Makanna’s Gathering is a poem by the Scottish-born South African poet, journalist, and essayist Thomas Pringle. Pringle, who went to South Africa to live in 1820, is known as the “father of South African poetry.” His sensitive depictions of the landscapes and peoples of southern Africa are among the earliest significant writings in English from South Africa.
Pringle’s collection African Sketches was published in 1834, the year of his death. It contained the prose description “Narrative of a Residence in South Africa” and the verse collection “Poems Illustrative of South Africa.” The six-stanza “Makanna’s Gathering” was included among these pieces. While many of Pringle’s poems and essays emphasized the natural landscape, this poem takes on the voice of a Xhosa chief. The Xhosa (called “Amakosa” by Pringle) are an African people whose ancestors were among the original inhabitants of southern Africa. White settlement in the 1800’s increasingly threatened their land and way of life. The prophet Makanna was the leader of a failed attack on the British in 1819.
Unlike the majority of his fellow white settlers, Pringle was deeply aware of the moral questions surrounding white occupation. In “Makanna’s Gathering,” he takes the unusual step of imagining himself in the African mind. His poetic speaker is the Xhosa prophet himself, gathering his people for war:
Wake! Amakosa, wake! And arm yourselves for war. As coming winds the forest shake, I hear a sound from far: It is not thunder in the sky, Nor lion’s roar upon the hill, But the voice of Him who sits on high, And bids me speak his will! He bids me call you forth, Bold sons of Kahabee, To sweep the White Men from the earth, And drive them to the sea: The sea, which heaved them up at first, For Amakosa’s curse and bane, Howls for the progeny she nurst, To swallow them again. Hark! tis Uhlanga’s voice From Debe’s mountain caves! He calls you now to make your choice— To conquer or be slaves: To meet proud Amanglezi’s guns, And fight like warriors nobly born: Or, like Umlao’s feeble sons, Become the freeman’s scorn. Then come, ye Chieftains bold, With war-plumes waving high; Come, every warrior young and old, With club and assagai. Remember how the spoiler’s host Did through our land like locusts range! Your herds, your wives, your comrades lost— Remember—and revenge! Fling your broad shields away— Bootless against such foes; But hand to hand we’ll fight today, And with their bayonets close. Grasp each man short his stabbing spear— And, when to battle’s edge we come, Rush on their ranks in full career, And to their hearts strike home! Wake! Amakosa, wake! And muster for the war: The wizard-wolves from Keisi’s brake, The vultures from afar, Are gathering at Uhlanga’s call, And follow fast our westward way— For well they know, ere evening-fall, They shall have glorious prey!
The military suppression of local peoples was often justified by stories of aggressive raids on colonial settlements. But Pringle gets to the heart of the issue for the Amakosa people when he writes, “conquer or be slaves.” Warriors may be motivated by revenge for the loss of their land, their herds, and their families. They might even be motivated by a desire to prove themselves “warriors nobly born.” But ultimately they have no choice but war, if the alternative is enslavement and the “freeman’s scorn.”
Pringle returned to the United Kingdom in 1826, becoming secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. He was admired by the great English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who praised Pringle’s well-known poem “Afar in the Desert.” Although Pringle was often criticized for conventional poetic diction and sentiment, he was always recognized as a literary pioneer.
Today, after South Africa has ended its policy of apartheid (strict separation of the races), Pringle’s place is more difficult to assess. In a literature rich with poetry written from the Black perspective, the work of a white settler may seem irrelevant. Further, the outdated style of many poems has made Pringle easy to dismiss. But critical attention in the late 1900’s and early 2000’s has focused on Pringle’s own complex and troubled relationship with his subject, Africa. Close study of Pringle’s poetry reveals a deep and thoughtful response to the encounter between Black and white people that became part of South Africa’s complicated legacy.
See also Xhosa.
