On the morning of 24 May 1921, a force of 800 white policemen and soldiers marched to a place called Bulhoek, about 25 kilometres southwest of Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. The white government had instructed them to confront an African prophet, Enoch Mgijima, and his followers, called the Israelites, who refused to leave their holy village Ntabelanga (‘The Mountain Of The Rising Sun’) where they had gathered to await the end of the world. The government was not prepared to allow them to pray and worship in peace, because it claimed the Israelites were illegally squatting on land that was not theirs. After many months of negotiating, it finally sent out an armed force to expel the Israelites. They did not want to fight the Israelites, but, if it came to that, they had modern weapons and they were prepared to use them.

When the Israelites and the police did not settle their differences, they clashed. The police were armed with rifles, machine guns, and cannons, while the Israelites had only sticks, swords, and spears to defend themselves. After the 20-minute skirmish nearly 200 Israelites lay dead and many others were wounded. This event would soon be called the ‘Bulhoek Massacre’.

From the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 to the end of apartheid in 1994, Bulhoek was but one of many occasions on which the white government used brute force to crush groups of people in Southern Africa. Port Elizabeth (1920), Bondelswarts (Namibia) (1922), Sharpeville (1960), Langa (1985), Boipatong (1992), and Bisho (1992) are among the list of tragic confrontations between the white regime and black people.

To understand why this particular clash at Bulhoek happened, some important questions need to be posed. Why did Mgijima call his followers to join him at his holy village of Ntabelanga, and what was their justification for challenging government officials? What tactics did the government try in dealing with the Israelites, and why in the end did they resort to force to remove them?