A single technology such as that of firearms may be taken up and employed by different societies in a great variety of ways and with fluctuating levels of success.

The voracious one of Senzangakhona,Spear that is red even on the handle [...]The young viper grows as it sits,Always in a great rage

otho thoroughly embraced firearms, considerably modified their traditional methods of warfare, and successfully took on Boers and Britons alike, at the other extreme the Zulu only gingerly made use of firearms and did not permit them to affect their way of warfare to any marked degree.

he battle of Isandlwana he killed a British soldier who fired at him with his revolver and missed:

By contrast, in South Africa, the spread of guns was far slower because of the sheer, vast extent of the sub-continent’s interior and its lack of ports. Although indigenous peoples like the Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi and Zulu gradually adopted firearms during the course of the nineteenth century, they did so with varying degrees of eagerness.

In battle, the Zulu tactical intention was to outflank and enclose the enemy in a flexible manoeuvre, evidently developed from the hunt, which could be readily adapted to a pitched battle in the open field or to a surprise attack

ormed Stuart that coward’s meat ‘would be roasted and roasted and then soaked in cold water. It was then taken out of the water and given to the cowards, while the king urged them on to fight. Upon this they would begin to steel themselves, saying, “When will there be war, so that I can leave off this meat?”’ If the coward was then reported to have acquitted himself fiercely in battle, the king ‘would then praise him and say, “Do not again give him the meat of the cowards; let him eat the meat of the heroes.”

he traders owed him military service, and it quickly came to Shaka’s attention that they possessed muskets

This stick which they carry, what is it for?

deed, it was reportedly Shaka’s far-fetched intention ‘to send a regiment of men to England who there would scatter in all directions in order to ascertain exactly how guns were made, and then return to construct some in Zululand’

1826, he used the limited but alarming firepower of the Port Natal traders and their trained African retainers against his great rivals, the Ndwandwe people, in the decisive battle of the izinDolowane hills; and in 1827, he again used their firepower in subduing the Khumalo peopl

uring the 1830s, guns began to be traded into Zululand in greater numbers, much to the despair of the missionary Captain Allen Gardiner.

He saw in this incipient trade a Zulu threat to all their neighbours, and was much disheartened, in 1835, when the Zulu elite evinced no interest in the word of God, but only in his instruction in the best use of the onomatopoeic ‘issibum’, or musket

ingane knew that they and their guns posed a deadly threat to his kingdom. Dingane’s treacherous attempt, early in 1838, to take the Voortrekkers unawares and destroy them, was only partially successfu

The Zulu discovered that, because of the heavy musket fire, in neither battle could they could get close enough to the Voortrekkers’ laager to make any use of their spears or clubbed sticks in the toe-to-toe fighting to which they were accustomed

eadrick argued that colonial warfare only became truly asymmetric with the introduction between the late 1860s and 1880s of breech-loading rifles, quick-loading artillery and machine guns

The Zulus’ disastrous defeats at Voortrekker hands only confirmed the chilling efficacy of firearms and the need to possess the new weapons

weapons technology could not be ignored. From the late 1860s, firearms began to spread rapidly throughout South Africa,

ince they were not in a position to obtain many through trade, young Pedi men (in what became a recognized rite of manhood) regularly made their way to the labour markets of Natal and the Cape and bought firearms from gun- traders with their earnings.

etshwayo had to import firearms thorough traders.

he enterprising hunter-trader John Dunn, who gained Cetshwayo’s ear as his adviser, cornered the lucrative Zulu arms market, buying from merchants in the Cape and Natal and trading the firearms (mainly antiquated muskets) in Zululand through Portuguese Delagoa Bay to avoid Natal laws against gun trafficki

ancillaries

20,000 guns entered Zululand during Cetshwayo’s reign

What this evidence makes clear is that firearms were not necessarily widely dispersed into the hands of ordinary warriors, and that many had little (if any) practical training in their use.

h the unskilled way in which they were maintained, with the often poor quality of their gunpowder and shot, and with shortages of percussion caps and cartridges.

Put simply, most Zulu did not shoot well because they had scant practice in it

he Zulu had their own names for each of the bewildering varieties of firearms of all sizes and shapes and degrees of sophistication that came into their hands

Xhosa were skilled in their use of firearms, and made for formidable foes.

the Zulu elite came to regard them as significant indicators of power and prestige, and recognized their efficacy in hunting and fighting

est firearms went to men of high status and, according to Bikwayo, double-barrelled ones seemed to have been the most prestigious

aluable, dangerous, and exotic as they were, firearms inevitably conferred the mystique of power upon the possessor

ade all those with guns hold their barrels downwards on to, but not actually touching, a sherd containing some smoking substance, i.e. burning drugs, fire being underneath the sherd, in order that smoke might go up the barrel. This was done so that bullets would go straight, and, on hitting any European, kill him

the nineteenth century, firearms became increasingly essential for hunting, one of the most important economic activities in southern Africa because of the international value placed on tusks, hides, and feathers

ory, in particular, was equally a source of wealth for the Zulu king, who was no longer content with his men killing elephants (as described by the hunter, Adulphe Delagorgue) by stabbing them with spears and letting them bleed to death, or driving them into pits filled with stake

weapons themselves still had to be incorporated into the ceremonies of ritual purification and strengthening that preceded battle.

rince Cetshwayo ‘succeeded in killing someone there, by shooting him when he was in caves among the rocks [...] on the hillsid

Mystical forces, in other words, would compensate for lack of practical skill in hitting a target, just as they would protect a man from wounds and death.

tshelele ka Godide told Stuart of a hunter who accidentally shot himself in the stomach and died when the butt of his cocked gun touched the ground. Cetshwayo ordered his izangoma (diviners) to hold a ‘smelling out’ (umhlahlo) and they pronounced that the victims’ brother ‘had worked evil (lumba) on the gun’.

e Zulu adoption of firearms was partial and imperfect, hedged about by all sorts of hindrances, both practical and essentially cultural. Only a handful of men who had close contact with white hunters and traders were easily familiar with firearms, and knew how to use them.

e bulk of amabutho continued to treat their guns like throwing spears, to be discarded before the real hand-to-hand fighting began. Why, we might ask, did they not make more effective use of them in 1879,

demanded that all natives surrender their firearms to Cape authorities

880 as the date for surrendering weapons.

lonial Cape forces sent to put down the rebellion suffered heavy casualties, as the Basotho had obtained serviceable firearms from the Orange Free State and enjoyed a natural defensive advantage in their country's mountainous terrain.

he land remained in Basotho hands and the nation enjoyed unrestricted access to firearms in exchange for a national one-time indemnity of 5000 cattle.

They were also long distance hunters and traders, for ivory and cattle in exchange for guns among other goods

In the i820s and I830s the Griqua and other Khoikhoi groups extended their operations over much of the highveld, giving the Ndebele their first whiff of gunpowd

Many Tswana chiefs appreciated the significance of firearms, as did Mzilikazi: firearms were military weapons which upset (or were rumoured to upset) balances of power, making the possessing group superior to its neighbours and equal to the Griqua and the whites; economically, firearms were efficient means of hunting, which for the Tswana was a necessity until well into the twentieth centur

e the migration of the Boers on to the highveld at the end of the I830s. Although the Afrikaner settlements formally forbade the trade of firearms to Afric

Africans had to have a magistrate's permit to buy guns, but such was the demand for labour on the diamond diggings and in railway construction that these permits were either readily granted or were ignored by traders

The great increase in the number of firearms on the highveld and in Tswana country from the middle years of the nineteenth century probably aggravated the political instability of the are

Tswana chiefs and Boer leaders jockeyed for position amongst themselv

armed with guns were also mounted, but not to the same extent as the Sotho. It seems that firearms were most successful when used in defenc

Africans would come to work on the diggings, and upon the railways which were being built from the Cape ports to the interior, only for cash with which to buy guns and ammunitio

y this time Africans were well aware of the technicalities of firearms, and (for example) in both the I878 Xhosa-Cape war and the Sotho Gun War white officers complained that Africans had better rifles than the colonial force

nservatism' of the Ndebele, guns were not generally issued to the impi. Despite this, guns were obviously thought to be an important weapon by the Ndebele, if only because their neighbours were becoming armed and more able to withstand the raids of the impi

swana's claim that guns were 'vital to their customary economic activity of huntin

An eyewitness account of the early nineteenth century Rozvi court relates that the Mambo had 'several guns' and four somewhat rusty cannons.43 Many of the guns traded from the Portuguese were muzzle-loaders known by the Shona as 'migigw

The Ndebele acquired firearms at a much later stage of their history than did the Shon

heir neighbours (Kalanga, Lozi) were putting guns to good economic use in the mid-nineteenth century. The ivory trade (and also the trade in cattle) in the Tswana and trans-Limpopo country was especially advantageous to the Ngwato capital, Shoshong, 'the largest, most prosperous and hence best armed town in the interi

he variety of guns was truly impressive. While muzzle-loaders dominated the Shona collection, the Ndebele possessed mainly breech-loading rifles, mostly Martini-Henry rifles.53 Other rifles found among the Ndebele included Sniders, Enfields, and those manufactured by Reilly, Rigby and Gibbs of Brist

gun society

They were also able to manufacture gunpowder from local materials, and for ammunition they used almost any missile that the particular

At the first battle there is evidence that the carrying of heavy firearms hampered the Ndebele in their night attack and there is a suggestion that premature firing gave away their position to the white forces

The use of firearms by the Ndebele in the Matopos was probably an important factor in inducing Rhodes to come to terms with them, terms which were not altogether unfavourable, certainly when seen in the light of settler demands, and of the treatment that was meted out to the Sho

le, firearms were most effective when used by societies that had little or no formal military s

frican people who did not fit in with this stereotype were not only considered to be lacking in military virtues and competency, but also to be greatly inferior in social and cultural attainmen