The Land of the Zulus: Its People, Its Government, and Its Army During the Anglo-Zulu War (1879)

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The earliest people of what is now South Africa were probably Khoisan language-speaking Khoikhoi cattle herders and San hunter-gatherers . Later on, by around the 5th century A.D. Bantu-speaking farmers arrived in southern Africa.

These newer arrivals gradually spread into what is now South Africa over the next few centuries. By the 11th century archaeological evidence suggests that Bantu-speakers were living in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province- the modern-day homeland of the Zulu people- and smelting iron. Those 11th century people were probably the ancestors of the modern Zulu people.

Another major ethnic group in South Africa are the Afrikaners, descendants mainly Dutch colonists who arrived in the 17th century, when the Dutch East India Company set up a colony at the Cape of Good Hope.

One of the most widely spoken group of Bantu languages in South Africa is Nguni. These are a group of very closely related languages or dialects that include the languages of some of South Africa’s largest ethnic groups- including the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi.

In the late 18th century, Nguni-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal were divided into many different clans and chiefdoms. In the early 1800s, a man named Shaka became chief of a small and unimportant Nguni clan in KwaZulu-Natal. He would go on to revolutionize military tactics in the region and conquer a large empire. Surrounding Nguni speaking groups were incorporated into the Zulu kingdom. Shaka was assassinated by his half-brother Dingane around 1828, but the Zulu empire remained one of the region’s most powerful.

By the mid-19th century, what is now South Africa was a political patchwork of British colonies, white Afrikaner republics, and black African states- the Zulu kingdom was the most powerful of the latter. After the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa, the British decided to bring the entire region under their control.

The British saw the conquest of the Zulu, the most powerful African state in the region, as the lynchpin to achieving this goal. Once they conquered the Zulu, they believed that the other black and white states would accept British rule. The Zulu king at the time, Cetshwayo hoped to avoid war with Britain, that he couldn’t win, but the British were just as eager to provoke a war.

The British issued an impossible ultimatum to provoke the war , and the Anglo-Zulu war broke out in 1879. The Zulus annihilated the British army at the Battle of Isandlwana, but that only motivated the British to send more reinforcements to restore their national honour and defeat the Zulu. Refusing to accept Cetshwayo’s attempts to negotiate peace, a British army armed with Gatling guns defeated the Zulus at their capital of Ulundi in July 1879.

The Anglo-Zulu War and the Zulu victory at Insandlwana, however, brought the Zulu kingdom fame and notoriety in the west. Articles about the Zulus appeared in western newspapers, and, after his defeat and exile, Cetshwayo became something of a celebrity during the time he spent in England. The British public and government became sympathetic to Cetshwayo, and supported his return to his homeland, but a dispute with a rival claimant to the throne resulted in civil war. Cetshwayo died soon after in 1884.

The British finally achieved their goal of unifying South Africa after the South African War . In this war Britain, with the help of colonial and Dominion troops from Canada, Australia, and India, conquered the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State.