/ 14 March 2000

XHOSA CHIEF’S GRAVE FOUND IN UK

TWO Xhosa princes have found the gravestone of their ancestor chief Sandile in a private pet cemetery on a farm in west England. They are hoping it will lead them to the famous chief’s skull, allegedly buried by a former army colonel with his pets, Die Burger newspaper reported. The Xhosa believe Sandile’s skull was taken to England as a trophy after he was killed in 1878 in one of the nine bitter late nineteenth-century border wars between them and the British in what is today eastern South Africa. Princes Xhanti Sigcawu and Zolile Burns-Nacamashe, accompanied by ex-president Nelson Mandela’s traditional praisesinger Zolani Mkiva, found the gravestone at the weekend in a shed on Hilcot Farm in the Cotswold area. The report did not say if the area would be dug up to search for the skull.