Description

ISBN: 9781869141776 1869141776 – Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond by Jennifer Wenzel. Published by UKZN Press, 2009. Softcover. New. 328 pp.

In 1856 and 1857, in response to a prophet’s command, the Xhosa people of southern Africa killed their cattle and ceased planting crops; the resulting famine cost tens of thousands of lives.

Much like other millenarian, anticolonial movements – such as the Ghost Dance in North America and the Birsa Munda uprising in India – these actions were meant to transform the world and liberate the Xhosa from oppression. Despite the movement’s momentous failure to achieve that goal, the event has continued to exert a powerful pull on the South African imagination ever since. It is these afterlives of the prophecy that Jennifer Wenzel explores in Bulletproof.