of The Rising Sun’). The area was in what was called a “buffer zone” created by the British during the previous century. The idea was to create buffer zones around white areas or towns and fill it up with friendly blacks who would protect them against the other more raw and violent blacks deeper away. It served two purposes. First it served as protection for whites; secondly it provided whites with a source of cheap labour. The clan that Enoch Mgijima came from, the Mfengu people was one group that accepted the British offer and lived at Bulhoek. The British had a policy of trying to westernize the blacks in these buffer zones. They would build them square houses, layout roads and put in sanitation and running water. All which was alien to the blacks whose traditional huts/houses known as “rondawels” were round and traditionally they never had streets, sanitation or running water. In doing so the British gave birth and rise to the modern phenomenon called “Townships”, which was called back then, “Locations”. The term “Locations” was still used up until 1994, when the PC-brigade in typical Orwellian Newspeak, changed it to “Townships” ...and “Squatter camps” became known as “Informal settlements”. Nevertheless, the Mfengus from Bulhoek embraced the British ideas. They wore Western clothes and went to mission churches (Wesleyan/Methodist and Presbyterian). They also sent their children to mission schools. Many were successful farmers and sold their surplus produce. Some earned money through skills such as building and carpentry. Some even had their own shops. Enoch Mgijima attended one such mission school called Lovedale college, but left after standard three (fifth grade), apparently because of severe headaches. He later started farming and also fancied himself a bit of a lay Methodist preacher. As we know, a little knowledge, especially in the wrong hands, is a very dangerous thing... On April 9, 1907 Mgijima had his first vision: an angel told him he had to educate his people and get them to worship God in the Old Testament traditions. The angel told him of the coming of a great war and the end of the world. Only the faithful would be saved. Before long, the “prophet” had a huge following. During this time a series of events led Enoch Mgijima to come to certain conclusions. First there was a severe two year drought during 1896-1897. The cattle herds of the blacks and many whites were decimated by Rinderpest. Food was scarce and more and more blacks started flocking to buffer zone areas where they could at least get something to eat from the whites. Needleless to say the townships started growing and squatters became a problem. The British started introducing anti squatting laws and forced removals to areas that they have built with proper infrastructure such as roads and running water. It was all alien to the blacks who did not understand that a fire truck needed to travel on roads of a certain breadth to be able to get to a shack that is burning down. If it can’t then a hundred shacks will burn down in no time, because they are built too close to each other. A problem we still sit with today. The same thing obviously applies to an ambulance or the police. When blacks are then forcibly removed from an area like this and their shacks bulldozed, they cry racism and unfairness. Nevertheless, when Halley’s Comet streaked through the sky in April 1910, Enoch Mgijima saw this as a confirmation of his vision that the end of the world was near. In 1912, Mgijima began baptizing his followers, who he called "Israelites", in the Black Kei River near Ntabelanga. The gospel he preached coincided with the beliefs of the American Church of Gods and Saints of Christ — the Sabbath fell on Saturday, they held services four times a day, and their main festival was the Passover in mid-April. In 1914, World War One broke out, and South Africans, also many blacks, took part in it. News of the devastation and the horrors of the war in Europe as well as between South Africa and the Germans in Deutsch- Westafrika obviously also reached South Africa. In 1917 The Bolshevik revolution broke out and the Communists came to power in Russia. In 1918 a worldwide flu epidemic killed millions of people and it also visited Bulhoek where it killed 1 000 people in Mgijima’s tribe. On top of it another severe and devastating drought followed in 1919. All of this was just too much for the simple lay preacher and prophet, Enoch Mgijima. He was convinced that the Lord was coming soon. In 1919, Mgijima’s followers from around South Africa began gathering at Ntabelanga to pray and await the coming of the Lord. Over the next two years, by 1921, some 3 000 blacks from the Israelites sect had gathered at Bulhoek. They were effectively squatting and have erected illegal huts and shacks without registering or submitting building plans; Again something totally alien to them. White as well as black farmers in the area started complaining that the new arrivals were stealing their cattle or letting their livestock graze on other people’s land. The Black Israelites actually gathered every year at Mgijima’s home for Passover and worshiped in a "tabernacle" made of patched-together tents. In early 1920, Mgijima applied to white authorities earlier than usual for permission for his followers to attend the festival as many black people were coming from far away. Reluctantly, Geoffrey Nightingale, the local inspector of black locations, agreed after Mgijima assured him that the structures that would be erected would be temporary. Six months later, Nightingale visited Bulhoek and saw that the squatter camp grew much larger. He spoke to Enoch Mgijima, who came up with all sorts of excuses why the people have been unable to leave. Nightingale warned him that the squatting was illegal, but reluctantly allowed them to stay a short while longer. A year later they were all still there and to make things worse, the squatter camp grew even larger. Three thousand blacks were squatting illegally there. “Illegally” according to the white man’s laws. Meanwhile, the government authorities built proper, square, brick houses for the blacks nearby in a permanent location complete with streets, infrastructure, a clinic and a court…all untraditional to blacks. Needless to say they did not want to move there and the white authorities, looking at a black problem through white lenses, could not understand why not. Several delegations from the government were sent to Bulhoek to persuade the blacks to move, but it all failed. One delegation, made up of 100 white policemen and some black community leaders camped nearby in tents and were chased off by angry black “Israelites” who were adamant that they were there to stay. The Israelites told a delegation that included Native Affairs Secretary E.J. Barrett that they would not leave without a message from God. Mgijima’s brother, Charles, told this delegation: "God sent us to this place. We shall let you know when it is necessary that we go." Prime Minister Jan Smuts was told about the problem at Bulhoek and urged to go there to resolve it, but he was busy elsewhere with an election and postponed the trip to April 1921. Meanwhile the Israelites joined other blacks in the Eastern Cape in their boycott of tax, especially property tax. Again, something that was totally alien to them. Another delegation of whites from the Natives Affairs Commission was sent to talk reason into the blacks at Bulhoek. They tried to convince them that they were also Christians and that God also worked through them, but the Israelites accepted the prophet Enoch Mgijima as their only authority. When no compromise could be reached, Prime Minister Jan Smuts sent in the police to sort the uppity blacks out. How did they dare oppose white authority? The head of the police, Colonel Truter, sent out an order that 800 policemen be brought in to Queenstown. It was the largest force of police that had been put together in peacetime in South Africa. On May 21, three days before the massacre, Colonel Truter told the Israelites to leave or police would arrest Mgijima and demolish the shacks. Mgijima responded by letter: "The whole world is going to sink in blood… The time of Jehovah has now arrived." Mgijima had another vision: the police would come from many directions and he had seen his people falling. Mgijima told his followers that they were free to leave, but they chose to stay. On the 23rd of May the first police arrived at Bulhoek. On the morning of 24th of May they started moving into position in five detachments on slopes overlooking the village. At 8.40am, the Israelites ended their morning service and marched outside for their usual drill. Police thought they were watching a war dance through their binoculars. Mgijima told his men: "You go and die for the Lord’s sake, but this is no death." The women and children stayed in the “Tabernacle” while about 500 men armed with knobkerries and spears organized themselves in regiments according to age. The police were armed with rifles, automatic weapons and even artillery. At noon, a last ditch effort failed when a party of three policemen speaking to three Israelites could not reach a compromise. What happened next is open to dispute. The police claimed Mgijima’s men jumped into battle and that they fired in self-defence; the Israelites claimed the police fired first. It may be that someone fired a shot by accident and then both sides might have clashed since everyone was very tense. The armed Israelites all dressed in white robes and therefore easy targets ran towards the police, whose rifles and automatic fire sliced them down. Despite this they kept charging and even wounded men crept forward until they collapsed. Mgijima was standing on a hill, dressed in a red robe watching the events. In a battle that lasted 20 minutes 183 black “Israelites” were killed. Denver Webb, the Eastern Cape historian who has worked to preserve the Bulhoek site says: "Oral history among members of the church has it that the death rate was as high as 800,"... Almost 100 were injured. Among the police, one was stabbed and a horse died. With the battle over, the police advanced on Ntabelanga and seized Mgijima. Colonel Truter told him: "Enoch, I hold you responsible for all this bloodshed." Altogether 150 Israelites were arrested and held in the Queenstown jail. It was the first time blacks were imprisoned for their political, religious and/or freedom beliefs in South Africa. It was the start of black political prisoners in South Africa…all on the watch of the liberals, not the nationalists. That night, while the rest of the Israelites were burying their dead, the police were tearing down their homes. The arrested black men and their leader, Enoch Mgijima, were charged with sedition and found guilty. The judge told them that their religion was a cloak for their political believes. The Judge said they had "A crazy notion that the day was coming when the black man would have his freedom"…epic words… Enoch and his brother Charles were given six years’ hard labour, their followers between 12 and 18 months. Charles Mgijima was worked to death and died in prison. So much for liberal human rights. Enoch Mgijima was released in 1924. He died in 1928, but his sect and his Tabernacle have survived. Today the sect is known as the Church of God and Saints of Christ. The Israelites commemorate the massacre annually. Members of all tabernacles in the Eastern Cape fast on May 24, and a commemoration takes place at Bulhoek on the first Sunday after May 24. This was one of the first times after the Union of South Africa that the white government used police and army troops to crush a group of Africans who would not obey its laws. The massacre at Bulhoek had a death toll of at least three times as high as the so called “Sharpeville Massacre”, but because it happened on the watch of the liberals and the British, it is all covered up and not mentioned in any history book for school children. At the heart of liberal beliefs are human rights such as freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of speech, etc… Liberals constantly preach tolerance of other cultures and other religions, but as can be seen from the Bulhoek case study, they are the first ones to suspend those freedoms when it suits them or clashes with their white western laws. Although Bulhoek was three times greater than Sharpeville and committed by LIBERAL whites against blacks, it is still not the biggest massacre in South Africa. A minor one was in 1949 when thousands of armed Blacks descended on an Indian town in Durban and in an orgy of rape, murder and violence that lasted three nights, burned down Indian businesses and houses and killed about 50 of them. But even that pales in comparison with what blacks have done to whites in South Africa. In the Weenen or Blouwkrantz Massacre of 1832, 41 white men, 56 white women and 185 white children (282 whites altogether) were brutally killed along with 250 of their coloured workers by blacks who picked white babies up by their feet and bashed their brains against the sides of the wagons. Then I am not even mentioning the tens of thousands of blacks who were murdered by the horrific necklace method by black communists in the 1980’s and the three year period preceding 1994. I am also not even starting to mention the thousands of whites raped, tortured and killed by blacks on their farms and in their houses since 1994 until present day, it makes Sharpeville look like a Sunday school picnic. Today these hypocritical liberals celebrate Human Rights Day and International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the 21st of March, the date of the Sharpeville massacre, but the Bulhoek massacre on 24th of May 1921, that was directly ordered by their liberal darling and founding father of the United Nations, Jan Smuts, is swept under the carpet. Mentioning the Weenen/ Bloukrans racist massacre of blacks against whites of 1832, borders on hate speech against blacks…Go figure. Main Source: “Because they chose the plan of God: The Story of the Bulhoek Massacre of 24 May 1921” … By Robert Edgar Professor of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
