Were South African Blacks ever Cannibals?

By Mike Smith
28th of June 2011

Ilana Mercer has a new book out. It is called “Into the cannibal’s pot, Lessons for America from post Apartheid South Africa”.

I have not read the book yet, but shortly will.

The title got me thinking...We know of cannibalism in Central and West Africa, but were South African Blacks ever Cannibals? The answer is yes.

It was Felix Dzerzhinsky, known by his nickname “The Red Terror”, founder of the Russian Secret Police, the fore-runner of the KGB who once told a journalist, “Humans are not much more than animals. Starve them enough and they start eating themselves”.

The barbarism and brutality of blacks in South Africa is well known. Who can forget the terrible necklace murders of the 1980’s and the early 1990’s? Who can ignore the Muti murders, thousand of them every year and almost a daily occurrence in South Africa where blacks harvest organs from live people, mostly children to use in witchcraft?

Now I see the necklace murder method is starting to stick out its head again. In the last few days, in Port Elizabeth, four people were killed “necklacing style”. One person had been arrested. Necklacing involves forcing a rubber tyre soaked with petrol over a person’s chest and arms, and setting it on fire. Source Sowetan

Back to history

During the Zulu king, Shaka’s “Defecane” (the great scattering), he wiped out between two and three million blacks in South Africa. That is right, the biggest killers of blacks in South Africa were always and still are, blacks themselves.

In Peter Becker’s book, Hill of destiny: The Life and times of Moshesh, Founder of the Basotho, he tells the story of how the Basotho king Moshoeshoe founded his hilltop kingdom at Thaba Bosiu (Mountain of the night) in what is today known as Lesotho.

The Sothos were fleeing into the hills to get away from the carnage of Shaka. On page 51, Becker explains why Thaba Bosiu was called “The Mountain of the night”, it is because they reached the mountain during the night after a terrible march during which, Moshoeshoe’s uncle, Peete, was captured and eaten by cannibals...

Say, What? South Africa had cannibals who were so hungry that they were attacking armed black soldiers on the march?

I mean, come on...everyone knows that at the time South Africa was still full of wild animals, no shortage of antelope, why eat humans?

Nevertheless, Allister Sparks writes in his book, The mind of South Africa, on page 103 another shocking reference to this cannibalism amongst black South Africans.

Sparks mentions that amongst others, Shaka scattered the four tribes of the Hlubi, the Ngwane, the Ndebele and the Batlokwa, who became tyrants themselves ruling the Highveld of Transvaal, dislodging even more blacks, driving them up and down and criss-cross over the land, plundering and being plundered. Killing and being killed.

“Not a clan was was left untouched, and across the length and breadth of the central plateau, not a single permanent kraal remained. Cultivation ceased and as food ran out many people crazed by famine turned to cannibalism...”

Then in typical liberal excuse for black behaviour, Sparks continues that it was.”...Something totally alien and repugnant to black South African culture.”

Really? Let us investigate...

He then continues, quoting a Hlubi survivor of the time as he was wondering through the land at the time...

“I was wandering on a path. I saw a man who called to me to stop. He came to me and told me to sit down. He caught hold of my skin mantle. I left it in his hand and ran as fast as I could. He was a cannibal and wished to kill me. Afterwards I met two children...one was dead. The living one was eating the flesh of the dead one. I passed on. Next I saw a company of people digging plants. I was afraid of them and hid myself. When I was still going I saw a long stone wall, not very high. There were people sitting there cooking. I saw human heads on the ground. I took another way and escaped from these cannibals.”

And where was the spirit of “Ubuntu” in South Africa back then? Disappeared off the face of the earth I suppose.

So here we are sitting with a conundrum, a cognitive dissonance, several in fact.

A writer like Allister Sparks wants to convince us that these poor blacks...these extremely hungry and starving people only turned to Cannibalism when they ran out of food, but as I have mentioned, they had their pick of wild animals in their millions, even insects and birds, fish in rivers...there was no reason to turn to cannibalism with such an abundance of food, despite them murdering each other in their millions the animal life survived. Even the Boers lived off the land during the Great Trek.

The bushmen of the Kalahari desert managed to survive in much harsher conditions without ever reverting to cannibalism.

But it is the attack on Moshoeshoe’s army and the capture of his uncle by cannibals that should make us think...

If these Cannibals were poor and starving blacks, they would have been frail, thin and weak, probably poorly armed as well. I accept that they might have been desperate and hungry, but where they stupid enough to take on armed, trained soldiers? Were they strong enough to capture a member of the Royal Family, the King’s uncle who was like his own father to him? I doubt it.

These Cannibals were not starving. They were strong and brutish enough to attack an army of 5000 and take prisoners. They simply loved eating human meat the same way as their cousins from the Congo, where they migrated from.

Today we can only wonder what happened to these Cannibal tribes of South Africa. They were absorbed into other tribes, intermarried and had offspring...

The descendants of these Cannibals are today working in your garden, sitting next to you at university...and taking care of your children.

Please support Ilana Mercers Book.

 

Anonymous said...

I actually remember reading in a news paper, in the early 80's, Bishop Tutu appealing to the masses that they must not eat the people that they were necklacing. If memory serves me right, they would break pieces off the burnt "mpimpi" and eat them to show the others how brave they were. It was something to that effect. Dingo 

http://mspoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/2011/06/were-south-african-blacks-ever.html