zululand, howard wayne, south africa

DURBAN, South Africa—In preparation for our trip to South Africa I read Robert Morris’ account of the Anglo-Zulu war, The Washing of the Spears; the “washing” refers to spears being washed in the blood of enemies. Recently our travels took us to Durban, which is the principal city of the province of KwaZulu-Natal. When we checked into our hotel I found that the travel desk could arrange a trip to the battlefields of the Zulu war. From that point on it was only a question of what day I could schedule and the best price I could get.[1]

The story of the Zulus begins with Shaka, who forged tribes together by application of his ruthless military ability. Shaka had two primary innovations, the short stabbing spear and the four-pronged attack. Warriors in the area previously carried one of more throwing spears that were inaccurate at a distance and, once thrown, left the warrior unarmed. Shaka shortened the spear so that it would be used for stabbing at close range, not throwing. Zulus also carried a large shield. In hand-to-hand combat a Zulu would use his shield as an offensive weapon to push his opponent’s shield aside and expose a vulnerable area, then administer a fatal wound with his stabbing spear.

The Zulu attack was modeled on the parts of cattle, cattle being a major part of Zulu life and the means of exchange. The center, or “chest,” of the Zulu army would engage the main body of the enemy. Two “horns” of troops would flank the enemy, one horn from the right and the other from the left. Finally the “loins,” the reserve, would join the battle. The Zulu armies defeated all the tribesmen before them, incorporating their remnants into the Zulu empire. All Zulu men were required to serve long terms in the army before they were allowed to marry. Shaka militarized the peoples in this part of southeastern Africa. Panic over the Zulu advance caused other tribes to flee the region ahead of the Zulu impis. Massive dislocation and depopulation occurred.

Shaka ruled from 1816 to 1828, when he was assassinated by his half-brother, Dingane. It was during Shaka’s rule, in 1824, when British traders settled in Durban which they named Port Natal. Shaka was receptive of them and supposedly gave them a grant of land. Whether there really was a land grant, as we understand that term, is now the subject of dispute, but that is another story. By all accounts Shaka was fascinated by the British and their monarchy.

Dingane warred with the Boers, who were entering his kingdom from the west. Dingane massacred one group of Boers who were meeting with him and who he persuaded to put down their weapons. The Boers retaliated, leading to their victory at the Battle of Blood River in 1838 which I wrote about in a prior report. Dingane was deposed in a civil war and killed.

The threat of Boer expansion – at one point they attacked Durban – led to the British annexing the province of Natal in 1843. The Tugela River became the northern boundary of Natal with Zululand in the coastal region, and the Buffalo River was the boundary further east.

The late nineteenth century was the time of the “Scramble for Africa,” as Europe divided up the continent. The British developed designs on Zululand and in December of 1878 presented the Zulus with an ultimatum they knew the Zulus could not accept. This included disbanding of the Zulu military system which was at the heart of their nation. When the ultimatum expired on January 11, 1879, the British invaded.

I met my guide, Colin King, at 6:15 in the morning. We drove to a lavish beach-side resort, Umhlanga, and met our two traveling companions. We continued northbound, passing fields of sugar cane which is the principal crop of the province. Durban exports a half million tons of sugar a year which is part of the reason it is Africa’s busiest port. Farther north were tracts of commercially grown lumber, and farther yet we crossed a bridge over the Tugela and entered Zululand.[2]

This is a rural area. The farther we went, the more we saw poverty and poorly-maintained roads. Whether because of Zulu culture or the conditions of the land, there was little agriculture other than raising cattle, and not enough of that to support the population. Many people lived from remittances sent by family members working far away, often in the gold mines near Johannesburg. We stopped for tea at Babanango at a small inn run by a white couple who will soon be leaving because the white community is disappearing from the area. As we continued on Colin described the lay of the land of the Battle of Isandlwana, where the Zulus won a great victory.

The British invaded in three prongs with the central prong crossing the Buffalo River at Rorke’s Drift and marching into Zululand at the dizzying pace of one mile per day. Initially the Zulus did not believe the British would go to war. It was not until the British attacked and destroyed a Zulu settlement a short distance from the Buffalo that the Zulu king took it seriously. He assembled the army, directed it not to attack fortified positions or to cross into Natal, and sent some 24,000 warriors to intercept the British. Much more lightly armed than the British, and without wagons to slow them, the Zulus could march 20 miles a day. Amazingly, the British scouts failed to detect the advance of more than 20,000 troops.

Isandlwana is a small mountain which the Zulus claim is in the shape of a cow’s stomach, but to my Western eyes resembles a shoe. The British camped in front of the mountain, but because they considered it only a temporary site they did not fortify the area (such as by placing their wagons in front of the camp as a barrier). To make matters worse, the British divided their forces; with one half under Lord Chelmsford going to the southeast to engage what he thought was the main body of Zulus. On the morning of January 22, 1879, approximately 1800 British troops were camped at the base of Isandlwana.

When they looked up, at about 8 that morning they saw the nightmare of 24,000 Zulus filling the horizon on the nearby heights. The British drew up their forces in front of their tents and engaged the “chest” of the Zulu forces. The British used a single shot rifle, firing and then reloading. The rifle was accurate at up to 1100 yards, and their firing imposed a devastating cost on the Zulus. Meanwhile, the Zulu right horn advanced to go around the mountain to cut off escape. The left horn also advanced, but the British thought it was moving to attack Chelmsford forces, so a cavalry unit left the front line to engage them

It became a matter of numbers and of the ability of the British to keep up a rate of fire. The Zulus continued to advance. One theory is that the British ammunition boxes were secured by screws and there were not enough screwdrivers to get them open fast enough. The result was to retard the British fire into the charging Zulus. When the mounted troops could not stop the advance of the Zulu left wing, the pincer closed and the battle moved into the camp. By 2:30 in the afternoon it was over. The Zulus took no prisoners and killed all those unable to escape, including their horses. The Zulus also sustained heavy losses.

When we arrived it was cold and overcast. There is a small museum a short distance from Isandlwana. There we viewed some displays about the battle and paid the entry fee. We drove through a Zulu village. The houses were either in the traditional bee-hive shape or matchbook dwellings; neither type seemed to have electricity. The children smiled and waved at us. Opportunities are limited in this area and education is difficult to obtain. South Africa imposes school fees on parents and, since there is little cash available, the children’s education is truncated and the cycle of poverty is continued.

We drove to the south side of the mountain, where the British had assembled their wagons in 1879 and which is now a parking lot. We got out of our car and approached piles of whitewashed rocks. There had been no time after the battle to bury the British dead. Between the hot African summer (January is summertime south of the equator) and scavenging animals, there was not much left to bury by May, when troops came to inter the dead. Graves were dug, the remains put in them, and the piles of rocks constructed to mark them. Individuals could not be identified.

Several monuments had been erected by civil groups to commemorate the British dead. More recently, and just inside the battlefield area, a Zulu memorial has been constructed both to mark their losses and to celebrate their victory. There are no words on that monument, just symbols from Zulu culture that require interpretation.

The right horn of the Zulus had not been fully engaged in the battle and the warriors did not have the opportunity to “wash” their spears. They persuaded their leader to let them attack Rorke’s Drift, just across the Buffalo River in Natal – thus violating the king’s instructions.

Rorke’s Drift then consisted of a church and a house that had been converted into a hospital which housed some thirty infirmed men. The British received word of the Zulu advance and used this time to place bags of corn (effectively sandbags) and boxes, piled up to shoulder level, to connect the two structures. To attack the Zulus had to assault a fortified area – a second violation of the king’s instructions.

Rorke’s Drift was defended by about 139 men, including those who were ill. The Zulus had between 3000 and 4000 men. They failed to attack in the pincer manner, but instead threw waves of troops at one side of the fortification, then hours later on another side. The British had firearms and could cut down the advancing Zulus. The attack started at about 6 p.m. on January 22 and continued until nearly 7 a.m. the following morning when the Zulus withdrew. At times combat became hand-to-hand as the Zulus broke into the hospital and the British retreated one room at a time. The building was burned to the ground.

The British held, losing 17 killed, while Zulu dead were at least 500. The British awarded an unusually high 11 Victoria Crosses to participants in the battle. They desperately wanted a victory after the defeat at Isandlwana and wanted to distract public attention from their bungling of that battle.

We drove from Isandlwana across the Buffalo River to Rorke’s Drift, where we toured the gift shop and had lunch in the small café (we were the only people eating there). We then walked to the museum which was built on the site of the hospital. The battle, and particularly the struggle in the hospital, was portrayed in vivid displays.

Outside the perimeters of the sandbag fortifications are shown by lines of rocks embedded in the soil. One could see that the British held the high ground – the Zulus attacked from a field six feet lower than the British position. If they reached the fortification they had to either climb over the bags or try to dismantle them – while being shot at or stabbed with bayonets. As at Isandlwana, there is a monument to the Zulu dead.

By now it was 3:30 and a hundred plus miles of bad roads were between us and Durban. It’s also not a good idea to drive at night on these roads – every day one reads about carnage on South Africa’s roads. We passed through villages that time seemed to have forgotten. They were small, poor, and many dwellings lacked power. They were also all black. The apartheid government had followed a policy of “benign neglect” in Zululand and the current government either lacks the resources, or the will, to improve the life of the rural poor.

Cattle wandered alongside the road. In one village the cattle seemed to own the street and we had to wait for them to cross before we could proceed. We went over narrow mountain roads with only our car’s lighting to guide us.

We did not see the remainder of the battlefields of the Zulu war. After Rorke’s Drift the British withdrew as panic set in that the Zulus would invade Natal. The British brought in re-enforcements and marched on the Zulu capital of Ulundi. The Zulus made a stand outside of their capital, but the British had artillery and Gatling guns – the precursor of machine guns. Zulus armed with stabbing spears could either stand off at a distance and be killed at long range, or charge into the facing of the rapid firing weapons. They did the latter and were mowed down in an attack that must have resembled the final battle scene in The Last Samurai. A similar fate awaited those who went “over the top” in the First World War.

On July 4, 1879, following their victory outside Ulundi, the British burned the Zulu capital. Their king fled, but was eventually hunted down and captured. An independent Zululand was no more.

[1] In the United States we’re used to getting onto large charter buses for regularly scheduled tours. In South Africa the tour is scheduled on demand and is typically in a private car with as few as one passenger. Necessarily, the price varies by the number of passengers on the trip. Because I was initially traveling alone, the tour company wanted to charge me double the standard price for one passenger. Luckily I was joined by a British couple, so the price was quite a bit less. Most of the visitors to the battlefields are British.

[2] During the time of the Union of South Africa Zululand was part of the province of Natal. In the late apartheid period the South African government declared non-contiguous portions of Natal to be a Zulu “homeland,” but this never amounted to more than autonomy. Prior to the 1994 democratic elections the Zulu homeland was re-incorporated into Natal, which was renamed kwaZulu-Natal. It has been a scene of major conflict (both political and violent confrontations) between the African National Congress and the primarily Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, which has strong ties to the Zulu king of the House of Shaka.