The Zulus were in a relaxed mood and sentries failed to notice McKenzie’s approach. Hence, at dawn, the rebels, who perhaps numbered 1,500, found themselves overlooked by soldiers on the surrounding heights. Immediately, the Zulus formed into a circle to receive instructions, whereupon the troops opened fire. In addition to normal weaponry, McKenzie’s force had 15-pounder artillery and Colt machine-guns. Devastation ensued. Zulus were cut down in large numbers as shot and shell tore into them from all sides. Desperately, the survivors dashed into the gorge, which for many was to prove a fatal trap, and for several hours the soldiers added to the death toll. They then descended, and flushed out survivors. Officially, it was said that 600 rebels had been killed and Bambatha was reportedly among the slain, having died in a mêlée with Natal levies at the bottom of the gorge. It was some days before his body was recognised. The head was then cut off and taken to Natal as proof of his demise. (In the 1960s a number of Zulus were to maintain that Bambatha had been among the warriors who had escaped from the gorge).
Although further violence was to occur in Natal, the rebellion was over in Zululand, and in Natal itself, on 11 July, the situation was such that the Colonial Office was informed, ‘Resistance is more or less over, rebels for the most part cowed and in hiding.’
Fatalities had been distinctly one-sided. Whereas around two dozen whites and six loyal blacks had perished in the five months or so of desultory fighting, the number of Zulus who died on either side of the Tugela ran into four figures. A contemporary, James Stuart, put the number at 2,300, while in Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906-8 Disturbances in Natal, Shula Marks estimates that up to 4,000 Africans lost their lives.
One of those singled out for retribution by the authorities was Dinuzulu, who was widely believed in colonial society to have been behind the rising. Consequently, in November 1908 he found himself on trial in Greytown, a prosperous little community to the north of Pietermaritzburg, charged with high treason. He was found not guilty of the bulk of the charges, but guilty of sheltering Bambatha and his family, along with other leading rebels. On 3 March 1909, he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and hauled off to gaol in Pietermaritzburg. He did not serve the entire sentence, for in the following year a member of the Boer commando that had assisted the uSuthu in overthrowing Zibhebhu in 1884 became Prime Minister of the newly constituted Union of South Africa—Britain’s newest dominion. His name was Louis Botha, and he soon ordered Dinuzulu’s release. Nonetheless, Dinuzulu was not allowed to return to his homeland. Instead, he ended his days living comfortably on a farm in the Transvaal. He died on 18 October 1913, while only in his mid forties.
Dinuzulu was the last of the Zulu kings to lead his people into battle. His successors were left to reconcile themselves to white domination, a demoralising and humiliating experience which Dinuzulu himself had been compelled to learn.
8. ‘MZILIKAZI — THE MATABELE HAIL YOU’
‘From all I could learn from friends and foes, he is brave, and in seasons of real danger possesses great deliberation.’ Robert Moffat
Mzilikazi kaMashobane began life in relative obscurity and ended his days as the ruler of one of the most powerful nations in southern Africa, the Ndebele, or, as they are more commonly known, the Matabele. It was the remarkable achievement of a remarkable man.
In several respects, Mzilikazi’s life paralleled that of his most famous African contemporary, Shaka. For one thing, it began in the same area—today’s Zululand or KwaZulu—for in the 1790s Mzilikazi was born into the Khumalo clan, part of the Nguni cultural and linguistic group, whose territory lay in what is now central Zululand.
In about 1800, Mzilikazi’s father, Mashobane, moved north with a subsection of the Khumalos and established his own minor chiefdom beside the Mkuze River in the vicinity of the Ngome Forest and to the west of the Ndwandwe clan. Mzilikazi’s mother was a Ndwandwe, for she was a daughter of their formidable chief, Zwide, though whether she was biologically Zwide’s child is uncertain.
Mzilikazi was his father’s heir, and thus it would have been customary for him to be raised among his mother’s people to avoid potential intrigues at his father’s court, and traditional evidence states that Mzilikazi did go with his mother to live with his maternal grandfather. Mzilikazi therefore grew to manhood in an exciting environment, for under Zwide the Ndwandwe emerged in the opening decades of the nineteenth century as one of the most powerful forces in the region. In about 1810, Zwide drove one of his principal adversaries, Sobhuza of the Ngwane, northwards across the Pongola River, where Sobhuza proceeded to found the Swazi kingdom. Zwide then waged war against Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa, whose territory lay to the southeast of his kingdom and whom he succeeded in killing in 1817.
However, as noted in Chapter 1, Zwide soon found himself confronted by a more formidable opponent, the Zulu chief Shaka, whom Dingiswayo had taken under his wing. Zwide was to clash with Shaka in wars fought in 1818 and 1819, but before doing so he killed Mzilikazi’s father (the circumstances surrounding Mashobane’s death are uncertain) and installed Mzilikazi as a vassal chief in Mashobane’s stead. Mzilikazi’s chiefdom was a small one, no doubt numbering hundreds rather than thousands of people.
Mzilikazi did not stay long in Zwide’s fold. He soon deserted to Shaka, apparently taking his entire chiefdom. The evidence surrounding this event strikes a discordant note, but it seems most likely that after supporting Zwide in the first war, Mzilikazi swopped sides before the decisive campaign that resulted in Zwide having to flee north. Mzilikazi was an ambitious man with an eye to the main chance. Perhaps he saw which way the wind was blowing and threw in his lot with Shaka in a desire to be on the victorious side.
At this date, Shaka was in the early stages of building the Zulu nation by conquering or accepting as allies neighbouring Nguni clans. Mzilikazi and his people were among the latter and were allowed to retain their corporate identity. Apparently, following their flight, they were billeted in the centre of Shaka’s kingdom, but shortly after Zwide’s defeat, Mzilikazi and his followers returned to the homeland they had abandoned.
Mzilikazi’s precise relationship with Shaka is uncertain. It is sometimes maintained that he became one of his closest friends and senior generals. On this point, R. Kent Rasmussen comments:
The idea that Mzilikazi was somehow a great ‘favourite’ of Shaka was being expressed at least as early as the 1860s and it is a popular theme in modern literature . . . . Unfortunately, the claim that Mzilikazi was Shaka’s favourite and that he held an especially high position in the Zulu hierarchy exists without any details to support it.
What is certain is that Mzilikazi and Shaka soon reached the parting of the ways. Things came to a head after Mzilikazi conducted a raid against the territory of a wealthy chief to the north or northwest of Zululand in or about 1821. Mzilikazi returned to his homestead beside the Insikwebezi River with a very large herd of plundered cattle. As Shaka’s subject, he was expected to hand the livestock over to his king, who would customarily have granted many of the cattle back to the Khumalo chief. But Mzilikazi kept almost all the cattle for himself and sent Shaka an insultingly small fraction of the herd.
In response, Shaka reportedly sent several messengers to remind Mzilikazi of his duty. According to a dramatic account of events recorded in the early twentieth century by a Rhodesian Native Commissioner, A. A. Campbell (who used the pseudonym, Mziki), the messengers were first humiliated by Mzilikazi, who plucked the crests from off their heads before declaring:
Messengers, take these words to [Shaka] . . . say that . . . Mzilikazi has no king. In peace he will meet [Shaka] as a brother, and in war he will find in him an enemy whom he cannot and will not despise . . . . Depart! and tell your king it rests with him whether it be peace or war.
Mzilikazi may have hoped that Shaka would simply let him go his own way, and perhaps acted in the way he did out of alarm at increasing centralisation in the Zulu st
ate. If so, he soon learned otherwise. An impi was sent against him and evidently came to blows with the Khumalos somewhere along the lower Insikwebezi, where Mzilikazi and his followers successfully defended a hilltop stronghold. The Khumalos then moved upstream to another defensive position on a hill called Nthumbane. Here, too, they were attacked, for Shaka sent a larger force against Mzilikazi. This apparently occurred weeks or months later, and it has been suggested that the delay was possibly due to many of Shaka’s forces being engaged in campaigns to the south. On this occasion, the Khumalos were overcome and the survivors scattered. They left behind many dead (especially women and elderly men) and their cattle to be rounded up by the victors.
Mzilikazi escaped and proceeded to regroup the survivors. Then, at the head of some 300 followers, most of whom were warriors (the figure is that of Henry Francis Fynn, who arrived in Zululand in 1824), Mzilikazi headed westward into the territory of a chief named Nyoka who lived beside the headwaters of the Mkuze River, about a day’s march from Nthumbane. Mzilikazi attacked Nyoka’s people, seized the chief’s cattle and grain, and soon moved on.
Evidently he did so in a northerly direction, and thus either entered Sobhuza’s territory beyond the Pongola or skirted the western fringes of his domain, for some of Mzilikazi’s followers are said to have deserted to the Swazi.
Mzilikazi then turned west and crossed the Drakensberg Mountains, intent on reaching the interior. He probably crossed somewhere just to the west of the Usutu River and (likely in 1821) came out on the vast expanse to the west of the magnificent mountain range: land occupied by Sotho tribes who were not as warlike as the Khumalos. The first to suffer at his hands were a branch of the Phuthing living on the Vaal-Olifants watershed, whom Mzilikazi scattered. Here the Khumalos stayed for a while, resting and gathering up livestock and provisions, before soon moving on once again.
The Sotho and their world
The Sotho were concentrated in the area stretching southward from the Limpopo River in the north to the Orange, and west from the Drakensberg towards the Kalahari Desert, though the westernmost Sotho are generally known as the Tswana. Their forebears had evidently begun settling in the region centuries earlier, perhaps as early as the beginning of the second millennium AD, and in so doing had mingled with the previous inhabitants.
The Sotho were divided into many chiefdoms, and the office of chief was hereditary. In a number of respects, the Sotho differed from the Nguni. For one thing, although likewise Bantu-speaking, their speech differed markedly from that of the Nguni. Moreover, unlike the exogamous Nguni, they practised cousin marriage, and generally lived in large settlements rather than in the scattered homesteads favoured by the Nguni. Furthermore, although the Sotho were also mixed farmers, cattle featured less prominently in their scheme of things. In addition, in contrast to the Nguni, the Sotho were notable craftsmen—many of their goods were made of metal—and carried on an extensive trade in such objects.
And what of the Sotho militarily? When males reached their late teens, they were assembled with others of their age belonging to the same chiefdom and were circumcised and subjected to a period of hardship and rigorous discipline, initiating them into manhood. In times of war, males who had jointly experienced initiation formed age-regiments that functioned as loosely organised tactical units. Unlike the Nguni, however, Sotho regiments did not wear ornate uniforms. Standard male dress consisted of a knotted breech-hide, although hide cloaks pinned on the right shoulder were sometimes also worn. Headdresses comprised a dense mass of ostrich feathers. Men of rank were also allowed to wear V-shaped gorgets of flattened brass that protected the throat and upper chest, as well as leopard skin cloaks. For protection, warriors carried small hide shields with distinctive projecting wings. The shields were intended to ward off light throwing spears, of which each warrior would normally possess several, and the spears were carried in a leather quiver over the shoulder. Wooden clubs and battleaxes were also sometimes employed.
Mzilikazi’s further movements
From Phuthing territory, Mzilikazi headed north to the middle reaches of the Steelpoort River, where he attacked the Ndzundza people of Chief Magodongo. In origin the Ndzundza were Nguni; their forebears had crossed the Drakensberg generations earlier and had settled among the Sotho with whom they had intermarried and become largely Sothoised.
Magodongo is said to have allied himself with a neighbouring chief of comparable origin, and to have used a stratagem to repel Mzilikazi. According to Matabele tradition, the combined forces of the allied chiefs:
came out to give . . . battle, driving before them a large herd of white cattle, so that they might conceal themselves among the dust it raised . . . [Mzilikazi] discerning the purpose for which they came, sent ahead a posse clattering their shields, which frightened back the cattle to their owners. In the stampede we charged them home, inflicting serious loss. We then marched on to the kraals, which we found deserted. Of cattle, sheep, and goats, there were plenty and we took them for ourselves. The grain, too, in much abundance was taken to supply our wants.
Ndzundza traditions record that Magodongo was killed and that the tribe lost all its property. Mzilikazi is claimed to have established a homestead called ekuPumuleni shortly after his arrival in the Transvaal, and is usually said to have done so in the territory of his first victims, the Phuthing. But Rasmussen has argued cogently that the settlement was most probably founded in Magodongo’s former territory. If so, Mzilikazi evidently did not stay long in the area—he probably moved on in 1822—and drought was likely one of the contributory factors.
He headed north again, having added some of the defeated to his following, and soon entered the territory of the Pedi, a Sotho people who had just been weakened by factionalism. Mzilikazi first attacked a newly established Pedi state northeast of the middle Steelpoort. He killed the chief and many of his followers before pursuing most of the survivors northwest into the Pedi heartland, where he virtually eliminated the royal family and, in a series of engagements with localised groups, made himself master of Pediland. The occupation of Pediland is said to have lasted about a year and during this period some of the Pedi were incorporated into Mzilikazi’s following, albeit as second-class citizens (as was probably the case with the earlier such recruits), and were evidently encouraged to learn to speak Zulu and to adopt northern Nguni customs.
It has been frequently asserted that far from conquering the Pedi in about 1822, Mzilikazi was actually defeated, and only succeeded in overcoming them several years later after adventures conducted elsewhere. This view originated among French missionaries and is sometimes said to have been supported by Matabele tradition. But this is not the case, for the information in question was actually derived from non-Matabele sources.
From Pediland, Mzilikazi is normally held to have headed west towards modern Pretoria. He certainly did settle in that region, but only after first moving southwest towards the middle reaches of the Vaal River—a fact alluded to by A.A. Campbell and more recently clarified by Rasmussen. Another Sotho group, the Khudu, was living in the region and upon Mzilikazi’s approach many of them fled, although some remained and offered allegiance to the Nguni warlord. Mzilikazi’s followers settled on both sides of the Vaal—where they were to stay for several years—and soon recommenced raiding, mainly, it seems, against Sotho peoples to the west, many of whom fled while other survivors were probably made captive by the warriors sent against them.
This was not a happy period for the Sotho in general. Those living south of the Vaal—in an area stretching southward to the Maluti Mountains—had already suffered at the hands of Nguni groups such as the Hlubi who had recently fled into the interior; and, as we have seen, Mzilikazi and his potent little war-machine had wreaked further mayhem and disruption north of the Vaal. Many Sotho perished. Others, their crops destroyed, their livestock seized, resorted to cannibalism.
The beginnings of the Matabele nation
Mzilikazi, as noted, fled Zululand with a small number of adherents and subsequently augmented this with Sotho and semi-Sotho peoples. A.T. Bryant has thus commented that Mzilikazi’s following became ‘a profoundly Sutuised community, not in name alone, but in numbers, habits, language and blood, for many of its men were Sutu captives, and practically all its females.’
That the Nguni element was outnumbered is clear. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that it was stronger than Bryant supposed. On this point, Rasmussen comments:
The modern Ndebele count more than sixty distinct names of clans whose members trace patrilineal descent back to the coastal Nguni. Since Mzilikazi appears to have left Zululand in the company only of members of his own Khumalo clan, the other Nguni clan names were all introduced subsequently . . . . The research of A.J.B. Hughes suggests that none of these new clan names was freshly created within Ndebele society, so their origins must lie in . . . bands of refugees who joined Mzilikazi. Such evidence as exists on this subject further suggests that most of the Nguni refugees who joined Mzilikazi did so during the troubled 1820s.
Some of the refugees in question joined Mzilikazi after also fleeing from Zululand—among them were more Khumalos. Furthermore early in the twentieth century, an ethnologist named George Stow declared that according to native authority, Mzilikazi expressly recruited Nguni adherents from Zululand by sending envoys on secret missions to woo warriors to his side.
Additionally, Mzilikazi was joined by Nguni who had preceded the Khumalos into the interior, namely the Hlubi. They had fled on to the highveld in about 1818 after being expelled from their territory by another Nguni group, members of the Ngwane people, who in turn followed them into the interior to escape from Shaka. In about March 1825, the two groups clashed in an epic battle on the west bank of the Caledon River and the Hlubi were soundly defeated. Some of the survivors were subsequently captured by Mzilikazi’s warriors and taken under his wing, although admittedly most of them forsook him within a couple of years. Moreover, the Nguni element among the nascent Matabele nation—as Mzilikazi’s people were to become known—was strengthened in late 1826 or early 1827 when Mzilikazi was joined by Ndwandwe refugees whose chief Sikhunyana, Zwide’s son, had been defeated by Shaka. As Bryant himself comments: ‘Mzilikazi reaped a rich harvest in this final break-up of the Ndwandwe clan, for large numbers of its men and women, knowing nowhere else to go, betook themselves to him and added considerable strength to his ever-growing tribe.’ Then, again, following the defeat of Matiwane and the Ngwane in 1828 (see chapter 1), Mzilikazi was joined by some of the survivors.
The Zulus and Matabele: Warrior Nations Page 20