There are many inconsistencies in the stories surrounding the murder of the Xhosa chief Hintsa, executed by British forces in the Cape Colony in 1835. What is incontrovertible is that Hintsa was killed while in a state of duress under Colonel Henry ‘Harry’ Smith’s command and that his body was mutilated by ‘civilised’ Englishmen. It seems that the parts of his body that were cut off were subsequently sold as ‘trophies’ on the streets of the settler hamlet Grahamstown, now Makhanda.
