In addition to a distinctive shield, each of Shaka’s regiment had its own uniform. These consisted of furs, cows’ tails and bird feathers. Initially, the raw materials were found within Zululand itself but as the army grew, the kingdom’s wildlife was insufficient to meet the demand and so pelts and feathers were obtained from elsewhere, either as tribute or through trade, most notably from Tsonga groups bordering Zululand’s north-eastern boundary.
The ends of cows’ tails were worn suspended from thongs around the elbows and the knees, and sometimes at the wrists and ankles as well. Fynn comments that some warriors also wore ‘a dress of oxtails over the shoulders and chest’ (certainly at a later date, and perhaps in Shaka’s time as well, cows’ tails sometimes hung in bunches that reached to the waist in front and the knees behind), while other warriors sported on their chests the skins of monkeys and genets cut into strips and twisted to resemble tails. Around the waist, the warriors wore kilts of twisted monkey and genet skins reaching to about the knees.
Splendid headdresses were also worn. The basis of the headdress was a padded band of animal skin, usually leopard skin in the case of junior regiments whereas those of senior regiments were made from the skins of otters. Square or oblong earflaps, normally of samango monkey skin, but sometimes of leopard skin, were attached to the headband and hung down to the jawline. Furthermore, some regiments also had flaps hanging from the back of the head and reaching down to the shoulders. In addition, each regiment wore distinctive plumes fixed to the headband. Young regiments, for instance, usually sported the long black tail feathers of the sakabuli bird, while blue crane feathers were worn by married amabutho. Moreover, small bunches of the scarlet feathers of the lourie bird were given as a reward to individual warriors who had distinguished themselves for bravery, as were a brass armband for the right forearm and a necklace of interlocking wooden beads.
When Shaka summoned the army for a campaign, the regiments rapidly made their way to the capital. Once assembled, they underwent various ceremonies (including ritual vomiting) aimed at binding them together and rendering them invulnerable both to enemy weapons and supernatural attempts to subject them to misfortune. A key feature of the preparations was the giya, in which distinguished warriors (or regiments) were called upon to dance in an aggressive manner in front of their colleagues. James Stuart was told that the giya was intended ‘to sharpen the heroes.’ A warrior singled out for such an honour ‘would remember his praises when the battle was on, feeling he would be worthless if he did not fight fiercely.’
The army would then set off in a column, but would divide in two when nearing the enemy. Henry Fynn witnessed Shaka’s warriors moving off against the Ndwandwe in 1826 and observed:
Every man was ordered to roll up his shield and carry it on his back—a custom observed only when the enemy is known to be at a considerable distance. In the rear of the regiments were the baggage boys, few above the age of 12, and some not more than six. These boys were attached to the chiefs and principal men, carrying their mats, headrests, tobacco, etc., and driving cattle required for the army’s consumption. Some of the chiefs, moreover, were accompanied by girls carrying beer, corn and milk; and when their supply had been exhausted these carriers returned to their homes.
Then, as was customary, the impi had to resort to foraging.
The Zulu army was extremely mobile in comparison with its European counterparts. Although the figure has sometimes been wildly exaggerated, it could cover over twenty miles in a single day without undue effort, and maintain such a pace for days. This testifies to the warriors’ stamina, bearing in mind the often rugged nature of the terrain over which they moved.
As the impi advanced, it was screened by scouts well to the fore, charged with the task of reporting enemy movements. Moreover, between the scouts and the main body of the army was an advance guard, consisting of warriors from each regiment sent forward with the aim of fooling adversaries into the belief that this represented the principal Zulu force.
If circumstances permitted, when near an enemy force, the army would draw into a circle where the warriors were given their orders and sprinkled, for the final time, with more medicine by the war-doctors.
Once battle had been joined—the preferred time for an attack was dawn—the senior commanders would normally watch unfolding events from high ground. They would issue fresh instructions by runner or through hand signals, but the degree of control they could exercise after the warriors had been committed was inevitably limited.
The favourite attack formation was an encircling movement known as the ‘beast’s horns’, comprising a centre, flanking units and a reserve. The centre or ‘chest’ consisted of veteran regiments which would advance to engage the enemy, while on the flanks the ‘horns’, comprising younger warriors, would dash forward with the aim of surrounding their opponents. The reserve, or ‘loins’, stayed to the rear to enter the fray when and where required. Shaka is credited with inventing the ‘beast’s horns’ tactic, but this is not certain. On this point, Knight comments: ‘The best that can be said with certainty is that the impondo zankomo emerged early in the kingdom’s history, and quite possibly under Shaka’ and ‘was undoubtedly in vogue in the 1830s’ during the reign of his successor.
If, as so often proved the case, the battle ended in victory, the Zulus disembowelled the bodies of slain opponents. It was believed that the spirit of the deceased was in his stomach: if not released, it would wreak havoc on the warrior responsible, sooner or later driving him to insanity.
At the end of a campaign the army returned to the principal royal homestead. Here warriors who had distinguished themselves were singled out for commendation and rewards. But others, accused of cowardice, were executed. For example, a man who had lost his spear or had been wounded in the back could expect such a fate. Mtshapi kaNoradu (the son of one of Shaka’s warriors and one of James Stuart’s sources), relates the general opinion of a coward’s fate: ‘Shaka used to order that a person should be seized, and his arm lifted up; he would then say, “Give him a taste of the assegai [spear], the thing that he fears so much.” He would then be stabbed as if he were a goat, and killed.’
By the mid 1820s, when Shaka’s power was at its height and men more numerous than hitherto, warriors are said to have sometimes been despatched in such a manner purely at random, having been selected from among their fellows with the intention of reminding the army that it was always expected to fight courageously.
The strength of the Zulu army in Shaka’s day is uncertain. Its size has sometimes been put at about 50,000 men. Even higher figures have been suggested. None are credible. Shaka’s army was undoubtedly much smaller, and modern estimates, based on probable population levels, place its strength in 1824 at approximately 15,000.
Contact with Europeans
According to Henry Francis Fynn, as noted above, by 1824 much of Natal was entirely depopulated. Early in that year, Fynn was resident at Cape Town, a settlement located on a peninsula at the southwest tip of Africa. The community had originated as a revictualling station founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 and had been taken over by the British in 1806. Here, Fynn heard rumours that a powerful and very wealthy black kingdom existed far to the north. Native refugees fleeing the mfecane brought such information, as did some Europeans. One of the latter was a merchant called John Robert Thompson who had arrived at Cape Town in 1822 after returning from a venture to the long-established but nondescript Portuguese trading settlement at Delagoa Bay. Thompson talked of ‘a formidable tribe’ which had recently risen from obscurity to a position of supremacy under its chief, ‘Chaka’, who had ‘established a barbaric kingdom of large extent’ governed through ‘military despotism.’
Although some who heard these tales viewed them as of no great consequence, Fynn was not one of them. Neither was an ex-Royal Navy lieutenant, Francis George Farewell. Excited and intrigued by what he heard, Farewell
decided that money could be made by opening up contact with Shaka. Hence in 1823 he chartered two vessels and sailed up the coast. In the event, no such contact was made. However, Farewell did come across a suitable location for a rival port to Delagoa—the site of present-day Durban.
Therefore, after returning to Cape Town, he began planning to establish an alternative port that would draw away the ivory trade from Delagoa Bay, to which the Zulus carried tusks of elephant and hippopotamus. Fynn was one of those who consented to participate in the venture. It has recently been argued that Farewell and his colleagues were motivated by a desire to engage in the slave trade, but this view is unconvincing.
In May 1824, a small advance party—which did not include Farewell— arrived off the coast of Natal. The group was led by Fynn, whose ‘Diary’ records that they entered a beautiful bay (known to the Portuguese as Rio de Natal), largely enclosed by jaws of land and overlooked by territory that was home to abundant game.
Fynn came ashore with three companions and spent what proved a stormy night encamped on sand dunes, harassed by hyenas. He soon made contact with a native called Mahamba, whose people had been devastated by the Zulus, and who told him that Shaka lived well to the north.
Fynn thus set off up the beach in search of Shaka’s residence—which he believed to be much closer—accompanied by Mahamba and two black servants, one of whom was an interpreter. After walking about twelve miles, Fynn sat down and ordered coffee. It was while the kettle was coming to the boil that Fynn, as mentioned earlier, beheld an awesome spectacle: ‘I saw on my right a dense mass of people coming fast from the direction I had come. My view extended over several miles of the beach, but I could not see the rear of this immense black and continuous mass of natives, all armed and in their war-dresses.’
As Fynn later discovered, the warriors were part of a tired Zulu army heading home, after having conducted a raid against the Pondo kingdom south of the Mthamvuna River. Mahamba immediately took to his heels, and was soon followed into the bush by the servants. But Fynn stood his ground and communicated as best he could with the surprised Zulu commanders.
The existence of Europeans was of course not unknown to the Zulus, partly owing to their trade with the Portuguese, and they referred to whites as ‘the makers of wonders.’ They also used an older expression, abeLungu, which referred to whites as pale and bedraggled sea creatures, for over the years European survivors of shipwrecks had occasionally come ashore along the coast and were viewed as strange inhabitants of the ocean who sometimes abandoned their watery home.
After deliberating among themselves, the Zulu commanders pressed on. Fynn watched the army pass, and the warriors looked at him in amazement as they did so.
The next day, Fynn, accompanied by his two servants, followed in their wake and reached a homestead on the fringe of Shaka’s domain. Hearing, however, that the king was not prepared to see him, he returned to the port, where Farewell and the rest of his party had just landed.
Word then arrived that Shaka was ready to receive Fynn and his companions. Escorted by about a hundred of Shaka’s warriors, a small group, including Farewell and Fynn, therefore set off to see the king. Progress was slow, but after several days they reached a ridge from which Bulawayo could be seen.
Farewell and Fynn were the first to enter the royal homestead where, according to the latter, much of the Zulu nation, including some 12,000 warriors, had assembled to meet them. They were welcomed with an impressive display of military bravado, dancing, and exhibitions of cattle assorted by colour. ‘It was a most exciting scene,’ states Fynn, ‘surprising to us, who could not have imagined that a nation termed “savages” could be so disciplined and kept in order.’ Shaka asked whether his guests had ever seen a land as well ordered as his own and proudly declared that ‘he was the greatest king in existence, that his people were as numerous as the stars, and that his cattle were innumerable.’
Shaka had recently heard news of the outside world from an interesting character named Jakot, who had arrived at his court in 1823. Jakot had, for example, told the king about the conflict between his own people, the Xhosa, and invading Dutch settlers, hostilities waged to the south of the Pondo kingdom and thus well beyond Shaka’s sphere of influence. Now, through Jakot—who had learnt some English through previous contact with Britons—Shaka questioned his guests. Among other things, he wished to know if the British monarch, George IV, was as great a king as himself.
In late July, Farewell left to return to the bay, but at Shaka’s request Fynn and a servant remained behind. In further conversation, Shaka told his guest that he believed Zulu weaponry to be superior to firearms, for the effectiveness of guns was reduced by the time it took to reload, thereby enabling his warriors to reach and overwhelm potential white opponents.
Of Shaka’s attitude during such private conversations, Fynn wrote:
In the presence of his people he placed the worst construction on everything, ridiculing all our manners and customs, though in perfect good humour [but when] none of his subjects were present he would listen with the greatest attention and could not help acknowledging our superiority. He, however, took exception to our method of imprisoning criminals, regarding it as the most horrid pain man could endure. If one were guilty why not punish the deed with death?
Within days of Farewell’s departure, Fynn featured in a dramatic incident—the aftermath of an attempt to kill Shaka. The identity of the would-be assassins is uncertain. They were presumed to be either dissident Qwabe, or Ndwandwe sent by Zwide. On the other hand, the assassination plot perhaps emanated from within the Zulu royal house itself. They struck during a dance, and a spear was plunged through Shaka’s arm and into his side. Hysteria erupted. The king was taken to a hut in a homestead near Bulawayo where he benefited from the ministration of a Zulu medicine man and from the attention of Fynn, who had a rudimentary knowledge of medical matters. The Englishman bathed the wound with camomile tea and bandaged it with linen. Medicines already promised by Farewell then arrived and were employed by Fynn. Even so, for four days the atmosphere was tense—Shaka’s life hung in the balance. His condition then began to improve and he was soon sufficiently recovered to appear in public.
In early August Farewell reappeared, having received word of the assassination attempt. Shaka evidently believed that his recovery was due to magical powers enjoyed by Fynn, and thus, sensing that an opportune time had come to stake his claim, Farewell presented Shaka with a written petition begging for land. His hopes were rewarded. On 7 August, the king responded by making his mark on the document, thereby, as far as the whites were concerned, ceding to them the bay where they had landed and some 3,500 square miles of the surrounding countryside as well.
Following Shaka’s recovery, Fynn returned to the bay with his colleagues and, on 27 August, ran up the Union Flag (Union Jack) and named the nascent settlement there Port Natal. Farewell and his companions began to live in the manner of local chiefs, and in some cases married native women. They gathered supporters, refugees from Shaka’s wars whom they judged according to African law, and amassed herds of cattle and stocks of ivory at their respective homesteads.
For his part, after the attempt on his life, Shaka moved his capital, Bulawayo, from beside the White Mfolozi in the Zulu heartland south to a ridge enjoying a commanding view of the Mhlatuze Valley. Here an impressive new homestead was constructed, with an outer palisade nearly two miles in circumference and enclosing some 1,500 huts. The new Bulawayo, sometimes referred to as Gibixhegu, was in Qwabe country and the move was no doubt partly intended by Shaka as a means of more effectively stamping out dissent among the Qwabe.
Shaka moves against Sikhunyana
In return for permission to settle in and around Port Natal, the Zulu king expected the whites to serve him when called upon to do so. To him they were merely subordinate chiefs subject to his will, and not, as they saw themselves, independent masters of thei
r own destiny. Consequently, in 1826 they were called upon to join the king’s army for a campaign against the Ndwandwe, whose ruler, Sikhunyana, had recently succeeded his father, Shaka’s old adversary, Zwide. Despite the events of 1819, the Ndwandwe were still a potent force and had raided the northern regions of Shaka’s domain. Hence he was determined to deal with Sikhunyana, encouraged by the defection to his side of a number of dissident Ndwandwe.
According to Fynn, and another member of the Port Natal community, Nathaniel Isaacs, who had arrived the previous year as a youth of 17, the Europeans were reluctant to comply with Shaka’s summons but deemed it wise to do so when the king informed them that he could destroy them with impunity.
The army that gathered was undoubtedly one of the largest Shaka ever assembled, and he led it in person. Fynn states that ‘the whole body of men, boys and women, amounted as nearly as we could reckon, to 50,000’, a figure that is generally, and no doubt correctly, believed to be a gross over-estimate.
The Zulus and their white colleagues moved north at a leisurely pace and, after crossing the Pongola, came across the enemy deployed on a slope in the wooded country of the Dololwane Hills. Fynn (who was to watch the battle from a suitable vantage point) says that the Zulus approached ‘with much caution ... till within twenty yards of the enemy.’ Jakot, the Xhosa interpreter, then fired three shots, whereupon ‘both parties, with a tumultuous yell, clashed together, and continued stabbing each other for about three minutes’ before falling back. A brief lull followed. Then, seeing that ‘their losses were about equal’, they closed again and a more prolonged clash occurred. Both sides then disengaged for the second time, with the Zulus having had the better of the contest. Emboldened by this, Shaka’s warriors charged once more and the Ndwandwe lines began to collapse. According to a Zulu source, at one point in the carnage Zulu killed Zulu when warriors came face to face after encircling and killing Ndwandwe in their path.
The Zulus and Matabele: Warrior Nations Page 3