University of Johannesburg History 2A 2023

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, With a shield on its knees [. . .] 6

Kumbeka Gwabe, a veteran of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, remembered how at the battle of Isandlwana he killed a British soldier who fi red at him with his revolver and missed: ‘I came beside him and stuck my assegai under his right arm, pushing it through his body until it came out between his ribs on the left side. As soon as he fell I pulled the assegai out and slit his stomach so I knew he should not shoot any more of my people’. 4 This was the weapon of the hero, of a man who cultivated military honour or udumo (thunder), and who proved his personal prowess in single combat

As we have already learned from Singcofela, killing at a distance with a gun was of quite a different order from killing with an ‘assegai’, the short-hafted, long-bladed iklwa or stabbing-spear

‘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’

It suggests that the battle tactics the Zulu undoubtedly employed in the war of 1838 against the invading Voortrekkers, and against each other in the civil wars of 1840 and 1856, had already taken full shape during Shaka’s reign.

Thus, when the Voortrekkers came over the Drakensberg passes in late 1837 and encamped in Zululand, Dingane 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 successful. The Voortrekkers rallied, and proved their superiority over the Zulu army, as they had done previously over the Ndebele, when they repulsed them in major set-piece battles at Veglaer in August 1838, and Blood River (Ncome) in December, the same year. 23 The Zulu discovered that, because of the heavy musket fi re, 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 fi ghting to which they were accustomed. As Ngidi ka Mcikaziswa ruefully admitted to Stuart, ‘We Zulus die facing the enemy — all of us — but at the Ncome we turned our backs. This was caused by the Boers and their guns’. 2

The king ‘thereupon formed a regiment which he called Isitunyisa’ (isithunyisa is a Zulu word for gun). 26 Even so, when in January 1840 King Dingane unsuccessfully faced his usurping brother Prince Mpande at the battle of the Maqongqo Hills, both armies of about fi ve thousand men each were armed (as far as we know) almost entirely with spears and shields, and fought a bloodily traditional battle following Shaka’s hallowed tactics.

By the early 1870s, it seems that a good third of Pedi warriors carried a fi rearm of some sort. 33 The Zulu perceived that they should not fall behind their African neighbours such as the Pedi in the new arms race, not least because their kingdom seemed endangered in the late 1860s, and early 1870s. 3

However, because no Zulu man was permitted to leave the kingdom as he had to serve the king in his ibutho, Cetshwayo had to import fi rearms thorough traders. The 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 fi rearms (mainly antiquated muskets) in Zululand through

Portuguese Delagoa Bay to avoid Natal laws against gun traffi cking. 35 The Zulu paid mostly in cattle, which Dunn then sold off in Natal. 36

The Zulu had their own names for each of the bewildering varieties of fi rearms of all sizes and shapes and degrees of sophistication that came into their hands, and, in 1903, Bikwayo ka Noziwana recited a long list to Stuart that ranged from the musket that reached to a man’s neck (ibala) to the short pistol (isinqwana).

In this the Zulu were very different, for example, from the Xhosa who, between 1779 and 1878, fought nine Cape Frontier Wars against colonizers bearing fi rearms. During the course of this century of warfare, the Xhosa went from regarding fi rearms as mere ancillaries to their conventional weapons (as the Zulu still did) to making them central to the guerrilla tactics they increasingly adopted. By the time the Cape Colonial Defence Commission was taking evidence in September–October 1876, most witnesses were agreed that the Xhosa were skilled in their use of fi rearms, and made for formidable foes. 43

the best fi rearms went to men of high status

fi rearms 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. White hunters sold these items on the world markets and recruited and trained Africans in the use of fi rearms to assist them in obtaining them. 48 Ivory, 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 fi lled with stakes. 49 The king required fi rearms for the task.

Following the battle of Isandlwana, in which the Zulu captured about eight hundred modern Martini-Henry rifl es, Zulu marksmen, familiar through hunting with modern fi rearms, were able to make effective use of them in a number of subsequent engagements.

The Zulu believed that an overlap existed between this world and the world of the spirits that was expressed by a dark, mystical, evil force, umnyama, which created misfortune and could be contagious. 54 The Zulu, accordingly, were convinced that, when malicious witches (abathakathi) harnessed umnyama through ritual medicines (muthi), guns too could be made to serve their wicked ends.

He carried a breech-loading rifl e that he had taken at Isandhlwana [. . .] The Zulu army fl ed. He got tired of running away. He was a man too who understood well how to shoot. He shouted, ‘Back again!’ He turned and fi red. He struck a horse; it fell among the stones and the white man with it. They fi red at him. They killed him. 58