The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  As part of his campaign, in 1876 du Toit launched Di Afrikaanse Patriot, the first newspaper to use an early form of Afrikaans. The following year he was the main author of a history entitled Die Geskiedenis van Ons Land in die Taal van Ons Volk – ‘The History of Our Land in the Language of Our People’. It was the first book to treat all Afrikaners, dispersed as they were among British colonies and independent republics, as a distinct people, occupying a distinct fatherland; and it linked them to a common destiny said to be endowed by God: to rule over southern Africa and civilise its heathen inhabitants.

  The book marked the beginning of a new historiography that would eventually take hold of Afrikanerdom, portraying Afrikaners as a valiant nation wrongfully oppressed by decades of British rule. In what was to become a standard interpretation of Afrikaner history, one episode after another from the past was cited as evidence of British oppression, starting from the moment the British took possession of the Cape in 1806. The exodus of emigrant farmers from the Cape in the 1830s now became known as the Great Trek, a defiant gesture against imperial Britain on behalf of the Boer nation. The emigrants were now called voortrekkers, pioneers endowed with heroic qualities, steadfast in their determination to protect Afrikaner freedom and solidarity, guided by a deeply religious sense of purpose, courageously heading into the unknown interior only to find the British in relentless pursuit. In their quest for supremacy, the British had annexed the first Boer state, the Republic of Natalia; then they had seized the diamond fields of the Free State.

  Britain’s annexation of the Transvaal, riding roughshod over the pleas of its Boer inhabitants, seemed to confirm the validity of these ideas and gave them new impetus. ‘The annexation of the Transvaal has had its good side,’ wrote Jan Hofmeyr, a leading Cape Afrikaner editor. ‘It has taught the people of South Africa that blood is thicker than water. It has filled the Africanders, otherwise grovelling in the mud of materialism, with a national glow of sympathy for their brothers across the Vaal, which we look upon as one of the most hopeful signs of the future.’

  What the British action had set in motion was the stirrings of a nationalist movement.

  36

  THE WASHING OF SPEARS

  The steady encroachment of white rule and its many manifestations – magistrates, missionaries, farmers, labour agents, taxation and land-grabbing – continued to provoke African revolts. In September 1877, in what marked the start of the ninth Xhosa war, Gcaleka Xhosa attacked a Cape police post. They were joined by Ngqika Xhosa based in the Cape. It took colonial forces and British reinforcements seven months to suppress the revolt. In February 1878, there was a rising by Griqua in Griqualand East. This was followed by a Griqua rebellion in Griqualand West that spread to aggrieved Khoikhoi, Tlhaping and Kora groups, affecting most areas of the colony as well as territories to the north and west of it.

  Britain’s new high commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, an arch imperialist committed to Carnarvon’s vision of confederation, interpreted this tide of events as a ‘general and simultaneous rising of Kaffirdom against white civilisation’ that blocked the way to confederation and needed to be stamped out altogether. Along with his Cape officials, he took the view that as long as independent African chiefdoms were allowed to exist, the danger of a ‘black conspiracy’ against white authority would be ever present. The most powerful of them all was the Zulu kingdom. Once British forces – using new breech-loading Martini-Henry rifles – had suppressed the Xhosa rebellion, Frere set his sights on forcing Zululand into submission.

  Under Mpande’s rule, Zululand had continued to function as a militarised state with an army that remained a formidable force. New age-regiments were regularly recruited, trained for close combat and stationed at barracks around the country. Every young Zulu was keen to ‘wash his spear’ in the blood of his enemies to prove his manhood. But Mpande had sought to avoid confrontation with white power. The border between Zululand and Natal running along the line of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers had remained relatively tranquil. Over the years, Mpande had maintained a cordial relationship with Natal’s secretary for native affairs, Theophilus Shepstone.

  On Zululand’s north-west frontier with the Transvaal, however, there was constant friction as Boer settlers encroached onto land the British authorities recognised as Zulu territory. Rather than go to war, Mpande ceded to the Boers in 1854 a wedge of fertile land between the Buffalo and Blood rivers that became known as the Utrecht district. But Boer farmers continued their encroachment further east into adjacent areas on the north-west border, claiming yet more Zulu territory. Mpande repeatedly asked Shepstone for assistance in mediating in the frontier struggle; in 1869 he even suggested the creation of a ‘neutral’ British buffer zone to halt Boer encroachment. Shepstone supported the Zulu case – the British government was opposed to Boer expansion – but the dispute rumbled on with the threat of war ever present.

  When Mpande died in 1872, he was succeeded by his forty-year-old son Cetshwayo, a tall, broad-chested man with regal bearing and immense thighs typical of the Zulu royal house. Troubled by internal rivalry, Cetshwayo invited Shepstone to attend his ‘coronation’, hoping that a show of British support would strengthen his hand. Shepstone duly accepted, keen to use the opportunity to extend British influence over Cetshwayo. During two days of discussion at a military kraal on the Mahlabathini Plain, Shepstone found Cetshwayo to be a skilful negotiator.

  Cetwayo is a man of considerable ability, much force of character, and has a dignified manner; in all conversations with him he was remarkably frank and straightforward, and he ranks in every respect far above any Native Chief I have ever had to do with. I do not think that his disposition is very warlike; even if it is, his obesity will impose prudence; but he is naturally proud of the military traditions of his family, especially the policy and deeds of his uncle and predecessor, Chaka, to which he made frequent reference. His sagacity enables him, however, to see clearly the bearing of the new circumstances by which he is surrounded, and the necessity for so adjusting his policy as to suit them.

  Cetshwayo insisted that all Boer settlements below the Drakensberg, including the whole of the Utrecht district, rightfully belonged to Zululand. To prevent further Boer encroachment, he offered to cede all the disputed territory to the British. But Shepstone, knowing how such a move would antagonise the Boers, felt unable to accept.

  When Britain took control of the Transvaal four years later, Cetshwayo assumed, in view of previous British pledges, that he would be able to regain lost territory. The border dispute by now had festered for sixteen years. During that time, while Boers had seized Zulu land and cattle, Shepstone had urged them to show moderation and restraint. They had duly complied. They had provided a full statement of their case in writing. Now Cetshwayo wanted the matter resolved.

  But Shepstone proved to be a fickle friend. Once he had been installed as grand-overlord of the Transvaal highveld, he advocated ‘a more thorough control of the Zulu Country’, whether this was gained ‘by means of annexation or otherwise’. He was more concerned to appease his disaffected Boer subjects than to pursue Zulu land claims.

  Alarmed by talk of annexation, Cetshwayo became increasingly distrustful of Shepstone’s intentions, telling a missionary: ‘I love the English. I am not Mpande’s son. I am the child of Queen Victoria. But I am also a king in my own country and must be treated as such . . . I shall not hear dictation . . . I shall perish first.’

  In October 1877, Shepstone attended an ill-tempered meeting with a Zulu delegation near the Blood River, infuriating them by suggesting a compromise with the Boers over the land issue. The meeting broke up in disarray. Livid that his authority should be challenged, Shepstone told London that the Zulu delegation had been ‘exacting and unreasonable in their demands, and the tone they exhibited was very self-asserting, almost defiant and in every way unsatisfactory’.

  Shepstone now turned against Cetshwayo with a vengeance. Insisting that he had come into possession of ‘t
he most incontrovertible, overwhelming and clear evidence’, never previously disclosed, he threw his weight into supporting Boer claims to the disputed territory and dismissed the Zulu case as ‘characterised by lying and treachery to an extent that I could not have believed even savages capable of’.

  In dispatches to London, Shepstone railed against the disruptive effect of allowing Cetshwayo’s regime to remain in place. ‘Zulu power,’ he said, ‘is the root and real strength of all native difficulties in South Africa.’ In December 1877, he told Carnarvon:

  Cetshwayo is the secret hope of every petty independent chief hundreds of miles from him who feels a desire that his colour shall prevail, and it will not be until this hope is destroyed that they will make up their minds to submit to the rule of civilization.

  The outbreak of the Xhosa war in the Cape, he argued, had been inspired by the Zulu king. ‘I am fully satisfied,’ he told Frere in January 1878, ‘that no permanent peace can be hoped for until the Zulu power has been broken up’. Frere, already convinced of the need for war, readily concurred. The overthrow of Cetshwayo, he believed, would be a salutary lesson for all African chiefdoms.

  The British government had no objection to annexing Zululand at an appropriate moment, but was nervous that Shepstone’s warmongering might lead to precipitate action before proper preparations had been made and wanted to avoid war. To gain time, it authorised a boundary commission to investigate the dispute. But the boundary commission upheld Zulu claims. It reported in July 1878 that the Transvaal government had never exercised any jurisdiction, civil or criminal, over the area, nor had it ever governed any of the natives resident on the land, nor received taxes or land rent from the Zulu inhabitants nor appointed a government official there.

  Frere was thus obliged to find another pretext for war. Claiming that Natal was threatened by a Zulu invasion, he sent British troop reinforcements there from the Cape. Cetshwayo was quick to express his concern to British officials:

  I hear of troops arriving in Natal, that they are coming to attack the Zulus, and to seize me; in what have I done wrong that I should be seized like an ‘Umtakata’ [wrong-doer]? The English are my fathers, I do not wish to quarrel with them, but to live as I have always done, at peace with them.

  Frere brushed aside such protestations and continued to talk up the danger of a Zulu invasion, claiming in his reports to the Colonial Office that Cetshwayo had 60,000 warriors under his command, ready to strike across the border; the people of Natal, he insisted, were ‘slumbering on a volcano’.

  Alarmed by his warnings, the British government authorised the dispatch of two more British battalions to Natal, but still hoped that war could be avoided. The difficulty that British ministers faced was that they had no immediate means of controlling Frere. There was as yet no direct telegraph link to the Cape or Natal. The telegraph cable from London reached only as far as the Cape Verde islands; from there messages had to be carried to Cape Town by ship, taking at least sixteen days; letters and dispatches spent up to a month en route from London. The time lag enabled Frere to argue that he needed to respond to events on the ground without waiting for government approval of every decision he made; it provided him with an excuse to ignore government instructions altogether.

  But in any case, neither Frere nor his army commander, Lord Chelmsford, expected anything more than a short, sharp action before Zulu resistance collapsed. Having recently thrashed the Xhosa, Chelmsford was in a confident mood. ‘I am inclined to think,’ Chelmsford wrote to a subordinate in November, ‘that the first experience of the power of the Martini-Henrys will be such a surprise to the Zulus that they will not be formidable after the first effort.’

  The device that Frere used to provoke a war was an ultimatum he sent to Cetshwayo on 11 December incorporating demands that he knew were unacceptable. Frere told Cetshwayo to disband his army and abolish his military system, in effect to remove his principal source of power, or face the consequences. Cetshwayo was given thirty days to comply. To ensure that there was no interference from London, Frere delayed informing the Colonial Office about his ultimatum until it was too late for it to be countermanded. The full text of his demands did not reach London until 2 January 1879. By then, Chelmsford had assembled an army of 18,000 men – redcoats, colonial volunteers and Natal African levies – along the Zululand border ready for invasion.

  On 11 January, Chelmsford crossed the Buffalo River at Rorke’s Drift, an old Irish trader’s post that had become a mission station, placing himself in command of the main expeditionary force of 4,700 men, which included 1,900 white troops and 2,400 African auxiliaries. His intention was to advance along a wagon track that ran from Rorke’s Drift to Cetshwayo’s capital at Ondini, sixty miles to the east. As the track was in bad condition, he decided to set up an intermediate camp along the way. After making a personal reconnaissance of the area, he selected a site beneath a giant rocky outcrop called Isandlwana, twelve miles from Rorke’s Drift, shrugging off the misgivings of several members of his staff. No trenches or any other kind of defences were built around the camp because Chelmsford considered it would take too much time. Nor did he order sufficient reconnaissance, dismissing the likelihood of a Zulu frontal assault on a force of heavily armed British, even though the Zulu were renowned for that type of warfare.

  The British army that day suffered one of the worst disasters in its history. A Zulu force of 20,000 warriors swept into the camp at Isandlwana, annihilating six companies of the 24th regiment. In all, some 1,360 men died – 870 white soldiers and 490 black auxiliaries and non-combatants. Out of a total garrison of 1,760 troops, only 55 whites and 350 auxiliaries survived. An estimated 1,000 Zulus were killed.

  Later that afternoon, another Zulu force attacked the mission station at Rorke’s Drift which the British had converted into a makeshift hospital. Forewarned that the Zulus were coming, a British detachment of a hundred men improvised defences by throwing up barricades of wooden biscuit boxes and bags of maize cobs and managed to hold out against a ferocious assault lasting twelve hours.

  The shock waves from a British army’s defeat at the hands of spear-carrying tribesmen spread across southern Africa. All over Natal, white communities were gripped by panic, fearing a Zulu invasion would soon overwhelm them. In London, British ministers were not only mortified by the blow to Britain’s military prestige, but livid that Frere had started the war without their sanction. No one doubted that the British army would eventually prevail in Zululand, but its defeat at Isandlwana left Britain humiliated in the eyes of rival European powers.

  Needing to restore its authority in southern Africa, Britain set out not just to crush resistance but to dismantle the Zulu state. Cetshwayo sent a series of envoys to Frere: ‘What have I done? I want peace. I ask for peace.’ But Frere was in no mood to listen. Bolstered by reinforcements and armed with rockets, artillery and Gatling machine guns, British forces, after a ponderous five-month campaign, routed the last of Cetshwayo’s impis at the battle of Ulundi. More than 1,500 warriors died for the loss of thirteen on the British side.

  A new British proconsul, General Sir Garnet Wolseley, was dispatched to deal with this troublesome part of south-east Africa, with powers to act as ‘supreme civil and military authority’ not only over Natal and Zululand but also over the Transvaal; what the British cabinet wanted was a ‘dictator’ to sort out the mess.

  In short order, Wolseley packed off Cetshwayo to prison in Cape Town and broke up his kingdom into thirteen ‘kinglets’, stripping Cetshwayo’s Usuthu clan of their status, land and cattle and rewarding Zulus who had sided with the British or who had capitulated early, in a ruthless display of divide-and-rule tactics. A sizeable chunk of southern Zululand was given to a white gun-runner, John Dunn, once an ally of Cetshwayo, who had deserted him at the beginning of the war to join the British camp. The entire ‘disputed territories’ were ceded to the Transvaal. Wolseley claimed that his ‘settlement’ had laid ‘enduring foundations of peace, hap
piness and prosperity’ but it resulted only in years of bitter strife among rival Zulu factions.

  Next, Wolseley turned his attention to smashing Sekhukhune’s Pedi state in eastern Transvaal. In November 1879, he mustered a motley army of British troops, colonial volunteers, Transvaal African auxiliaries and 8,000 Swazi warriors to destroy Sekhukhune’s capital at Tsate. Sekhukhune was taken prisoner and incarcerated in Pretoria; his followers were dispersed into new settlements, losing much of their land.

  Wolseley assumed that such a demonstration of imperial might would have a salutary effect on the restless mood of the Transvaal Boers – defeating an enemy whom they had so conspicuously failed to dislodge. But in fact by crushing both Cetshwayo and Sekhukhune, the British had liberated the Transvaal Boers from the two greatest threats to their security. They now saw a new opportunity to get rid of the British.

  37

  A CHOSEN PEOPLE

  In December 1879, two weeks after British forces had crushed Sekhukhune, a mass meeting of 2,000 rebellious Boers was held at Wonderfontein to decide what action to take to rid the Transvaal of British rule. The mood of the meeting was strongly in favour of war. But Paul Kruger once again advocated caution. ‘The steps you wish to take are a matter of life and death,’ he told them. ‘You know that England is a mighty power, while our forces are small and insignificant in comparison with what she can bring into the field . . . Consider carefully before you shout “Yes! Yes! We want to fight!”’

  After five days of deliberation, the meeting unanimously approved a Volks-Besluit – a Decision of the People – declaring that Transvaal burghers had no wish to be British subjects. Nothing less than independence would suffice. ‘We solemnly declare that we are prepared to sacrifice our life and shed our blood for it.’