The Horns of the Buffalo

by John Wilcox

  ‘The very same. Except that ’e was only a sergeant then. Anyway, he says, “Come an’ join the 24th Regiment of Foot and we’ll make a man of you.” So I says, “I’m a man already an’ a better one than you.” So ’e says, “I’m wearin’ uniform, otherwise I’d knock the cockiness out of you, sonny.” So I says, “All right then, I’ll put the bleedin’ uniform on an’ then you can try.” So that’s ’ow I took the Queen’s shillin’.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  Jenkins grinned. ‘As soon as I’d signed, like, Cole put me on a charge straight away for impertinence. ’E always ’ad a sense of humour.’

  The two picked their way through wild garlic and strange silver trees, the witboom, up the slopes of Table Mountain. At a little plateau below the summit they tethered the horses and scrambled up several hundred feet more to the flat top. Both men were struck silent by the view. To the south, the coastline meandered through wisps of low coastal cloud to the tip of the Cape itself. Seaward and to the north, the dark blue of the South Atlantic was studded with white sails and smoke trails as ships made their way to the haven of the artificial harbour. Coaling was taking place at one end of a quay and small black clouds half hid the vessels berthed there. The harbour bristled with masts and the water within the moles was criss-crossed with white wakes as the small crafts plied their trade. To the north and to the east, the mountain fell away in gullies of red sandstone, made more crimson by the patches of red disa orchids growing within. The air was clear and crisp and the coastal plain, dotted with farms and white-painted houses, seemed to march for hundreds of miles before it gradually gave way to smoky blue hills. Simon thought that, if he concentrated hard, he could see to India.

  ‘Almost as good as Wales, bach sir,’ said Jenkins.

  Simon had hoped that his few days of leisure could be used to prepare for the task ahead. Apart from the horse riding, however, he found it depressingly difficult to discover anything about the Zulus and the threat they posed. Before sailing, he had ascertained that the 1st Battalion was not, in fact, in Cape Town, but had been posted some six hundred miles to the east to Kingwilliamstown, in British Kaffraria, at the very edge of the Cape Colony. There they were attempting to keep the peace in a border province that, although under direct British rule - as was the Cape Colony - was a polyglot pot of nationalities which now showed signs of boiling over. Natal, the British colony that bordered independent Zululand, seemed quiet. The glory, it seemed to Simon, lay with his old battalion in British Kaffraria and he had long since resolved to try and join them, if he could. There was a debt to be paid there.

  Cape Town itself, in those first days after Simon’s arrival, was not designed either to inform him or to advance his plans to join the 1st/24th. As the political, military and commercial hub of the Cape Colony - and virtually that of the rest of South Africa - it was temporarily leaderless and, it seemed to Simon, full of lassitude. The newly appointed Governor of the Colony, Sir Bartle Frere, had left for Kingwilliamstown and taken his staff with him, including the Army Commander, who, it was rumoured, was soon to be replaced anyway. However, the latter’s chief of staff, Simon was informed, was on his way back to Cape Town and would give him his orders on his return.

  On the fifth day after his arrival, Simon received a brief note ordering him to report to the office of Colonel George Lamb CB, late Indian Army.

  The office, for all its white-painted walls, was dark and sparsely furnished but it seemed to light up with the Colonel’s smile as he stood and advanced to welcome Simon. A diminutive man, with colonial campaigning etched on his nut-brown face, he held himself as erect as a colour standard and exuded authority and bonhomie. Nevertheless, Simon regarded him with apprehension. How much did he know about the reason he was serving with the 2nd Battalion, and would his horsemanship be tested? He would never survive that. He need not have worried. This was no Covington.

  ‘My dear Fonthill, a belated welcome to the Cape. I am sorry that you have had to kick your heels for a few days, but I had to travel with the C-in-C.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Thank you.’

  The Colonel pushed forward a chair. ‘Do sit down. Cheroot? Sorry I can’t offer you a decent cigar but we cleared out stocks to replenish the 1st/24th’s mess at Kingbillystown.’ His blue eyes sparkled. ‘I’m sure you’d approve of that, though.’

  ‘Very much so, sir.’

  The little man bustled back to his desk, picked up matches and threw them to Simon.

  ‘I’ve just been going through Baxter’s report. Sad business. We shouldn’t use these old emigrant tubs to transport our men. But you did jolly well. I congratulate you.’

  Simon murmured his thanks.

  ‘Right, now let’s get down to business.’ He pulled deeply on his cheroot and examined the papers on his desk. ‘I see that you’re a fine horseman and that, although you don’t speak Zulu, you have one of the Bantu dialects?’

  Simon swallowed hard and shifted from one buttock to the other on the edge of the chair. ‘Er, not quite, sir.’

  ‘Eh? What?’

  ‘I can ride, of course, Colonel, but I’ve only got French and German and . . .’ he tailed off, ‘my German’s not too good.’

  ‘What the blazes!’ The Colonel looked again at the document on his desk. ‘It distinctly says here, “Has aptitude for languages and knows native dialect.” ’

  Simon swallowed again. ‘I think, sir, they might be referring to Welsh. I did learn it while I was at school in the country before going on to Sandhurst, although it is very rusty now. It must somehow have got on to my record.’

  ‘To hell with the confounded Horse Guards! They get everything wrong.’ Colonel Lamb frowned and looked hard at Simon. Then, gradually, his eyes softened and the brown face seamed into a half-smile. ‘Welsh, eh?’

  Simon nodded. ‘Half Welsh, anyway. Borders.’

  The smile broadened. ‘Welsh meself, although I never did master the deuced lingo. Dammit all, Fonthill, if you can speak Welsh you can learn Zulu, can’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so, sir. But I was wondering if there was a chance that I could join my old battalion in Kingwilliamstown and serve as a line officer there?’

  ‘Certainly not. The bloody place is full of Welshmen as it is. Now the Governor and the C-in-C are there, too. There’s not room to breathe in the godforsaken hole. Best you stay out of it.’ The Colonel tapped the ash from his cheroot and leaned forward. ‘No. Kaffir wars are dirty businesses. Chasing bunches of natives through head-high thorn scrub; not seeing more than a foot or two in front of you and not knowing when a spear is going to be thrust into your privates from out of the bush . . .’ He winced and shook his head again. ‘No. These are foot soldier policing actions. Not for a fine horseman like you.’

  Simon groaned inwardly.

  ‘Anyway, the damned war hasn’t begun yet. And, of course, the Governor has gone down there to stop it starting.’ The Colonel’s teeth gleamed in the darkened room. ‘No, my boy. We have something rather more interesting for you to do.’

  He pushed back his chair and strode to a map that dominated one wall. ‘Know much about South Africa?’

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid, sir. There wasn’t much time to do research before I left England.’

  ‘Right. Perhaps best to start with a clean slate, anyway. You must first get the geography in your mind.’ He picked up a pointer. ‘Here we are.’ He tapped the Cape Colony at the bottom of the map, the largest territory shown. Then his pointer moved upwards and eastwards. ‘Here’s British Kaffraria, where your Welsh boys are. You mustn’t worry about Basutoland and Griqualand East and West, here. They’re annexed and reasonably quiet. To the north of the Orange River here is a wilderness of desert, with a few bushmen and nothing else. No interest to anyone.’

  He gripped his cheroot with his teeth so that it tipped up and the smoke curled clear of his eyes. The pointer swung in an arc from top right of the map to top centre. ‘Here,’ he said, wrinkling hi
s eyes, ‘here’s where the trouble starts.’

  The pointer jabbed at the middle of the map. ‘Orange Free State, where the Boers trekked to fifty years ago to get away from us. See?’ The pointer moved north-east. ‘Here. The Transvaal. Huge territory. High plateau country. Both of ’em independent Boer republics. Got it?’

  Simon nodded.

  The pointer swung right and down. ‘Natal. British but independent of the Cape Colony. Usual mixed bag of settlers but mainly British and natives. Lush, good country. And here . . .’ The pointer moved up the coast to a rectangular strip of seaboard, fringed on the north by Portuguese territory, by Natal to the south-west and the Transvaal to the north-west. ‘This,’ said the Colonel, ‘is Zululand. A completely independent nation, ruled by King Cetswayo.’

  Lamb walked back to his desk and stubbed out his cheroot. ‘The problems of this colony, Fonthill, are fundamentally those of every country in the world: people and land. We have European underpopulation and native overpopulation, of course, the same as throughout the Empire. But here the Europeans are an infernal mixture of anti-British, damned touchy Boers, British settlers and a poacher’s bag of the sweepings of the rest of Europe.’ He leaned forward. ‘And the natives are another hell’s brew: servile coastal Kaffirs, various tribes of Bantu inland, and up there,’ he gestured over his left shoulder, ‘the Zulu nation.’

  Simon stood up and walked to the giant wall map. ‘I can understand that, sir,’ he said. ‘But land? This is a huge country, and from the little I’ve seen of it, it is very fertile. Surely there is enough to go round?’

  ‘Stuff!’ The little man bounded to his feet. ‘You know nothing of it yet. Yes, the territory is enormous.’ He swept the map with his palm. ‘Well-watered, grassy flatlands is what everybody - white and black man alike - wants. But there is not enough of that to go around. We’ve got steep mountain ranges and arid tracts eating up vast acreages, and great stretches of potentially fertile flatlands that are only usable when we get water trickling through the stony riverbeds for a couple of months a year. Winter pasturage is always a problem, and when we have a drought it can be as bad as India.’

  The Colonel bristled with animation, his blue eyes shining from his seamed face as he jabbed the map in emphasis. Simon realised that this was a breed of soldier new to him. He had long been accustomed to the languid career officer typified by Covington: mannered, confident and arrogant from his breeding, able enough but with little interest beyond regimental matters, hunting and the social round. Lamb carried the missionary zeal of an empire-maker. He had, Simon remembered being told, served long years in India.

  ‘As you would expect,’ continued the Colonel, ‘two hundred years of European settlement has meant that the white man has taken the best of the land and the water availability.’ He gestured to the map again. ‘Only here, in Natal, has any land been set aside for the natives, where we’ve pushed about three hundred thousand Kaffirs into reserves. But the Boers do nothing. They think that the Transvaal goes on for ever - and that it’s all theirs.’

  He sighed in exasperation. ‘Here on the border of the Transvaal and Zululand, between the headwaters of the Buffalo River and the Pongola, there’s been a land dispute between the Boers and the Zulus going on for years. God knows when it will be settled but there will probably be another Boer-Zulu war before it is.’

  Simon peered pensively at the map. ‘What’s the answer to it all, then, sir?’

  Lamb bounced on his heels. ‘One word - confederation.’

  ‘Confederation?’

  ‘Confederation. Uniting all of the territories into one big colony or dominion under the British flag, as we’ve just done in Canada. That way we can have central government and begin to impose some discipline and long-term planning. It will take time, but it’s the only way to build this sprawling mess into a proper nation within the Empire.’

  The Colonel took Simon by the arm and led him to his chair. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘the process has already begun. I am sure that the new Governor, Sir Bartle Frere, has come out with this intention.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Can I rely completely on your discretion?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Shepstone is already in the Transvaal, preparing to annex it to the British Crown.’

  ‘Shepstone?’

  ‘Yes. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, formerly Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal - he knows Cetswayo well - has come out from the Colonial Office with a special mission.’ Lamb smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, Shepstone is a bit of a loose cannon crashing about the deck. He does tend to be a trifle unpredictable. But he knows the territory well and Sir Bartle should be able to handle him.’

  ‘I see.’ Simon nodded slowly. The history lesson and the tour d’horizon of South African politics was all very interesting, but what the hell had they to do with an infantry second lieutenant who spoke good French, some German and no Zulu? ‘May I ask, sir, how I fit into all of this?’

  ‘You may well. I spoke a second ago - perhaps a touch indiscreetly - about a loose cannon. Well, there is a whole battery of loose cannons also out there: Cetswayo and his Zulus. Know anything about them?’

  ‘Very little, I have to confess, sir.’

  ‘Well you should. Any soldier should. Damned fine people. Let me tell you about them.’

  Colonel Lamb returned to his chair, threw a cheroot to Simon and settled back and lit another for himself. ‘At the end of the last century, the Zulus weren’t up to much. They were a small clan - only about fifteen hundred people - living a pastoral life in the Umfolozi Valley in an area of what we now call Zululand only some ten miles square. Then came Shaka. He was probably illegitimate and he had no privileges, although he was undoubtedly the son of a chief. He made his own way and became a fine warrior, allegedly killing a treed leopard when he was a young teenager.’

  The Colonel sucked on his cheroot. He was enjoying the telling of a good story. ‘He eventually became leader of his small clan and began building up the finest army that has ever been seen among the tribes of South Africa - perhaps the whole of Africa. He started with the weapons. He threw away the light throwing spears that he considered just toys and introduced the assegai, a short stabbing spear which became known as the iklwa. Know why?’

  Simon shook his head.

  ‘Because that’s the noise it makes when the blade is twisted in the victim’s body and drawn out. A sort of sucking sound . . . iklwa!’ Lamb savoured the word and chuckled.

  Simon swallowed and put a firm rein on his imagination. The story was too interesting to have it interrupted in any way. He leaned forward, fascinated.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lamb continued, ‘he taught his troops how to hook the bottom of their shields around those of their enemy in personal combat and then, as the body is swung round and left unprotected, to sweep under with the iklwa so . . .’ The little man danced to his feet and demonstrated the movement with his pointer.

  ‘He introduced discipline and unquestioned obedience to orders: the fundamental of success in battle, as you know. He had to chop off a lot of heads along the way and he undoubtedly was a despot, but he knew what he was doing.’ Lamb chortled again. ‘Shaka felt that the leather sandals worn by his warriors impeded movement, so he had them all thrown away. When his men objected, he made ’em dance on thorns.

  ‘He also introduced battle tactics which were revolutionary in their time and are still in use by the Zulus to this day. Look.’ He took a piece of paper from his desk and gestured to Simon to look over his shoulder. He roughly pencilled two rectangular blocks opposing each other.

  ‘Zulu warfare used to consist of two bodies of men facing each other and hurling insults and light throwing spears. Not many casualties. Shaka changed all that. He reasoned that warfare wasn’t sport, it was a means of acquiring power. And to do that you had to kill.’

  Lamb tapped the block on the right. ‘Shaka’s Zulus became a buffalo in battle. This was the chest of the beast, which faced the ene
my in the traditional way. Suddenly, however, it developed horns.’ He drew quickly. ‘The top horns would break out of the main body from the rear, like this, and race quickly behind the enemy, while the bottom horn would do the same in the other direction, so that the enemy was suddenly surrounded and had to fight on all fronts. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But the skill lay in the timing of it and the speed with which it was done. They’re still doing it and it’s easy to be fooled.’

  The Colonel wrinkled his brow in admiration. ‘Shaka was a remarkable man. A complete innovator. He trained his impis - they’re Zulu divisions, or even corps - to move fast over rough country. They can trot for twenty or so miles and then fight a battle. But his most profound move was his complete reorganisation of the army.

  ‘He structured his warriors into separate regiments, usually segregated by age and marital status. Each was separately trained, given names and shield insignia to distinguish them in battle. A remarkable esprit de corps and regimental loyalty was established, with great competition growing between the units.’ The Colonel drew reflectively on his cheroot. ‘Do you know, Fonthill, this savage intuitively established within four years the same regimental system which it had taken sophisticated European military theorists four hundred years to evolve.

  ‘When he died, about fifty years ago - murdered, of course - the Zulus had established complete superiority over all clans within their reach. They had grown to be a nation of some quarter of a million and their territory had expanded from that original hundred square miles to a vast tract, stretching from the Swazi border on the Pongola River in the north to what is now called Central Natal in the south, and from the Drakensburg mountain range in the west to the India Ocean in the east.’

  ‘And now, sir?’

  ‘Now, Fonthill, Shaka’s people have consolidated into a semi-pastoralist, semi-militarist nation, within their own borders. They’ve battled with the Boers over the years and, of course, with neighbouring tribes. But under Cetswayo they’ve been reasonably quiet. People here are a bit undecided about the Zulu king. Some call him a savage who poses a constant threat. Others suspect that he’s a shrewd operator who has accepted the reality of the white man’s presence and wants to find a way to live in peace and retain his independence.’