DC12/NAMM/0009

Remembrance of the most renowned Xhosa Chief in South Africa's 19th-century frontier wars. Chief Maqoma grave site is situated in a Memorial dedicated to him by Dr L.L Sebe name Chief Maqoma's Memorial/Ntaba ka Ndoda. Born in 1798, he was the Right Hand Son of Ngqika, King of the Rharhabe division of the Xhosa nation. Implacably opposed to his father's ceding of the land between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers to the Cape Colony, Maqoma became committed to regaining his ancestral home. Moving west from Ngqika's kraals, he slipped back into the so-called Neutral Zone in 1822 to found a new chiefdom on the banks of the Kat River. Despite taking every effort to placate the Whites from his position, Maqoma was hounded continually by colonial raids and expelled from his territory in 1829, the year Ngqika died. Imprisoned on Robben Island for 12 years, Maqoma was paroled in 1869. When he attempted to resettle on his stolen land, however, he was rebanished to the infamous island prison, where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1873.