South African Play Explores Impact of Historic Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse

ramento focused on compensation and titled “Redressing the Harms Delineated in Report 1.”

That meeting will be held over two days, Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4 at the Byron Sher Auditorium at the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) headquarters, beginning at 9 a.m. both days.

Moore-Johnson kicked off her presentation at the San Diego meeting during a panel titled “The Forgotten 40 Acres: Repairing Wealth Disparity Using the Estate Tax and New Charitable Incen- create a public-private partnership to help fund reparations we could get our wealthy clients to willingly enthusiastically embrace using their own money to pay for reparations,” Moore-Johnson said. “We believe that tax deductions should be allowed for private contributions to racial repair because individual taxpayers would be paying a debt of the federal or state government on the government’s behalf,” Moore-Johnson said.

Potential revenue sources, the attorneys say, could be the state estate tax, mansion tax, graduate

By Navdeep Jassal Post News Group Contributor

Navdeep Jassal, has been traveling in South Africa for the last five months and recently had the opportunity to review a play in Johannesburg. Presented by Africa Creations Production Company, the play reveals the nature of African indigenous spirituality.

“The Rise and Fall of the African Gospel: Nongqawuse” was created, written and directed by Mbongeni Moroke who was inspired by the historic events of 1856-7 and the miseducation that followed.

Though performed in the Xhosa language, with a few short excerpts in English for non-Xhosa speakers, I had the opportunity to speak with Moroke — who portrayed Mhlakaza, a sangoma (traditional healer) and father to Nongqawuse. This article is gleaned from our conversations.

The play is about two wellknown historical figures for the Xhosa: Their young maiden prophetess, Nongqawuse, and South Africa’s first Black Christian Presbyterian minister, Tiyo Soga.

tives.” She said, “the tax code has incentivized white wealth building for years,” and that she and Odom have now found a way to redistribute wealth through tax exemptions at the state level.

“For years, Ray and I intuitively understood that if we could harness those tax incentives to property tax, and metaverse tax.

Johnson mentioned that the graduate property tax revenue would not apply to California because of Proposition 13, a law that restricts increases in the state tax code.

Odom and Moor-Johnson’s

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For background’s sake, it must be understood that according to African indigenous spirituality, cows are slaughtered to summon the ancestors’ protection. In 1856, cattle represented the primary measure of wealth among the Xhosa, and the word to the king from prophetess Nongqawuse that cattle should be killed to hide the wealth from the arriving Christian missionaries was shocking.

The message came in a time when the Xhosa nations’ strength and trust in its leadership had been eroding after a great king had been assassinated by Christian missionaries in the early 1800s following his betrayal by his own counsel and other Xhosa leaders.

That “negative aura persisted around the kings,” making for a continual threat to Xhosa unity, Moroke said.

And unity is key: According to South African spirituality, God the Creator cannot intervene in a divided nation; therefore, after the slaughter, the rising of the ancestors foreseen by Nongqawuse did not happen in the way it was expected.

Enter Tiyo Soga, the son of a chief counselor to the king who had turned away from Xhosa tradition and followed in his Christian mother’s footsteps. He eventually traveled to Scotland to study religion and theology and returned as a Christian evangelist.

By then, Xhosa society was divided like never before. The Christian missions became the sanctuary and refuge for the hordes of hungry, famished people — their grain silos empty, their cattle no more, and their land useless.

While 16-year-old Nongqawuse was labeled a false prophet and scapegoated, Soga and lesserknown Black individuals spread the new religion by white Christian missionaries throughout Xhosa land.

Moroke’s inspiration is a righteous one: The spirit of God the Creator existed before the Bible in Africa and Moroke speaks from and uses the African indigenous spiritual lens in his work as playwright, director, actor, and musician, demonstrating that spirituality in ancient Africa was powerful.

Through entertainment, Moroke strives to re-educate Black South Africans on the value of their own history, valor and spirituality.

The opening scene takes place on Robben Island more than 100 years before Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a political prisoner there. Three broken Xhosa kings

Continued on page 9 the harm caused by their products.

The Backstory

A 1953 study by Roper, B.W. found that only 5% of African Americans smoked menthol cigarettes. A 1968 poll of People’s Cigarette Smoking Habits and Attitudes by Philip Morris showed that menthol use among Blacks had almost tripled to 14%. A report by Brown and Williamson in 1978 found that it had tripled again to 42%. By the 2000s, over 80% of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes.

COMMENTARY: Black Institutions Must Stop Taking Big Tobacco Money

By Dr. Phillip Gardiner

It’s hard to believe that with the amount of damage that the tobacco industry has inflicted on the Black community, that there are still Black organizations accepting their funding.

By doing so, these Black organizations enable the tobacco industry to portray themselves as allies to our community. They help silence our voices and efforts aimed at encouraging policymakers to take specific steps to protect our people, thus becoming complicit in our death and disease.

The problem with accepting these funds is the tobacco industry has a history of targeting and ex- ploiting vulnerable communities, especially Black communities, through predatory advertising and marketing tactics.

Our people must be aware that accepting money from the tobacco industry contributes to the ongoing exploitation of our people through their predatory practices of marketing menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

The African American Control Tobacco Council is calling on Black organizations to be united in our fight against Big Tobacco and help save Black lives. Tobacco companies are actively opposing public health measures aimed at protecting Black Americans from

Today, 85% of Black adults and 94% of Black youth who smoke are using menthol products.

These striking statistics arise from the success of the industry’s predatory marketing of these products in our community, where there are more advertisements, and most disturbingly, menthol cigarettes are cheaper compared to other communities.

In 2022, the use of cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos was highest among Black youth. These practices, coupled with buying the silence of some Black spokespersons for the past 50 years, have led to Black Americans dying disproportionately from heart attacks, lung cancer, strokes and other tobaccorelated diseases.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Across this country, tobacco