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.