Millenarian modernism in H. I. E. Dhlomo’s The girl who killed to save

Abstract

This essay takes as its starting point the final scene of H. I. E. Dhlomo’s The Girl who Killed to Save (1935). Ostensibly an account of ‘Nongqause the Liberator,’ the prophet behind the Cattle Killing of 1856–1857, Dhlomo’s play presents ‘not merely a work of historical recovery or a reflection of increasing segregation but also an engagement with the full range of nationalist imaginings at work in the New African era’ (Wenzel 83). In this regard, it is pertinent to recall that the more immediate precursor for the millenarianism presented in the play was the arrest of Nontetha Nkwekwe in 1922 and her death in the same year of its publication. Like Nongqause, Nkwenkwe was a millennialist prophet. Responding to the Spanish Influenza, Nkwekwe’s prophecies eventually provoked the South African authorities to incarcerate and then institutionalize her. Given the increased attention on the influenza as a shaping influence on the modernism of 1922 and after, this essay figures Dhlomo with an expanded global modernism that engages more explicitly with its millenarian correspondents.