Zulu people

The Zulu people form the largest ethnic group in South Africa. While Zulus began as members of various Nguni clans, they banded together under the Zulu identity during the colonial period, with Zuluness developing in response to shared experiences of oppression rather than as a geographical designation.

In the mid-seventeenth century, Dutch traders discovered that South Africa could serve as a resting point while traveling the spice route from the Netherlands to the countries of the Far East, and Dutch settlers soon followed. The British were also attracted to the rich resources of the area, and they took over Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1795. The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 increased the likelihood of European exploitation in South Africa. Ultimately, that exploitation led to the enactment of apartheid, in which Zulus and other Bantu-speaking peoples were segregated in all aspects of South African life.

Background

One of the most significant influences on the formation of Zuluness was Shaka kaSenzangakhona (ca. 1787–1828), better known as Shaka Zulu, a military tactician and Zulu king. Born the illegitimate child of Senzangakhona kaJama, an Nguni chief, and Nandi, the orphaned daughter of the chief of a neighboring clan, Shaka Zulu was bullied as a child. He grew up angry after he and his mother were exiled from his father’s clan, and he taught himself stick fighting, ultimately becoming a master spearman. He designed the iklwa, a two-foot long spear with a sword-like tip.

Shaka Zulu became a protégé of Dingiswayo, an Nguni chief who trained him in military strategy. Upon the death of his father in 1816, Shaka, with help from Dingiswayo, amassed a small army and ousted his brother Sigujana, thereby usurping the Zulu throne. Shaka expanded the Zulu Kingdom through military force and became known as a particularly brutal ruler, executing people at will with little to no cause. By the time Shaka Zulu was assassinated in 1828, he had killed thousands of Zulus, including women and children. Yet despite his ignominious death, Shaka Zulu continued to influence Zulu military strategy and the concept of Zuluness.

Overview

On December 16, 1838, a group of 470 Voortrekkers (Dutch settlers) faced off against a Zulu force of almost twenty thousand. The Zulu warriors could not hold out against the guns of the Boers, and some three thousand Zulus were killed. The conflict became known as the Battle of Blood River.

The victorious Boers established the Republic of Natalia, and many Zulu survivors were enslaved. In turn, the British defeated the Boers in May 1842 at the Battle of Khangela, driving them out of Natalia. The British established the colony of Natal in the republic’s place; its northern border was the Thukela River, above which existed Zululand, a sovereign Zulu state ruled by King Mpande. Following the death of Mpande in 1872, his son Cetshwayo kaMpande (ca. 1826–84) ascended to the throne.

In 1877, Sir Bartle Frere (1815–84) was named British high commissioner of South Africa, and he immediately took action to suppress Zulu opposition to British colonial expansion in South Africa. Frere presented the Zulus with an impossible ultimatum designed to push the two sides to war. What followed has come to be known as the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. At the Battle of Isandlwana, a force of twenty thousand Zulus handed the British their most significant defeat. Ultimately, the Zulus were defeated at the Battle of Ulundi, and their king was exiled to Cape Town.

Tensions between the British and the Boers erupted into war the following year. After a meeting with Queen Victoria in 1882, King Cetshwayo was allowed to return to South Africa; however, his kingdom had been partitioned by the British and taken over by rivals in favor with the British. Cetshwayo and his supporters were eventually defeated by his rivals in a series of battles, and he fled to the British Zulu Native Reserve, where he died in 1884.

Also in 1884, Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo (1868–1913), heir to the Zulu throne, gifted a portion of northwestern Zululand to the Boers in return for helping him defeat challengers to royal Zulu authority. The Boers used the land to establish the Nieuwe Republiek, or New Republic, in 1884, and the British officially recognized the new state in 1886 (although it was annexed two years later by the Boer-controlled South African Republic). In 1887, the British annexed part of Zululand in an effort to limit Boer power in the area. Dinuzulu led a rebellion in response, aided by uSuthu, or supporters of the abolished Zulu monarchy, who lived in the New Republic under Boer rule. The rebellion was quashed by August 1888, and Dinuzulu was tried for high treason and exiled to the island of Saint Helena.

The Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899 and lasted until 1902, ending in a British victory. The resulting treaty made the South African Republic (renamed the Transvaal Colony) and the Orange Free State British colonies and eventually led to the establishment of the Union of South Africa.

In 1906, in response to a number of policies imposed by the colonial administration in Natal, the Zulus of the area rebelled in what has come to be known as the Bambatha Rebellion. The aftermath led to passage of series of harsh laws that would form the basis of apartheid, a system in which the white minority of South Africa legally subjugated the black majority. Nevertheless, the Zulus continued to establish legitimacy within South Africa, and after apartheid became official policy following the election of the National Party in 1948, Shaka Zulu became a symbol of antiapartheid resistance, invoked as the “Warrior King of the Zulus.” In 1975, the Inkatha Freedom Party began demanding a sovereign state for the Zulu people, promoting Zulu nationalism as a viable alternative to both apartheid and armed resistance.

The apartheid system began to come apart in 1990 amid increasing international pressure, and it was soon announced that democratic elections would take place in April 1994. That election saw Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) become the first black president of South Africa.

In the early twenty-first century, black Africans make up approximately 79 percent of South Africa’s population. The Zulu language, also called isiZulu, is the most prevalent of the country’s eleven official languages, spoken by nearly one-quarter of South Africans.

Bibliography

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