Zululand
I | INTRODUCTION |
Zululand, historic region in eastern South Africa,
comprising the northeastern portion of what is today KwaZulu-Natal province. It
is the traditional homeland of the Zulu people and was the site of a powerful
Zulu kingdom in the 19th century. The region extends from the Thukela (Tugela)
River in the southwest and the Indian Ocean in the southeast to the Phongolo
(Pongola) River in the north. At its furthest extent in the 1820s, the Zulu
kingdom comprised most of present-day KwaZulu-Natal.
II | PRE-19TH-CENTURY HISTORY |
Zululand was first settled by Iron Age people
from East Africa who migrated into the region by the 3rd century ad. By about 1500, the inhabitants were
physically, linguistically, and culturally similar to the African population in
Zululand today. Each family lived in a circle of thatched, beehive-shaped huts
surrounding a central cattle enclosure, and supported itself with the produce of
its small fields and livestock. A family’s wealth was measured by how many heads
of cattle it owned. Chiefs ruled over constantly shifting territories, as rivals
competed for cattle, land, and followers.
Chiefdoms in the region were small until the
late 18th century, when some began to expand. Why they did so is unclear.
Sharpening competition for resources in a time of prolonged drought and an
increasing need to defend against European slave and ivory traders may well have
forced the small chiefdoms to undertake major changes to survive. The most
significant of these changes was the development of the amabutho system,
in which all of a chiefdom’s young men were grouped by age into military
regiments (amabutho). The chiefs used the amabutho to control their own
subjects and to protect them against outside enemies. Keeping the amabutho fed
and properly rewarded required constant raids against neighboring chiefdoms, and
this added to a growing cycle of regional violence.
III | IMPACT OF THE MFECANE |
By the end of the 18th century two main
rival chiefdoms had emerged in the region: the Ndwandwe and the Mthethwa. The
Zulu chiefdom was allied with the Mthethwa as a subordinate state. Starting in
the 1810s, intensifying conflict between the rival groups caused their weaker
neighbors to move out of their way, dislodging other chiefdoms in their path.
This period of turmoil and subsequent migrations, lasting in the region through
the 1820s, is often referred to as the mfecane, meaning “the crushing” in
Nguni languages.
In 1817 the Ndwandwe defeated the Mthethwa,
leaving only the Zulu chiefdom to stand against them. When the Zulu chiefdom was
a subordinate state, the Mthethwa chief Dingiswayo had encouraged Shaka, the
Zulu chief, to build up his military power. Shaka had perfected the highly
successful Zulu battle tactics. In battle, the Zulu army was meant to resemble a
charging bull, and was therefore divided into three groups: the bull’s chest,
horns, and loins. The chest, featuring the strongest warriors, was meant to hold
down the enemy while the horns, two divisions containing the fastest warriors,
surrounded the enemy. When the horns completely encircled the enemy, the chest
would finish it off in hand-to-hand fighting with a stabbing spear. The loins
were held in reserve to reinforce divisions and to pursue the enemy as it fled.
In 1818, through a combination of diplomacy
and military aggression, Shaka consolidated Zulu power over the entire region
once dominated by the Mthethwa. Chiefdoms that submitted to Zulu overlordship
were given protection in return for providing manpower for the amabutho. Shaka
further developed the amabutho system, making it central to social and economic
life of his growing state, and extended it to include women as well. The system
remained the basis of the Zulu leader’s power until the fall of the Zulu state
in the late 19th century.
In 1819 Shaka defeated the Ndwandwe, taking
over their territory to the north, and also defeated and dispersed lesser
chiefdoms to the west and southwest. Shaka was now the preeminent ruler of what
came to be known as the Zulu kingdom. The Zulu were not strong enough to
establish a permanent presence in the more distant regions, however, and had to
be satisfied with constant raids and with the payment of tribute. Defeated or
terrified chiefdoms who attempted to move out of the range of the Zulu armies
added to the general confusion and devastation of southeastern Africa.
In 1824 a small British trading settlement
was established at Port Natal (later Durban), which fatefully connected Zululand
to the colonial world. Shaka welcomed the British hunters and traders as
suppliers of exotic goods and, because they had firearms, as mercenaries in his
wars. In return he permitted them to live peacefully at Port Natal like chiefs
living in his kingdom under his overlordship.
IV | ARRIVAL OF THE AFRIKANERS |
Resistance to Shaka’s unending military
campaigns and high-handed style of rule grew in the 1820s. In 1828 a trusted
adviser and two of Shaka’s half-brothers assassinated him. One of the
conspirators, Shaka’s half-brother Dingane, swiftly killed almost all of his
rivals in the royal house and brutally established his authority. Unlike Shaka,
Dingane was suspicious of the British presence in Port Natal, which was growing
in size and independence. However, the greater threat came from over the
Drakensberg Mountains to the west.
In October 1837 Dutch-speaking Afrikaners (or
Boers, Dutch for “farmers”) began emigrating across the Drakensberg
Mountains into the Zulu kingdom. These emigrants, known as Voortrekkers,
requested permission from Dingane to settle in Zulu territory south of the
Thukela River. Aware that the same group of Voortrekkers had recently defeated a
powerful nearby state, Dingane feared that the Afrikaners would overrun
Zululand. In February 1838 Dingane invited their leader, Pieter Retief, and a
party of his followers to his homestead to negotiate. There, Dingane had the
Voortrekker party massacred. He simultaneously sent his armies to attack the
Voortrekkers’ encampments. After an indecisive series of battles, the
Voortrekkers avenged the massacre by defeating the Zulu army on December 16,
1838, at the Battle of Blood River, also known as the Battle of Ncome
River.
V | FALL OF THE ZULU KINGDOM |
After the defeat of the Zulu, the Voortrekkers
established the Republic of Natalia in the area south of the Thukela River and
struck a deal with Dingane’s half-brother Mpande. With Afrikaner support, Mpande
overthrew Dingane in January 1840 and became king of Zululand. In return for
their support, Mpande ceded more land to the Afrikaners. In 1843 the British
took over Natalia, declared it the colony of Natal, and recognized the Thukela
and Mzinyathi (Buffalo) rivers as the boundary between the colony and the Zulu
kingdom. Most Afrikaners in the region migrated north into the Transvaal region,
where they founded the South African Republic.
Zululand was thus wedged between British Natal
on the south and the South African Republic on the northwest. It was constantly
menaced by the Afrikaners, who persistently tried to seize Zulu territory. To
counteract this threat, Mpande cultivated good relations with the British, and
welcomed British hunters, traders, and missionaries. These visitors disrupted
traditional Zulu ways of life and introduced diseases that decimated their
livestock. The kingdom was further troubled by a ferocious power struggle
between two of Mpande’s sons, Cetshwayo and Mbuyazi. The dispute ended in 1856
when Cetshwayo’s military faction slaughtered Mbuyazi’s. The victory made
Cetshwayo so powerful that, thereafter, Mpande was forced to share his authority
with him.
Mpande died in 1872 and Cetshwayo continued
his policy of maintaining good relations with the British. However, British
interests soon shifted. For the sake of imperial strategy and economic
opportunity, the British decided to bring all the white-ruled states of southern
Africa under their authority. But confederation, as this policy was known,
seemed to be threatened by an independent, powerful, and unpredictable Zulu
state in its midst. Despite desperate negotiations by Cetshwayo, the British
were convinced that a military solution was necessary, and in January 1879 they
invaded Zululand. On January 22, 1879, at the Battle of Isandlwana, Cetshwayo’s
army, using the traditional charging-bull battle tactics, partially annihilated
a British force totaling some 1,800 men. The stunning, bloody defeat horrified
Britain, but despite Isandlwana and several lesser Zulu victories, the modern
military organization and technology of the British eventually triumphed over
traditional Zulu tactics. The Zulu were decisively defeated at the battle of
Ulundi on July 4, 1879. Cetshwayo was captured and sent in exile to Cape Town,
and, for all practical purposes, Zulu independence was lost.
Having eliminated the Zulu threat, the British
had no wish to burden themselves with the administration of the territory. They
broke up the former kingdom into 13 weak chiefdoms and left them to their own
devices. Civil war ensued between the chiefs who had supported the Zulu kingdom
and those who had benefited from British settlement. Taking advantage of the
turmoil, the Afrikaners in 1884 provided military aid to Cetshwayo’s son
Dinuzulu in exchange for the northwestern third of Zululand. The Afrikaners
immediately reduced the status of Zulu inhabitants on their new farms to that of
tenant laborers.
VI | COLONIAL AND 20TH-CENTURY ZULULAND |
In May 1887 the British annexed what was left
of Zululand as a British colony, and subsequently put down a rebellion by
Dinuzulu in 1888. White settlement was initially prohibited in Zululand, but
when Britain permitted Natal to incorporate Zululand as a province in December
1897, white settlement soon followed. In 1906 two-fifths of Zululand—including
all the best agricultural land—was thrown open to white settlers. The remaining
land was turned into reserves for the Zulu. These reserves remained
underdeveloped, and the Zulu became migrant workers on farms and in the mines
and towns. Traditional Zulu customs and practices steadily eroded during this
time. Zululand, with the rest of Natal, became part of the Union of South Africa
in 1910. In the 1970s, as part of South Africa’s rigid policy of racial
segregation known as apartheid, parts of Zululand were designated as the
bantustan, or black homeland, of KwaZulu (see Bantustans).
A renewed sense of Zulu national
consciousness, pride, and unity began to develop in the 1970s. In 1977 the South
African government gave KwaZulu nominal self-government. In the period leading
up to the first post-apartheid elections in South Africa in 1994, there was
considerable violence between rival political groups in the region. Following
the elections, KwaZulu was incorporated into the administration of the new
province of KwaZulu-Natal.
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