Contact Artefacts please if you have any comments or more information regarding this record.	Menu Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon		Ntsikana's Monument Kwamagosh Peddie district, Eastern Cape

Date: n.d. Type: Monument Status: Extant   Click to view map Coordinates: 33°08'55.79" S 27°04'22.59 Alt: 346m

Sited on the crest of an oval promontory and commanding expansive views over the harsh, dry surrounding Eastern Cape landscape, Ntsikana's Monument commemorates the Xhosa prophet Ntsikana. This site is NOT the grave of Ntsikana. Ntsikana was born in 1780 and died in 1821. Ntsikana was a Christian Xhosa prophet, evangelist and hymn writer who is regarded as one of the first to translate Christian ideas and concepts into terms understandable to a Xhosa audience. Ntsikana's Monument is sited in close proximity to the settlements of Hloseni and Kwamagosha, to the northwest of the town of Peddie, and is accessed via the R345, with a signposted turn-off. The road from Peddie to the monument site is gravelled and is currently in reasonable condition. The monument precinct is roughly square and is surrounded by a low barbed wire fence with an entrance on the east side and the monument sited on the west side. The rounded rectangular base of the monument is formed of an organically curved plastered surface over what was presumably a mound of local stone. The base is topped with two superimposed rectangular concrete blocks of different sizes (each cast in a temporary shutter made from matched lining board) which in turn supports a simple metal cross. Directly to the north of the memorial is a circular dished cement structure set into the ground, the significance of which has not yet been determined. A small-scale freestanding display stand once held an inclined panel with some explanatory text as part of the Makana Route. The text is however badly weathered and is now completely illegible. It has yet to be determined when the monument was constructed. However Andre Odendaal's book 'The Founders: The Origins of the African National Congress and the Struggle for Democracy', published by Jacana in 2012 records that "in April 1909 Umhalla together with Walter Rubusana, John Knox Bokwe and others conducted the first annual Ntsikana Remembrance Day as a specifically Xhosa festival. This was in response to the first annual Fingo Emancipation Day held in May 1908." William A. Martinson, January 2025