Nonteta Bungu (c. 1875–1935)

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Nonteta Bungu (c. 1875–1935)

South African who founded the Church of the Prophetess Nonteta in 1918. Born in Mnqaba, in what is now South Africa, around 1875; died of stomach and liver cancer in an insane asylum in Pretoria, South Africa, in May 1935.

A prophet of the Xhosa tribe, Nonteta Bungu was born around 1875 in the small village of Mnqaba, on the southeastern coast of what is now South Africa. The existence of the Xhosa had been undergoing a seismic shift since the late 18th century and the beginning of the Frontier Wars against the Boers, who sought more and more Xhosa land, and had received a terrible blow in 1856, when a vision received by a young woman named Nongqause caused them to slaughter all their cattle and destroy all their crops in expectation of supernatural intervention against the Europeans; the result was mass starvation. When the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918–19 struck the Xhosa, Nonteta Bungu began to have visions during her bouts of fever, dreaming that God was punishing the earth for the sins of the people. On her recovery, she began preaching against alcohol, adultery, and the eating of pork. She "read" from her bare hands when she spoke, and eventually founded the Church of the Prophetess Nonteta.

Although Nonteta Bungu did not expressly preach against the white government, she became a victim of the government crackdown on dissident, black-led religious sects during the early 20th century. She was arrested and imprisoned in a local insane asylum in 1921. When her followers continued to visit her there, she was transferred to the Weskoppies Asylum in Pretoria. Before she was taken away, she told her followers, "I will return in a different form," and, "Look to the Americans—they will help you one day." In 1927, over 30 of her parishioners walked the 600 miles to Pretoria to see her again. Although the doctors at the asylum agreed that her mental condition did not warrant her imprisonment, in accordance with the government's wishes they kept her there until her death in 1935 from stomach and liver cancer. Her followers did not hear of her passing until two weeks later. When they asked for her body, they were told it had already been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave and would not be given up.

In 1973, while South Africa's government was still in the hands of the white minority, Professor Robert Edgar of Howard University went to Mnqaba to conduct research. There he met some of the approximately 1,000 followers Nonteta Bungu's church still claims. Upon his return in 1997, he found the church elders still upset about the desecration of their saint. Believing that the new African National Congress-led government would be sympathetic to this quest, he set about trying to find Nonteta Bungu's grave. With the assistance of Coen Nienaber, a forensic archaeologist, he did indeed locate her remains; as the asylum authorities had noted in their records, she had been buried without a coffin atop the coffin of another inmate in an unmarked grave. After conclusive identification of her body, Edgar and Nienaber obtained $5,000 from the provincial government to transport her back to Mnqaba.

In November 1998, the remains of Nonteta Bungu were laid to rest on a hilltop with 600 mourners participating in a long, song-filled service, fulfilling her prophecy 63 years after her death.