uNtsikana

Ntsikana kaGaba (c.1780-1821) was a Xhosa seer, evangelist and hymn-writer of the Cira clan, remembered as the prophet who first rendered Christian faith in genuinely Xhosa idiom. Undergoing a visionary conversion, he gathered a community of followers and composed sacred songs, among them the 'Great Hymn', Ulo Thixo omkhulu ngosezulwini, 'He, the Great God in Heaven', the earliest hymn in the Xhosa language. He wove together older Xhosa conceptions of uThixo with new Christian teaching, and proclaimed the reign of Sifuba-Sibanzi, the Broad-Chested One, a redeemer in whom Xhosa and Christian hope converged. His message drew both Xhosa and displaced Khoi hearers, and his hymns and prophecies remained a living authority in later Xhosa religious movements.

Domains

• prophecy
• hymnody

Powers

• composes the first Christian hymns in Xhosa
• prophesies the coming of the Broad-Chested One

Epithets

• umprofeti wamaXhosa — the prophet of the XhosaJanet Hodgson, Ntsikana's Great Hymn (Cape Town, 1980) (secondary)

Sources

• Ntsikana kaGaba (c.1780-1821) was a Xhosa prophet and hymn-writer who first expressed Christianity in Xhosa terms, composed the earliest vernacular hymns, and proclaimed the redeemer Sifuba-Sibanzi.: Janet Hodgson, Ntsikana's Great Hymn: A Xhosa Expression of Christianity in the Early 19th Century Eastern Cape (Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1980) (secondary); Janet Hodgson, 'Ntsikana: A Precursor of Independency?', Missionalia 12, no. 1 (1984) (secondary)