How Shaka Zulu Changed the World How Shaka Zulu Changed the World By Heather Whipps | July 14, 2008 12:19pm ET MORE Spearheads buried near the python stone carving were particularly beautiful and were brought from hundreds of miles away. They have been dated to at least 70,000 years ago. Credit: Sheila Coulson Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today. He was both a brutal warrior and a symbol of African unity, inviting comparisons to the bloodthirsty but brilliant military leaders of ancient Sparta. Shaka Zulu may be a polarizing figure, but he's one who forever left a mark on the history of the region. The famed 19th-century leader of South Africa's Zulus brought tribal factions together for the first time, creating both a state and a powerful sense of identity for the region's largest group — a common culture that remains today. His militaristic actions also caused a rippling effect throughout Africa, forever disturbing the balance of power.

Warriors trained and regrouped for conquest Southern Africa was inhabited by a number of groups in the late 18th century, from the native Xhosa and Zulu to the Boers and the British, who'd recently acquired the Cape area for their crown. Each group had its own interests, which resulted in many battles over territory and resources. The Zulu people — who numbered in the tens of thousands — were concentrated in the southeastern portion of what would become the country of South Africa. They shared a culture, but remained a disorganized cluster of clans without a common leader until a vicious warrior united them. In 1816, Shaka Zulu took power of his Zulus after distinguishing himself in battle, both physically and strategically, and began a campaign of conquest to unite all of the clans in the region under his rule. Shaka began with a systematic reorganization of Zulu warriors, implementing a rigid training program, new blade weaponry that replaced the traditional spear, new attack formations and a strict code of obedience. Zulu society — much like Sparta — was entirely restructured to support the army.

In just a couple of years, his army had brutally executed, displaced or assimilated a vast territory with more than 200,000 inhabitants who became his subjects. Despite its violent methodology, his clan had formed one united nation — the biggest and most powerful in southern Africa. Shaka's campaigns part of a larger chaos An increasingly cruel and paranoid Shaka Zulu was assassinated in 1828, but that didn't mark the end of his effects on the history of southern Africa. Besides creating a political entity in the Zulu Kingdom, Shaka's military campaigns caused the massive displacement of people, a crisis that became part of a decades-long period of turmoil historians call the Mfecane (or the "scattering"). From the 1820s to the 1840s, those who weren’t killed or assimilated by the encroaching Zulu warriors fled, leading to a refugee crisis and reshuffling of South Africa's traditional settlements. Many groups banded together for security, forming new communities. The tiny nations of Lesotho and Swaziland, both almost wholly enveloped by South Africa, were birthed by tribes escaping the chaos.

Existing famines also worsened during the Mfecane, leading to the origin of a few cheap jokes about European missionaries being cooked up in big, bubbling pots. Cannibalism either didn't happen or occurred very infrequently during this time, historians say, but all the hostility present during the Mfecane caused rumors to spread like wildfire and be reported as fact by Europeans. Editor's Recommendations 6/12/2006 • Military History At the same time that Napoleon Bonaparte was conquering much of Europe, there arose in the eastern provinces of South Africa a black warrior and empire builder who, in his own world, was to become even more famous than the French emperor. By sheer strength of character and visionary ideas, Shaka molded a tiny band of loyal fighters into a conquering army that built the first Zulu nation. Not only did he introduce new tactics that proved devastating on the battlefield, but he also pursued total warfare on a scale just short of genocide, depopulating vast regions in the process. In the late 18th century, the Zulus were an obscure Nguni tribe of some 1,500 people, ruled by a petty chief named Senzangakhona.

In either 1786 or 1787, he met Nandi, a woman of the eLangeni tribe, while traveling and the two engaged in the Nguni institution of uku-hlobonga, designed to release sexual tension among the young without conception resulting. However, both partners broke the rules. Once it was discovered that Nandi was pregnant, a messenger was dispatched, bearing a formal indictment against the young Zulu chief. He replied insultingly that the pregnancy no doubt was false and due to iShaka, an intestinal parasite known to cause menstrual irregularity. Some months later, the eLangeni elders requested Senzangakhona to come and collect his woman and her ‘iShaka,’ which he reluctantly did. A corruption of the intestinal parasite’s name became the less-than-flattering name Senzangakhona gave to his newborn son-Shaka. At the age of 6, Shaka began to care for his father’s sheep with the other herd boys. When he allowed a dog to kill one of the flock, his father became angry, his mother defended him and Senzangakhona dismissed them both from his kraal.

Nandi and Shaka spent miserable years wandering from one kraal to another, pursued by derision and abuse. Around 1803, Nandi and her son finally found a haven in a kraal close to the center of the dominant power group in the region-the Mthethwa hegemony. Because of his intelligence, drive and unconquerable spirit, 16-year-old Shaka became the senior herd boy. Once the young man even stood his ground and single-handedly killed a leopard attacking the herd, earning praise and a cow from the king. King Dingiswayo came to the Mthethwa throne and by diplomacy and warfare built up a federation of more than 50 tribes. He introduced the practice of organizing youths into military regiments, called amabutho, based on their age groups, which others soon emulated. The fierce competition among the cattle-herding Ngunis for the scarce grazing land was drastically changing the nature of warfare from a quasi-recreational pastime to a serious struggle for survival.

When King Dingiswayo called up Shaka’s age group to form the Izi-cwe (‘Bushmen’) regiment, the 21-year-old recruit stood 6 feet, 3 inches, with a body that seemed to be all muscle, sinew and bone. He was issued an oval shield, 5 feet 9 inches high and 3 feet wide, and three light throwing spears, or assegais. His uniform consisted of white oxtails at the wrists and ankles, a kilt of fur strips, a skin cape with black widow-bird plumes and cowhide sandals. An intertribal battle at that time normally consisted of two armed bodies of warriors facing each other at 40 and 50 yards, with each side casting their light spears at the other and returning those already hurled, until one side had enough and fled. If pursued, the retreating warriors had only to drop their weapons to the ground, signifying surrender, and their lives would be spared. To Shaka, hurling the light spear at a distant foe, usually without any effect, seemed stupid, since the opponent merely picked up the thrown assegai and threw it back.

He soon began to close with the enemy instead of standing off from him. Parrying his opponent’s thrown spear with his shield, he would charge forward, hook the enemy’s shield aside with his own, and stab him to death with his assegai. Declaring that his cowhide sandals hampered his movements, he discarded them. The whole regiment soon became aware of the young warrior’s skill in combat, and Shaka began leading the victory dance. Finding the light throwing spear dangerously fragile when used as a striking or thrusting weapon, Shaka used the time between campaigns to design a single, massive-bladed assegai with a stout, short handle. Called aniklwa, in reference to the sound it made when it was plunged into and pulled from the victim’s body, it later became the primary Zulu weapon and was used to cut a bloody swath through half a continent. He first used it in the 1810 campaigns, when he was 23 years old. Later, King Dingiswayo and his army found the Butelezi tribe drawn up in battle formation on a ridge, with their cattle behind them and, farther back, their women and children.

When the king’s herald demanded the enemy’s surrender, a famous Butelezi warrior issued a challenge, which Shaka accepted. After a quick victory with his new iklwa and close-in tactics, Shaka strode toward the Butelezi army, followed first by his friends, then his unit and finally the entire Izi-cwe regiment. That unexpected surge caused the Butelezis to break and flee among their cattle for protection. The Butelezis admitted defeat, accepted Dingiswayo’s suzerainty and paid a compensation in cattle. The king rewarded Shaka with 10 head of cattle and promoted him to the command of 100 warriors. After subduing three more tribes, Dingiswayo headed home. Back at the military kraal, Shaka began shaping his 100-man command into an effective fighting machine. The young commander divided his men into three separate bodies. The largest was the central compact one, with two smaller ones on each flank. Shaka’s tactical genius brought about the deployment of two enveloping ‘horns’ (flanking forces) from the ‘head’ (main body) and supported behind by the ‘loins’ (reserve force).

It was later destined to become the well-known and traditional Zulu ‘buffalo’ battle formation. Shaka and his 100 men performed so outstandingly in combat that the king appointed him as regimental commander. After Shaka had trained the Izi-cwe in his innovative fighting, Dingiswayo moved against Zwide, the chief of the powerful Ndwandwe tribe. The Mthethwas found Zwide’s army on a steep ridge, with a 500-strong allied contingent rushing to link up with it. Shaka and his Izi-cwe regiment raced to cut off the allied warriors, wheeled and struck them head-on with a furious attack. As Shaka had hoped, many of the Ndwandwe warriors now streamed off the ridge to aid their allies and catch the Izi-cwe regiment in a pincer movement. After putting the allies to rout, Shaka turned to face and hold the Ndwandwes from the ridge until his army arrived. He then ordered his right flank to extend and surround them.

Before all of Chief Zwide’s army could join the battle, it had already been won by Shaka’s tactics, which had transformed a traditional set-piece battle into one of movement, permitting the defeat of the enemy in detail. Shaka’s reward was a generous share of the captured cattle, which he gave to his men. King Dingiswayo also appointed Shaka as his commander in chief and maneuvered a reconciliation with his estranged father, Senzangakhona, who promised to make Shaka his heir. Before Shaka’s father died in 1816, his eighth wife persuaded him to appoint her son as his successor instead of Shaka. When the new Zulu chieftain was assassinated shortly thereafter, King Dingiswayo told Shaka to assume the Zulu throne and gave him a regiment to enforce that decision. Shaka’s new domain consisted of about 100 square miles, and he could reach any point of his frontier in less than a hour from his centralized royal kraal. Those Zulus who had slighted his mother or him in the past he condemned to death by clubbing, spearing, head-twisting or impaling.

The new Zulu ruler called up every subject capable of bearing arms and formed them into regiments. He selected a regiment of 20-year-old youths to garrison his newly built kraal of 100 huts, named Bulawayo. Shaka quickly shaped his army of 500 warriors into an effective fighting force. Each day he visited the military kraals, chastised any violator of his rules and strove to instill a sense of special Zulu pride. The new chief forced them to abandon their cowhide sandals and throwing spears and adopt his revolutionary method of close-in fighting with the short, thick-bladed iklwa. Shaka’s first independent campaign was against the eLangeni, his mother’s tribe. After a march of 25 miles, his warriors surrounded the capital kraal under the cover of darkness and obtained a surrender without a fight. Once again, his judgment seat dealt out punishment for any who had done evil against his mother or himself, with the more hideous forms of execution used for those who had insulted his mother. This conquest doubled his number of spear-wielding warriors.

Shaka next declared war on the Butelezi tribe, and both armies formed their battle lines about 100 yards apart at the appointed time and place. The Butelezi had come in the usual manner, with their women and ample supplies of beer trailing behind to celebrate their expected victory. Their 600-strong army formed up in five lines about 200 yards long, with their leader seated comfortably in the shade of a tree on a hill far behind his warriors, as had long been the practice for most African chiefs. Personally leading his 750-strong army, Shaka placed his best 300 warriors in the center as the army’s head, with a regiment behind as the loins and half of another regiment on each flank as the horns. The Zulu center advanced to within 60 yards of the foe, then charged. The surprised Butelezis did not even have time to throw their spears before the Zulus were among them, stabbing with the fatal ‘left hook’ method. The Butelezi army panicked and fled, but the Zulus, their iklwas delivering deadly blows, stayed on their heels.

The encircling horns, meanwhile, had closed in on the women spectators also, and soon even the last screaming woman had been dispatched. The Zulus had suffered only a few casualties. Those wounded beyond help were put out of their misery with a single, merciful spear thrust. Shaka then sent his warriors throughout the land to gather all the women, children and cattle, slay all the useless people and burn every hut. With that campaign, Shaka introduced a new type of warfare to southern Africa-one of total annihilation. Early in 1818, Chief Zwide killed the husband of Dingiswayo’s sister, and the incensed king quickly marched his army toward the land of the Ndwandwes, ordering Shaka to do likewise. The king reached the enemy kraal and, while waiting for Shaka, let himself be tricked into captivity. When Chief Zwide cut off his head, the leaderless Mthethwa army fled. The onrushing Shaka and his now hopelessly outnumbered army avoided falling into a trap only through a warning from a friendly chief.

The entire Izi-cwe regiment now flocked to Shaka’s standard, as did many individual Mthethwas, bring his total fighting force close to 5,000. After eliminating other tribes and forming additional alliances, Chief Zwide decided to remove the Zulu threat. He placed one of his sons, Nomahlanjana, in command of 10,000 warriors and sent them marching on the Zulu capital. The Ndwandwe army reached the northernmost border of Zululand, the White Umfolozi River, in early April 1818. To contest that invasion, Shaka had less than 4,000 warriors, because a sizable bodyguard had to be detached to guard the women, children and cattle evacuated southward into the forest. He had placed Zulu warriors at the few fords where the rain-swollen river could be crossed, and his main force on the top of Qokli Hill, just south of the river. Shaka positioned his regiments in a complete circle, five lines deep. He concealed his reserve on the central plateau, where ample supplies of water, food and firewood had been stored.

No water existed for some distance from Qokli Hill. He made his stand on the hill because there were no natural obstacles on the plain on which to anchor his flanks. As a last resort, he planned to form his warriors into a solid phalanx and burst through the encircling enemy to seek refuge in the forest to the south. Basically, the Zulu commander had adopted a circular version of the famous British hollow square tactics that Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, had used to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Shaka planned to fight defensively only until the Ndwandwes made a mistake, then launch his counterattack. After reaching the fords, Nomahlanjana tried to force a passage but failed. By nightfall, the receding waters permitted crossings anywhere, and reinforcements swelled Nomahlanjana’s ranks to more than three times the Zulu numbers. With daybreak, the Ndwandwes poured across the White Umfolozi River and saw a herd of cattle being driven over a hill seven miles away. Their commander assumed the entire Zulu herd was being rushed to safety and sent 4,000 warriors racing after it.

He formed the remaining 8,000 in a semicircle on the northeastern base of the Qokli Hill. Seeing only about 1,500 Zulus defending the height, Nomahlanjana ordered an assault, then seated himself beneath a mimosa tree near the base of the hill and drank calabashes of beer. As the Ndwandwes marched up the hill, they compressed their formations. Shaka ordered his first two lines to attack the closely packed enemy warriors, who did not have room to throw an assegai. The Zulus slashed into the helpless foe, and after 10 minutes of slaughter Nomahlanjana ordered a withdrawal. He then had half his army remain at the foot of the hill, while the other half assaulted upward with wide intervals between the formations and ample space between the warriors. They closed and started hurling their assegais. When the Ndwandwes in the first and second lines had only one spear left, Shaka launched his first two lines. Within five minutes they had killed or mortally wounded the entire first line of the Ndwandwes. Once again Nomahlanjana withdrew all his forces off the hill.

For the next attack, Nomahlanjana ordered his first line of fresh warriors to rush forward with spears in hand, while those in the second line threw their spears at any Zulu battling in the first rank. Shaka foiled that plan by ordering an assault as soon as the attackers came within spear’s throw. That charge drove the enemy’s first two lines into the third, where the jammed warriors had no room to cast a spear, while the Zulus’ stabbing iklwas wrought great carnage. For the third time, Nomahlanjana withdrew his forces down the hill. After a fourth attack failed, Nomahlanjana ordered his warriors to fight only briefly, then simulate flight and, upon reaching the bottom of the hill, turn and fling themselves upon the pursuing Zulus. Following orders, the Ndwandwes soon were fleeing downhill, their shields covering their backs. Many of Shaka’s over-eager warriors dashed after them, inflicting fearful slaughter. Upon reaching the base of the hill, however, they realized their danger and ran back up, still keeping their formations.

Soon the pursuing Ndwandwes confronted solid Zulu lines in their original positions, clashed for a few frustrating minutes, then fell back. Now the heat of the day reached its peak. Although the Zulus had plenty of water, more and more Ndwandwes began departing to quench their thirst. Only two lines of Zulus now remained on the hill, a mere 600 men, many of them wounded. Soon a 200-yard-long column of warriors, 70 ranks of 20 men abreast, with 7 feet between ranks, streamed uphill toward where Shaka sat. It was a simple battering-ram tactic, designed to break the Zulu lines by sheer brute force. Wanting to be in at the final kill, Nomahlanjana and his four brothers joined the tail end of the column. Shaka now decided to commit his hidden reserves, for smoke signals warned of the return of the enemy force that had captured his cattle herd. He placed 500 reserve warriors as a ‘chest’ right in the path of the attacking column and sent the other 1,500 dashing downhill in two enveloping horns.

After those horns clamped shut behind the enemy column, broad Zulu blades drained the blood of all within, including Nomahlanjana and four of his brothers, at the cost of only 500 Zulus. Shaka immediately sent 1,000 of his surviving warriors to seek out and slay the enemy who had drifted off in search of water, and then join him at the Bulawayo kraal for a final stand. He next formed his remaining two lines into a chest and two horns to deal with the Ndwandwes still encircling the base of the hill. The Ndwandwe leader, once informed of the loss of his chief and the attacking column, ordered a retreat and, despite grievous losses, succeeded in joining up with the returning regiments that had captured the token Zulu cattle herd. The regrouped Ndwandwes attacked and drove the Zulus back to the Bulawayo kraal. More than 3,000 fresh enemy warriors threw themselves against the last remaining Zulu formation. Shaka rushed from one threatened point to the next with his ‘fire brigade’ of selected men, always managing to choke off the fatal breach in his lines.

Then, his men who had slain the thirsty foe appeared in the rear of the attacking Ndwandwes. The enemy warriors tried to flee, but less than 1,000 of them escaped encirclement and death. Shaka’s casualties for the entire campaign totaled 1,500 killed and 500 seriously wounded. His opponent lost some 7,500 dead. The Mthethwa hegemony and many smaller ones now rallied to Shaka, enlarging his territory to more than 7,000 square miles. Soon Shaka had eight full regiments at his disposal, each 1,000 strong. His drillmaster mercilessly trained them to obey orders and fight at close quarters. Shaka then took them on 60-mile hikes, often at a fast trot, with any warrior failing to keep up being slain on the spot. Chief Zwide, meanwhile, vowed revenge for his five lost sons and forged an alliance with the other tribes threatened by the meteoritic rise of the Zulu kingdom under the upstart Shaka.

In the spring of 1819 he sent some 18,000 warriors under the command of the seasoned veteran Soshangane to eliminate Shaka. The invaders carried only enough food for their three-day march to the border, fully expecting to feast upon captured grain and cattle. Shaka, alerted by his spies, evacuated all his people, cattle and food within 40 miles of his threatened northern border to the Nkandla forest to the south. He planned to let hunger and exhaustion wear down his more numerous opponents before giving battle. The invaders crossed the White Umfolozi and pursued the elusive Zulu regiment that retreated southward. Sham Zulu attacks that night frustrated the enemy’s attempts to sleep. The next day, when the invaders’ ox herd trailed too far behind, another Zulu regiment dashed out of hiding to capture it and fight a rear-guard action until darkness ended their efforts. That night Shaka had a large herd of oxen driven close to the enemy camp to give the impression that the entire Zulu nation and its cattle were fleeing to the safety of the southern forest, and Soshangane fell for this deception.

Daybreak revealed the Zulus and their cattle disappearing over a hill, about seven miles distant, and the famished foe set out in pursuit. The Zulus led them on a 35-mile chase to the Tugela River, then crossed over, wheeled about and stood their ground. The Ndwandwe warriors implored their chief to attack at once, but Soshangane refused, suspicious of the small number of warriors defending the fords. Instead, he ordered his army to camp for the night and called a council of war. The next morning, the Ndwandwe host began an apparent retreat but, late in the afternoon, hidden behind a dense screen of scouts, the main body turned sharply and disappeared into the Nkandla forest to await Shaka’s next move. Ndwandwe foraging parties ranged far and wide in search of food. Shaka selected 500 warriors to make infiltrating attacks through the night and keep the Ndwandwes from sleeping. At daybreak, Soshangane led his exhausted, starving army to the safety of the open plain and a speedy retreat homeward.

Shaka and his 10,000 Zulus swiftly caught up with the retreating army of 16,000, and the two bodies squared off. Shaka formed columns of five warriors abreast and sent them to outflank both the enemy’s wings. After stretching his front line to the danger point in the face of the solid phalanx of Shaka’s main force, Soshangane detached two regiments, sent them off to cover the flanking columns and ordered the rest of his army back to its original positions. Shaka pretended to make a full-scale attack, but let only the two wings of his main body clash with those of the foe. Under cover of the resulting confusion, two Zulu regiments raced straight for the detached Ndwandwe regiments covering the initial outflanking Zulu troops. Soshangane could only watch helplessly as his doomed regiments formed lines facing both ways and fought to the last man. Shaka next disengaged the wings that had been pinning those of his foe, keeping them out of spear range.

Soshangane soon gave up trying to force the Zulus to stand and fight, wheeled his army about and resumed his retirement, still in a battle formation. The Zulus trailed close behind, killing any stragglers. Reaching the Umbrella River the next day with an army reduced to 12,000, Shoshangane located a narrow ford and, posting his best regiment in a dense formation to guard it, he started withdrawing his regiments, which were strung out on a 2,000-yard front parallel with the river. The cautious commander failed to notice that his front line facing the Zulus had not been shortened to compensate for the withdrawn units. But Shaka did notice and launched an attack by 7,000 of his warriors, holding back only 1,000 in reserve. The Zulus smashed through the poorly arrayed Ndwandwes, slaying all who did not swim to the other side. Shaka next secretly dispatched two regiments-one downstream and the other upstream-to slip unseen across the river and strike the foe’s rear.

Once they had struck both flanks and begun rolling them up onto the center, Shaka ordered his main army to force a crossing and join the battle. His unexpected tactics quickly broke the Ndwandwe formation into small bands of fugitives, closely hounded by the victorious Zulus. When night halted the pursuit, Shaka sent his two freshest regiments racing to Zwide’s kraal, but they failed to capture the enemy chief, who fled some 200 miles before halting. The next morning, the entire Zulu army swept through Ndwandweland, killing every person it encountered, burning all huts and seizing the livestock. By this victory, Shaka gained absolute control over the heartland of the Nguni, which he used to create a much greater Zulu empire. From then until his death, Shaka’s armies ranged the surrounding lands, leaving rotting corpses, burning huts and total devastation in their wake. Shaka became as absolute a ruler as was possible in an age of primitive technology. He amassed vast herds of cattle, each one bred to a single color. Few kings or dictators, before or since, have treated their subjects with such ruthlessness and ferocity.

He had his warriors clubbed to death upon the merest sign of weakness. He neither took a legal wife nor fathered a son, for fear that his heir would plot against him, and had his concubines executed if he discovered they were pregnant. He expelled all rainmakers, declaring that only the king could make rain. When his mother died, he massacred thousands of his subjects so their families would mourn along with him. Now clearly insane, Shaka retained his throne through the worst kind of sheer terror-vast mass executions, torture and mindless butchery. In 1828, Shaka’s half-brother, Dingawe-by then fearing for his own life-slew the mad tyrant and assumed the throne, quickly murdering all prominent Zulus likely to protest his actions. He had Shaka’s body buried secretly in an unmarked grave. At his death, Shaka ruled over 250,000 people and could muster more than 50,000 warriors, whose iron discipline equaled that of the Roman legions in their prime.

His 10-year-long kingship had resulted in more than 2 million deaths by warfare alone, not counting the deaths during mass tribal migrations to escape his armies. His semi-Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Qokli Hill and his masterful conduct of the Second Ndwandwe War remained the highlights of his military exploits, establishing Shaka, king of the Zulus, among the great commanders of all time. This article was written by Truman R. Strobridge and originally published in Military History Magazine in October 2002. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today! Zulu legend 'neither genius nor tyrant' - Telegraph Zulu legend 'neither genius nor tyrant' By David Blair, in Isandlwana 12:01AM GMT 15 Nov 2006 Shaka Zulu, the warrior king of the 19th century hailed as "Africa's Napoleon", was neither a military genius nor a bloodstained tyrant, according to new research. The new study of Shaka by a South African academic debunks popular "myths" about the king who forged the Zulu nation.

White chroniclers from the colonial era portrayed Shaka as the epitome of a brutal African leader. They record Shaka slicing open pregnant women on a whim and murdering thousands to show his sorrow over the death of his mother, Nandi. Today’s Zulu chiefs, by contrast, proudly remember him as a masterly general who created an invincible army. No Zulu has forgotten that on a sweeping plain beneath a rocky mountain peak, 20,000 warriors armed only with spears destroyed a British force of 1,700 men and achieved one of the most crushing victories in military history. Their triumph at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879 can be credited to Shaka’s military genius, according to Inkosi Mbhekiseni Mazibuko, the chief of Isandlwana. Although Shaka died 51 years before the battle, he invented the “buffalo horns” formation which the Zulu army used to surround and destroy the British camp. “We view Shaka as the Napoleon of southern Africa,” said Mr Mazibuko, 42, who traces his own ancestry back to Zululand’s founding king.

“He was a brave leader whose military techniques created the victory here at Isandlwana. He taught our warriors the techniques for victory.” But Mr Mazibuko’s version of history and the lurid tales of white colonists are both mistaken, according to Dan Wylie, an academic at Rhodes University and author of Myth of Iron: Shaka in History. The evidence suggests that whites invented tales of Shaka’s brutality in order to justify colonial expansion. “These eyewitnesses encountered Shaka at a time when it made sense to denigrate African leaders as much as possible and a monstrous image emerged,” said Mr Wylie. “The more monstrous they could be seen to be, the more legitimately they could be conquered.” Many of the tales emerged from the diary of Henry Francis Fynn, a British adventurer who lived at Shaka’s court. The evidence suggests that Fynn greatly embellished his account. Nathaniel Isaacs, another British author who wrote about Shaka, urged Fynn to make the Zulu leader “as bloodthirsty as you can” and “endeavour to give an estimation” of the number of people he killed. As for Shaka’s supposed martial genius, there is no evidence that he was responsible for any significant military innovations.

The “buffalo horns” formation was, said Mr Wylie, a “well-established hunting technique” that long predated Shaka’s reign. Moreover, there is no evidence that Shaka used it extensively. When he did so during one battle in 1826, the tactic failed. As for the elite army that Shaka supposedly created, Mr Wylie said that Zulu “regiments” were not solely military organisations and amounted to “multi-functional labour gangs”. Shaka did not have a true standing army at all. The idea that he forged a militarised state, described by one historian as a “black Sparta”, is also false, Mr Wylie claimed. He said that there is no evidence to suggest that Zululand was any more militarised than neighbouring African kingdoms. Scarcely anything about Shaka is known for certain. Most historians say he was born in 1787, but the true year may have been 1781 or 1792 - or any date in between.

It has been established however that before his murder in 1828 he fought wars that killed or displaced hundreds of thousands and gave the Zulus, once an obscure clan, control over a large area of South Africa. Mr Wylie denied that he was debunking Shaka himself. On the contrary, previous historians had concentrated on Shaka’s alleged military skills and “underestimated” his political acumen. “Shaka was a charismatic, competent leader and a far more subtle statesman than he’s been given credit for,” said Mr Wylie. King Shaka Zulu | South African History Online South African History Online Home » Biographies » King Shaka Zulu King Shaka Zulu Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on People category: Location of death: Stanger, Natal Shaka was a great Zulu king and conqueror. He lived in an area of south-east Africa between the Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean, a region populated by many independent Nguni chiefdoms. During his brief reign more than a hundred chiefdoms were brought together in a Zulu kingdom which survived not only the death of its founder but later military defeat and calculated attempts to break it up.

Shaka was a son of Senzangakhona, ruler of an insignificant small chiefdom, the Zulu. His mother was Nandi, the daughter of a Langeni chief. Information about Shaka's early years is gleaned entirely from oral sources. It is claimed that Shaka was born into Senzangakhona's household but that the couple were not yet married according to traditional custom. A more credible account is that the relationship between Nandi and Senzangakhona was illicit, and that Shaka was born in Langeni territory at the Nguga homestead of Nandi's uncle. Shaka's name is said to stem from Senzangakhona's claim that Nandi was not pregnant but was suffering from an intestinal condition caused by the iShaka beetle. Despite his attempts to deny paternity, Senzangakhona eventually installed Nandi as his third wife. Shaka thus spent his earliest years at his father's esiKlebeni homestead near present Babanango, in the hallowed locality known as the EmaKhosini or Burial-place of the Kings, where Senzangakhona's forebears, the descendants of Zulu (Nkosinkulu), had been chiefs for generations.

The relationship of Senzangakhona and Nandi seems to have been unhappy and ended in the chieftain driving Nandi from his court. Nandi and her son sought sanctuary in the Mhlathuze Valley of the Langeni people. Here, growing up as a fatherless child, Shaka seems to have been the victim of humiliation and cruel treatment by the Langeni boys. At that time there were two strong rival Nguni groups, the Mthethwa led by the paramount chief Dingiswayo, and the Ndwandwe under the ferocious Zwide. Later, probably at the time of the Great Famine, known as the Madlantule (c.1802), Shaka was taken to the Mthethwa people, where shelter was found in the home of Nandi's aunt. He thus grew up in the court of Dingiswayo, who welcomed them with friendliness. Shaka, however, suffered much from the bullying and teasing of the Mthethwa boys, too, who resented his claims to chiefly descent. As he grew to manhood, Shaka began to discover new talents and faculties.

Outwardly, he was tall and powerfully built, and his skill and daring gave him a natural mastery over the youths in his age group; inwardly, he was developing a thirst for power. Probably when he was about twenty-three years old, he was drafted into one of the Mthethwa regiments where he found a satisfaction he had never known before. With the impi in the iziCwe regiment, he had the companionship he had previously lacked, while the battlefield provided a stadium in which he could demonstrate his talents and courage. His outstanding deeds of courage attracted the attention of his overlord and, rising rapidly in Dingiswayo's army, he became one of his foremost commanders. At this time, Shaka was given the name Nodumehlezi (the one who when seated causes the earth to rumble). While in the Mthethwa army Shaka became engrossed in problems of strategy and battle tactics, and Dingiswayo contributed much toward Shaka's later accomplishments in war. Militarism was thereafter to be a way of life for him, and one that he was to inflict on thousands of others.

Shaka usurps the Zulu Chiefdom On the death of Shaka's father (c. 1816), Dingiswayo lent his young protégé the military support necessary to oust and assassinate his senior brother Sigujana, and make himself chieftain of the Zulu, although he remained a vassal of Dingiswayo. But, as Dingiswayo's favourite, he seems to have been granted an unusual amount of freedom to carve out a bigger principality for himself by conquering and assimilating his neighbours, including the Buthelezi clan and the Langeni of his boyhood days. Dingiswayo's death According to the diary of Henry Francis Fynn, Dingiswayo's death (c.1818) was the result of Shaka's treachery, though firm testimony of this is lacking. However, it is known that when Dingiswayo fought his last battle, Shaka did not arrive at the scene until after his overlord's capture. He thus retained his forces intact.

Zwide later murdered Dingiswayo, and, when the leaderless Mthethwa state collapsed, Shaka immediately assumed leadership and began conquering surrounding chiefdoms himself, adding their forces to his own and building up a new kingdom. The defeat of the Ndwandwe Zwide decided to smash his new rival. After a first expedition had been defeated by the superior control and strategies of the Zulu at Gqokoli Hill, Zwide, in April 1818, sent all his army into Zululand. This time Shaka wore out the invaders by pretending he was retreating and drawing Zwide's forces deep into his own territory; then, when he had successfully exhausted the invaders, he flung his own regiments on them and defeated them conclusively at the Mhlathuze river. This defeat shattered the Ndwandwe state. Part of the main Ndwandwe force under Shoshangane, together with the Jere under Zwangendaba, the Maseko under Ngwane, and the Msene led by Nxaba, fled northwards. The survivors of the main Ndwandwe force settled for a time on the upper Pongola River.

In 1826, under Zwide's successor, Sikhunyane, they again fought the Zulu, but were totally routed. The majority then submitted to Shaka. He was able to recruit additional warriors from these sources and proceeded to train them in his own methods of close combat. Shaka's supremacy By then, Shaka had no major rival in the area of present day KwaZulu/Natal. During his brief reign, which lasted only ten years after his final defeat of the Ndwandwe, his regiments continuously went on campaign, steadily extending their assaults further afield as the areas near at hand were stripped of their cattle. If a chiefdom resisted, it was conquered and either destroyed or, like the Thembu and Chunu, driven off as landless refugees. When chiefdom submitted, he left local administration in the hands of the reigning chief or another member of the traditional ruling family appointed by himself. The Zulu Military System Once in power Shaka began reorganizing the forces of his people in accordance with ideas he had developed as a warrior in Dingiswayo's army. The assegai.

He had seen that the traditional type of spear, a long-handled assegai thrown from a distance, was no good for the regulated fighting in close formation he had in mind. A group of warriors who held on to their assegais instead of hurling them, and who moved right up to the enemy behind the shelter of a barrier of shields would have its opponents at its mercy and would be able to accomplish complete victory. Having proved the advantages of the new tactics, Shaka armed his warriors with short-handled stabbing spears and trained them to move up to their opponents in close formation with their body-length cowhide shields forming an almost impenetrable barrier to anything thrown at them. The formation most generally used was crescent-shaped. A number of regiments extending several ranks deep formed a dense body known as the chest (isifuba), while on each side a regiment moved forward forming the horns. As the horns curved inward around the enemy, the main body would advance killing all those who could not break through the encompassing lines. Discipline. By means of much drilling and discipline, Shaka built up his forces, which soon became the terror of the land.

Shaka prohibited the wearing of sandals, toughened his warriors' feet by making them run barefoot over rough thorny ground and in so doing secured their greater mobility. His war cry was `Victory or death!' and he kept his impi on continuous military campaigns until he thought they had earned the right to wear the headring ( isicoco) of manhood. Then they were formally dissolved and allowed to marry. The male amabutho. The young men were taken away to be enrolled alongside others from all sections of the kingdom in an appropriate amabutho, or age-regiment. This produced a sense of common identity amongst them. Each of these amabutho had its own name and was lodged at one of the royal households, which became military communities as well as retaining their traditional functions. Each military settlement had a herd of royal cattle assigned to it, from which the young men were supplied with meat. The hides of the cattle were used to provide the shields of the warriors and an attempt was made to select cattle with distinctive skin colouring for each amabutho. The female amabutho. Numbers of the young women of the kingdom were assembled at the military settlements. Officially, they were wards of the king.

They were organized in female equivalents of the male amabutho and took part in ceremonial dancing and displays. When one of the male amabutho was given permission to marry, a female amabutho would be broken up and the women given out as brides to the warriors. Until such time, however, sexual intercourse between members of the male and female age regiments was forbidden. Transgressions were punished by death. The royal women. Each settlement contained a section of royal women headed by a formidable woman, usually one of Shaka's aunts. Shaka, however, dreaded producing a legitimate heir. He never married and women found pregnant by him were put to death. His households were thus not dominated by wives but by stern senior women of the royal family. In the king's absence, administrative authority was wielded jointly by the female ruler of the settlement and by an induna who was usually a favourite of the king. The military system thus helped develop a strong sense of identity in the kingdom as a whole. The traditional leaders of the subject chiefdoms still held local administrative authority, and on the dissolution of the amabutho the young men would return to live in their community of origin.

Thus, the sense of identity of these subject chiefdoms was not entirely lost, but remained an important element in the later politics of the Zulu kingdom. The military indunas or captains, as trusted favourites of the king, received many cattle from him and were able to build up large personal followings. These developments resulted in the evolution of powerful figures in later reigns with strong local power bases that they had been able to build up because of royal appointments and favours. KwaBulawayo. Shaka's first capital was on the banks of the Mhodi, a small tributary of the Mkhumbane River in the Babanango district. He named his great place KwaBulawayo (`at the place of the murder'). As his kingdom grew, he built a far bigger KwaBulawayo, a royal household of about 1,400 huts, in the Mhlathuze valley, some 27 km from the present town of Eshowe. Economic and social changes. The development of the military system caused major economic and social changes. That so much youth was concentrated at the royal barracks resulted in a massive transfer of economic potential to a centralized state.

However, the cattle wealth of the whole community throughout the kingdom was greatly improved; even though most of the herds were owned by the king and his chiefs and indunas, all shared in the pride roused by the magnificence of the royal herds as well as the pride of belonging to the unequalled military power of Zulu. Effects of Shaka's wars. His wars were accompanied by great slaughter and caused many migrations. Their effects were felt even far north of the Zambezi River. Because they feared Shaka, leaders like Zwangendaba, Mzilikazi, and Shoshangane moved northwards far into the central African interior and in their turn sowed war and destruction before developing their own kingdoms. Some estimate that during his reign Shaka caused the death of more than a million people. Shaka's wars between 1818 and 1828 contributed to a series of forced migrations known in various parts of southern Africa as the Mfecane, Difaqane, Lifaqane, or Fetcani.

Groups of refugees from Shaka's assaults, first Hlubi and Ngwane clans, later followed by the Mantatees and the Matabele of Mzilikazi, crossed the Drakensberg to the west, smashing chiefdoms in their path. Famine and chaos followed the wholesale extermination of populations and the destruction of herds and crops between the Limpopo and the Gariep River. Old chiefdoms vanished and new ones were created. The white traders of Port Natal By the time the first white traders arrived at Port Natal in 1824, Shaka was in control of a centralized monarchy, which spanned the entire eastern coastal belt from the Pongola River in the north to the lands beyond the Tugela in the south. That year, Henry Francis Fynn and Francis Farewell visited Shaka. In 1825, when Lieutenant James King paid him a visit, Shaka sent a goodwill delegation to Major J Cloete, Cape government representative at Port Elizabeth. Shaka accorded the white traders most favoured treatment, ceded them land, and permitted them to build a settlement at Port Natal.

He was curious about their technological developments, was anxious to learn much more about warfare, and he was especially interested in the culture they represented. Moreover, he was alert to the advantages that their trade might bring to him. In 1826, in order to be closer and more accessible to the settlers at Port Natal, Shaka built a large military barracks at Dukuza, (‘the place where one gets lost'). It was 80 km further south of his previous royal residence kwaBulawayo, on the site of the present day town of Stanger. During his lifetime, there were no conflicts between the whites and the Zulus, as Shaka did not want to precipitate clashes with the military forces of the Cape colonial government. H F Fynn, who knew him well, found him intelligent and often amiable, and mentioned occasions that leave no doubt that Shaka was capable of generosity. Freed from the restrictions that limited most chiefs, Shaka acted as an undisputed, almighty ruler. A cruel tyrant, he had men executed with a nod of his head. The loyalties of his people were severely strained as the frequent cruelties of their great king increased steadily.

The climax came with the death of his mother Nandi in October 1827, huge numbers were put to death during the mourning ceremonies because they showed insufficient grief; and his armies were sent out to force the surrounding chiefdoms to grieve. Taking advantage of the absence of his armies, on 22 September 1828, his bodyguard Mbopha, and his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangana, stabbed Shaka near his military barracks at Dukuza. As the great King Shaka's life ebbed away, he called out to his brother Dingane: “Hey brother! You kill me, thinking you will rule, but the swallows will do that.” He meant the white people, because they made their houses of mud, like the swallows. This was too much for his assailants and they leapt upon him, stabbing. According to members of his family, Shaka's last words were: “Are you stabbing me, kings of the earth? You will come to an end through killing one another.” Hastily they buried his body in a grain-pit nearby.

Having died without an heir, Dingane succeeded him, but Shaka's prophecy haunted him and ever after that, he was wary of white people. Under Shaka's successors, Dingane, Mpande, and Cetshwayo the Zulu monarchy profoundly influenced the course of South African history. References: • Howcroft, P. (undated). South Africa Encyclopaedia: Prehistory to the year 2000, unpublished papers with SA History Online. • Who is Shaka Zulu? A short biography on a man with incredible vision Shaka, Zulu King [online] Pagewise [accessed 17 September 2009] • Anglo-Zulu War 1879 . [online] About.com [accessed 17 September 2009] Further Reading: South Africa - Nguni Nguni South Africa Table of Contents The Nguni peoples are classified into three large subgroups, the Northern Nguni, the Southern Nguni, and the Ndebele. The Zulu and the Swazi are among the Northern Nguni.

The Xhosa are the largest Southern Nguni society, but the neighboring Thembu and Mpondo are also well known Southern Nguni societies, often described as subgroups of the Xhosa. Each of these groups is a heterogeneous grouping of smaller (also heterogeneous) ethnic groups. Four of South Africa's official languages are Nguni languages; isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, and isiNdebele are spoken primarily by the Zulu, the Xhosa, the Swazi, and the Ndebele peoples, respectively. Each of these languages has regional variants and dialects, which are often mutually intelligible. Before the nineteenth century, the dominant Nguni settlement pattern was that of dispersed households, as opposed to villages. The typical household was centered on a patrilineage; it also included other relatives through a variety of kinship ties, and people who had attached themselves to the household--often as indentured laborers who were rewarded in cattle. Cattle were central to most Nguni economies, which ranged from almost complete dependence on herding to mixed pastoralism and crop cultivation, often supplemented by hunting.

Nguni political organization generally consisted of small chiefdoms, sometimes only a few hundred people loyal to a person chosen by descent, achievement, or a combination of factors. Until the eighteenth century or later, historians believe, these chiefdoms were not united under a king or monarch. Each chiefdom typically included a group of related patrilineal clans, or descent groups united by common ancestry only a few generations deep, and others who had chosen to attach themselves to a particular chief. A chief could demand support and tribute (taxes) from his followers, could reward those he favored, could form political alliances, and could declare war against his enemies. A chief's followers, in turn, usually had the right to leave and to join another chiefdom, if they wished. Larger chiefdoms sometimes exercised limited control over smaller ones, but such hegemony generally did not last for more than a generation or two. Zulu An estimated 8 million South Africans consider themselves Zulu (amaZulu) or members of closely related ethnic groups in the 1990s. By the eighteenth century, Zulu society encompassed a number of Nguni-speaking chiefdoms north of the Tugela River (see fig. 4).

The Zulu homestead (imizi ) consisted of an extended polygynous (see Glossary) family and others attached to the household through social obligations. This social unit was largely self-sufficient, with responsibilities divided according to gender. Men were generally responsible for defending the homestead, caring for cattle, manufacturing and maintaining weapons and farm implements, and building dwellings. Women had domestic responsibilities and raised crops, usually grains, on land near the household. Zulu chiefs demanded steadily increasing tribute or taxes from their subjects, acquired great wealth, commanded large armies, and, in many cases, subjugated neighboring chiefdoms. Military conquest allowed men to achieve status distinctions that had become increasingly important. In the early nineteenth century, the large and powerful Mthethwa chiefdom, led by Dingiswayo, dominated much of the region north of the Tugela River (see The Rise of African States, ch. 1).

Shaka, a Zulu warrior who had won recognition in 1810 by skillfully subduing the leader of the warring Buthelezi chiefdom, took advantage of Dingiswayo's military defeat by the neighboring Ndwandwe armies to begin building the Zulu empire in 1817. As king, Shaka Zulu (r. 1817-28) defied tradition by adopting new fighting strategies, by consolidating control over his military regiments, and by ruthlessly eliminating potential rivals for power. Shaka's warrior regiments (impis ) eventually subjugated the powerful Ndwandwe, and decimated or drove from the area the armies of Shaka's rivals. Spreading warfare--exacerbated by pressures from Europeans--drove thousands of Africans north and west, and the ensuing upheaval spawned new conflicts throughout the region (see fig. 5). The Zulu empire weakened after Shaka's death in 1828 and fragmented, especially following military defeats at the hands of the Afrikaners in 1839 and the British in 1879.

Zululand, the area north of the Tugela River, was incorporated into the British colony, Natal, in 1887. The last Zulu uprising, a poll tax protest led by Chief Bambatha in 1906, was ruthlessly suppressed. The Zulu population remained fragmented during most of the twentieth century, although loyalty to the royal family continued to be strong in some areas. Leaders of Zulu cultural organizations and Zulu politicians were able to preserve a sense of ethnic identity through the symbolic recognition of Zulu history and through local-level politics. Zulu men and women have made up a substantial portion of South Africa's urban work force throughout the twentieth century, especially in the gold and copper mines of the Witwatersrand. Zulu workers organized some of the first black labor unions in the country. For example, the Zulu Washermen's Guild, Amawasha, was active in Natal and the Witwatersrand even before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. The Zululand Planters' Union organized agricultural workers in Natal in the early twentieth century.

The KwaZulu homeland was carved out of several unconnected plots of land in Natal in the 1960s. In 1976 Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, a member of the Zulu royal family, was named chief minister of KwaZulu, and the government declared KwaZulu a self-governing territory a year later. Buthelezi established good relations with the National Party-dominated government and, in the process, severed his former close ties to the African National Congress (ANC). During the 1980s, Buthelezi refused repeated government offers of homeland independence; he preferred to retain the self-governing status that allowed the roughly 4 million residents of KwaZulu to be citizens of South Africa. Zulu solidarity was enhanced by Buthelezi's intellectually powerful and dominant personality and by his leadership of the Zulu cultural organization, Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement--usually called Inkatha), which became the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) during the 1990s.

During the apartheid era, many people in areas officially designated as Zulu were descendants of nineteenth-century Zulu warriors or subjects of the Zulu royal family, who retained a strong ethnic consciousness and pride in their Zulu identity. Others in these areas, however, traced their descent to those who resisted Shaka's domination or celebrated his death at the hands of his own relatives in 1828. Some viewed their association with Zulu royalty as little more than an artificial political creation. A substantial minority within the diverse Zulu society in the 1980s and the 1990s supported the rival ANC. Military prowess continued to be an important value in Zulu culture, and this emphasis fueled some of the political violence of the 1990s. Zulu people generally admire those with physical and mental agility, and those who can speak eloquently and hold a crowd's attention. These attributes strengthened Buthelezi's support among many Zulu, but his political rhetoric sometimes sparked attacks on political opponents and critics, even within Zulu society. Buthelezi's nephew, Goodwill Zwelithini, is the Zulu monarch in the 1990s.

Buthelezi and King Goodwill won the agreement of ANC negotiators just before the April 1994 elections that, with international mediation, the government would establish a special status for the Zulu Kingdom after the elections. Zulu leaders understood this special status to mean some degree of regional autonomy within the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Buthelezi was appointed minister of home affairs in the first Government of National Unity in 1994. He led a walkout of Zulu delegates from the National Assembly in early 1995 and clashed repeatedly with newly elected President Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela. Buthelezi threatened to abandon the Government of National Unity entirely unless his Zulu constituency received greater recognition and autonomy from central government control. Swazi About 1.6 million Swazi people live in the region in the 1990s--almost 900,000 in Swaziland and the remainder in South Africa, especially in the area of the former homeland, KaNgwane. Until the late eighteenth century, Swazi society consisted of a group of closely related Nguni chiefdoms organized around patrilineal descent groups.

At that time, a powerful chief, Ngwane I, seized control over several smaller neighboring chiefdoms of Nguni and Sotho peoples to strengthen his own army's defense against the Mthethwa forces led by Dingiswayo. The greatest rival of the Mthethwa, the Ndwandwe, later subjugated the Mthethwa and killed Dingiswayo. Ngwane I, under pressure from the Ndwandwe, then withdrew into the mountainous territory that would later become Swaziland. Ngwane I was able to resist incorporation into the Zulu empire during the reign of Shaka, and the Swazi maintained generally peaceful relations with Shaka's successors. Some Swazi clans were forced to move north, however, as regional upheaval spread, and together with displaced Zulu clans, they established aristocratic dynasties over herdsmen and farmers as far north as areas that would later become Malawi and Zambia. In the twentieth century, the Swazi kingdom retained its autonomy, but not total independence, as the British protectorate of Swaziland in 1903 and as a British High Commission territory in 1907.

In 1968 Swaziland became an independent nation led by King Sobhuza II. Swaziland has pressured Pretoria for the return of Swazi-occupied areas of South Africa since the 1960s. In 1982 Pretoria agreed, but that decision was reversed by the South African Supreme Court. KaNgwane was carved out of land adjacent to Swaziland during the 1960s and was declared a "self-governing" territory with a population of about 400,000 in 1984. KaNgwane's Chief Minister Enos Mabuza tried to build an agricultural and industrial economy in the small, segmented territory, and he became the first homeland leader to grant full trade union rights to workers in his jurisdiction. Mabuza also led the fight against the incorporation of KaNgwane into Swaziland. During the late 1980s, he clashed with Pretoria by expressing strong support for the ANC, although many KaNgwane residents remained uninvolved in South African politics.

Xhosa The Xhosa (amaXhosa) people in South Africa in the mid-1990s number roughly 6 million, according to official estimates, including the Pondo (Mpondo), Thembu, and several other small ethnic groups, which have been assimilated, to varying degrees, into Xhosa society over several centuries. Each of these is also a heterogeneous grouping of smaller populations. Most Xhosa people speak English, and often several other languages, but they also take great pride in speaking Xhosa (isiXhosa), an Nguni language closely related to Zulu. Unlike most other African languages, Xhosa has more than a dozen "click" sounds, probably assimilated from Khoisan speakers over long periods of acculturation between Xhosa and Khoisan peoples. Some ancestors of twentieth-century Xhosa arrived in the eastern Cape region from the north before the fifteenth century, and others moved into the area during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Xhosa history tells of settlement east of the Sundays River by the early eighteenth century.

The Xhosa eliminated or enslaved some of the Khoisan speakers they encountered, but many Khoikhoi were peacefully assimilated into Xhosa society. Khoikhoi workers were often entrusted with the care of cattle for a generation or two before being accepted as equal members of Xhosa society. The Xhosa generally incorporated newcomers who recognized the dominance of the Xhosa chief. In fact, until the twentieth century, the term Xhosa was often used to designate territorial affiliation rather than common descent. The resulting Xhosa society was extremely diverse. Most Xhosa lived by cattle herding, crop cultivation, and hunting. Homesteads were normally built near the tops of the numerous ridges that overlook the rivers of the area, including the Fish River, the Keiskama River, the Buffalo River, and the Kei River. Cattle, serving as symbols of wealth, as well as means of exchange, pack animals, and transportation, were central to the economy. Crops such as corn, sorghum, and tobacco thrived in years with adequate rainfall. Woodworking and ironworking were important men's occupations.

Xhosa homesteads were organized around descent groups, with descent traced through male forebears. These lineages, and the large clans formed by groups of related lineages, provided the center of Xhosa social organization. These descent groups were responsible for preserving ancestral ties and for perpetuating the group through sacrifices to the ancestors, mutual assistance among the living, and carefully arranged marriages with neighboring clans or lineages. Political power was often described as control over land and water. A powerful chief may be praised in oral histories by the claim that he had power over the land close to a large river, and a lesser chief, by the claim that he had power over land near a smaller river or tributary. Xhosa oral histories tell of installing a royal lineage, probably by the early seventeenth century. This family, the Tshawe, or amaTshawe (people of Tshawe), continued to dominate other Xhosa clans for more than a century; only the Tshawe could be recognized as chiefs over other Xhosa, according to historical accounts in The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Day of Their Independence , by Jeffrey B. Peires.

The Xhosa also experienced a rapid increase in population, and they divided several times over six or seven generations. The resulting dominant chiefdoms, the Gcaleka and the Rharhabe (Rarabe), formed distinct sections of Xhosa society throughout the twentieth century. Xhosa people had extensive contact with Europeans by the early nineteenth century, and they generally welcomed European missionaries and educators into their territory. A Xhosa grammar book--the first in a southern African language--was published in 1834. Their early and sustained contact with Christian missionaries and educators led the Xhosa to distinguish between "school people," who had accepted Western innovation, and "red people," who were identified with the traditional red ocher used to dye clothing and to decorate the body. By the twentieth century, the Xhosa school people formed the core of South Africa's emerging black professional class and included lawyers, physicians, and ministers. The South African government recognized the split between the Gcaleka Xhosa and the Ngqika (a subgroup of Rharhabe) Xhosa in the twentieth century by establishing two Xhosa homelands.

Transkei, a segmented territory in eastern Cape Province bordering Lesotho, was designated for the Gcaleka Xhosa, and Ciskei--just west of Transkei--was for the Ngqika Xhosa. Transkei became an independent homeland in 1976, and Ciskei, in 1981. Xhosa language speakers also include the Thembu (Tembu), the eastern neighbors of the Xhosa during much of their history. The Thembu represent a number of clans that managed to exert their dominance over neighboring clans. The Thembu had long and varied contacts with the Xhosa. These were often peaceful and friendly--for example, Xhosa history says that the Great Wife of each chief was a Thembu--but they sometimes erupted into war. The Thembu recognize their own royal clan, the Hala, who led many Thembu into battle against the Xhosa during the late eighteenth century. Also closely related to the Xhosa are the Pondo (Mpondo), the eastern neighbors of the Thembu.

The Pondo royal clan, the Nyawuza, struggled to establish and to preserve its dominance over neighboring clans well into the nineteenth century, when some of the Pondo and their neighbors were displaced and subjugated by the Zulu. Another population often described as a Xhosa subgroup is the Mfengu, consisting of descendants of small remnants of clans and chiefdoms that were displaced during the early nineteenth-century upheaval of the mfecane (or crushing--see Glossary). Survivors of the mfecane attached themselves to Xhosa society, which was relatively stable, often in Xhosa villages located near Christian missions. After an initial period of clientship, or social inferiority that eroded as generations passed, the Mfengu were generally accepted as equals in the diverse Xhosa population. Ndebele The term Ndebele, or amaNdebele, in the 1990s refers primarily to about 800,000 South Africans whose forebears have inhabited areas of the northern Transvaal (now Northern Province) for more than a century.

The Ndebele language, isiNdebele, is classified among the Nguni languages, although Sotho influences are strong enough in some areas that isiNdebele is sometimes also classified as a variant of seSotho. Most Ndebele trace their ancestry to the area that became Natal Province, later KwaZulu-Natal. Some began moving northward well before the early nineteenth-century mfecane , and many of these settled in the northern Transvaal. Others, subjects of the Zulu leader Mzilikazi, fled north from Natal after his defeat by Shaka in 1817. Ndebele peoples throughout the region were forced to move several times after that, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, the Ndebele were dispersed throughout much of Natal, the Transvaal, and adjacent territory. Many Ndebele became formidable warriors, often subjugating smaller chiefdoms and assimilating them into Ndebele society, and Ndebele clashed repeatedly with Voortrekker militias around Pretoria.

The late nineteenth-century Afrikaner leader Paul Kruger jailed or executed many of their leaders, seized their land, and dispersed others to work for Afrikaner farmers as indentured servants. Some of the land was later returned to a few Ndebele, often as a reward for loyalty or recognition of status. Under apartheid, many Ndebele living in the northern Transvaal were assigned to the predominantly seSotho-speaking homeland of Lebowa, which consisted of several segiments of land scattered across the northern Transvaal. Others, mostly southern Ndebele, who had retained more traditional elements of their culture and language, were assigned to KwaNdebele. KwaNdebele had been carved out of land that had been given to the son of Nyabela, a well-known Ndebele fighter in Kruger's time. The homeland was, therefore, prized by Ndebele traditionalists, who pressed for a KwaNdebele independence through the 1980s. KwaNdebele was declared a "self-governing" territory in 1981.

Very few of its 300,000 residents could find jobs in the homeland, however, so most worked in the industrial region of Pretoria and Johannesburg. At least 500,000 Ndebele people lived in urban centers throughout South Africa and in homelands other than KwaNdebele through the 1980s. During the 1980s and the early 1990s, many Ndebele recognized a royal family, the Mahlangu family, and the capital of KwaNdebele was called KwaMahlangu. The royal family was divided, however, over economic issues and the question of "independence" for the homeland. These disputes were overridden by the dissolution of the homelands in 1994. At that time, in addition to the estimated 800,000 Ndebele people in South Africa, nearly 1.7 million Ndebele lived in Zimbabwe, where they constituted about one-sixth of the population and were known as Matabele; about 300,000 lived in Botswana.

Question: In the 19th century, Chief Shaka was the leader of which group?
Answer: Zulus