Shaka

Shaka (1787 – 22 September 1828), also known as Shaka Zulu, the name by which he most often appears in the history books, he was a Zulu tribal chief who in the early 19th century started a process that transformed the small Zulu tribe into the mightiest warrior nation in Africa, successfully fighting off the advancing British Empire from Cape Good Hope.

There are various versions of the life and work of this tribal chief that are often at odds with reality, presenting him as a brilliant military leader or as an inhuman despot. The sources on his life come mainly from the Zulu oral tradition.

In Shaka times and tribal society there were beliefs in magical and religious rituals that the Zulu performed, even in the realm of warfare. European chronicles have always used them to disparage Zulu culture and have influenced later evaluations of Shaka.

Although what has stood out the most about this tribal leader is the fearsome aspect of his personality, it is recognized the genius he showed transforming a small and unimportant tribe into a nation that tenaciously defended its territory in a framework of wars of intertribal annihilation by the possession of cattle or the conquest of territory.

When he came to power, Shaka had as his followers the 1,500 members of his father's clan, barely a third of whom were warriors. After years of brutal warfare, by 1820 the entire Natal Plateau had been conquered and the his enemies' lands devastated. Three years later all the Zulu tribes were finally subservient to his command. Finally in 1826 an army of 50,000 Zulus attacked and destroyed the Ndwandwes, a tribe of 40,000 people. At the time of his death Shaka he ruled over a quarter of a million or half a million people and possessed an army of 90,000 to 100,000 men and women (although only about 50,000 spears could be mobilized at a time).

Shaka has usually been accused of having killed more than a million people in his campaigns and causing large migrations of his vanquished enemies who did not wish to die. This figure comes from the writer Henry Francis Fynn in 1832 when the Governor of the Cape informed him of the depopulation caused by Shaka. However, Flynn was not an eyewitness to the events so his estimates are questionable.

Shaka's reign spanned 12 years (1816-1828), in which he forged a nation that built an empire in south-east Africa during the XIX, known as the Zulu nation, to which he gave a series of values and traditions that have endured until now, which still exists as a nation in present-day Basutoland and Bechuanaland, and considers itself independent. It is worth noting the complexity of staying in power for so many years at this time, a feat achieved by the Zulu king.

Shaka had a great relationship with the English. He many times awaited the embassies sent by the English king with great enthusiasm, contradicting the positions that add to the adversity that existed between them. An example that this was not the case is the great relationship he had with Henry Francis Fynn or the transfer of some land in Port Natal, so that they could live there.

The beginnings

Colonia de Natal, centuryXIX.

In Shaka's time, the Zulus lived in what is now the province of Natal (eastern South Africa).

The first European chronicles recounting the life of the Zulus were provided by shipwrecked men in the 18th century, who described them as a friendly, cordial, prosperous and law-abiding people, who were later said to have evolved negatively towards later Victorian chronicles which for colonial interest branded the Zulus as a savage, ferocious and uncivilized people.

Shaka was born on an indeterminate day in the year 1787 (exact date unknown) as the product of a pregnancy outside the proper protocol of Zulu nobles, to his mother, Nandi, with the Zulu chief Senzangakona In a society with a widespread practice of polygamy and which had strict rules of conduct regulating in particular sexual relations between young people and despite the fact that Shaka was the son of a chief, both he and his mother fell out of favor and were marginalized by their tribe.

The systematic marginalization to which both were subjected covered multiple aspects of their lives and they suffered great hardships and humiliations, including the very name of Shaka, which in the Zulu language means beetle. As a consequence of this marginalization, a notable resentment and a sense of injustice awoke in him that later developed into a ruthless and implacable ambition.

The repression against Shaka and his mother arose from the fact that Shaka, at the age of six, took charge of caring for his father's sheep. The young man erred and allowed a dog to kill a sheep. His father became angry and Nandi defended the boy, earning his expulsion from the Senzangakona clan.

In time, Senzangakona became chief of the Zulu but disowned Shaka as a son, so his mother, aware that Zulu tradition led parents to murder their children to avoid future threats, sent him away. of the tribe to protect him.

Exile and early years of reign

Before arriving at the clan where they settled, the Mthethwa. Both wandered through various kraals (clans), but the same thing happened in all of them: Shaka was bullied by boys her age. In 1802 there was a famine that affected Elangeni -the area in which they lived-, and they had to go into exile towards the Mthethwa tribe.

Moving away meant a bitter exile for Shaka in which, after wandering around various places, he ended up being a warrior in the training regiments (shields) of the Mthethwa tribe, where he spent several years serving as a soldier and acquired a experience that would be the source of his innovative ideas and allowed him to analyze military techniques and social organization.

During these years he developed an imposing physique, a temperamental character and excelled so remarkably as a warrior that when Prince Mthethwa died he was named his successor and received the favor of chief Dingiswayo (it seems that Shaka had ordered the slaying of the two direct heirs to the throne mthethwa).

Their exploits caused Chief Dingiswayo to summon Shaka's father to his court and introduce them to each other. At first his father did not recognize him, but this meeting led to their reconciliation and would be the beginning of his rise to power until he became de facto chief of two tribes at the beginning of his reign, after Shaka's father and a half-brother died in circumstances as yet unknown.

Shaka assumed command of the Zulu tribe on the death of his father and half-brother, thus becoming chief of a tribe to which, due to the years of marginalization he had suffered up to then, he felt no loyalty, but the The suffering he had endured inspired him to make changes by acting from the beginning with speed and determination to create a community based on the principles of work, social duty, respect for hierarchy and self-discipline, reinforced by a system of justice based on harsh punishments for the one who raped them.

Initially, Shaka had to be very careful not to offend the powerful conservative elders of the tribe, but with this in mind, he began to make substantial changes to the organization of the Zulu army, using it as an engine of change to carry out the reforms that constituted the basis of his power.

Thus, as their military system developed, the roles played by men and women in Zulu society also changed. Thus, women began to take charge of supplying food to the population and providing logistical support to the army during its campaigns, and men began to combine the traditional tasks of herding cattle with military ones in equal measure.

After moving his headquarters to a more convenient location for strategic reasons and modifying the Zulu marriage laws, he established the Amabutho system, which consisted of the formation of military cadres with young men of the same age in each area whom they served. he gave a personal touch, instilling discipline, loyalty, determination and courage, while promoting martial skills as a fundamental element in organizing a true militia system, with a period of compulsory service of around three years.

There is an accepted belief that he established a system of military training in a field covered with thorns to harden the soles of the feet of the warriors to allow them to dispense with the uncomfortable sandals they used, thus increasing their mobility in combat, and who introduced into his army a weapon of his own invention that was a kind of short assegai (spear) very useful as a knife and much more manageable than the long assegai used until then, giving the Zulu army a superiority unprecedented tactic in the region.

With the introduction of this new weapon and the new regiments, the way of doing battle at the time changed. Now the fight would be hand-to-hand, because this spear was created for it. Previously, throwing spears were used, which were banned by Shaka.

Building the Kingdom

Zulu warriors.

With his army reorganized, Shaka tested his new ideas in a confrontation with the Bhutelezi clan, a people with whom the Zulus already had old rivalries, in which the Zulu army was so efficient that it defeated them soundly in the first few seconds. fighting and managed to destroy the clan.

This was the first of several military campaigns that the Zulu waged at a time known as the Mfecane, a highly chaotic period in African history in which various leaders used terror and violence to subdue their adversaries, and in the one in which Shaka had to face the threat of the Ndwandwe tribe, who, under the command of chief Zwide, defeated the Mthethwa and killed chief Dingiswayo.

To deal with this threat, Shaka sought to form alliances with other tribes and during negotiations he was scorned by the chief of a tribe he was with during his exile; his reaction against this chief was relentless, he sent one of his Impi (Zulu warrior army) and killed the chief after subduing the tribe and placing as successor to the former chief another who became an ally of the Zulu and helped him to control of the area, and Shaka's fame as a powerful and magical man spread rapidly.

In 1818, Shaka fought his first battle against Zwide in which the Zulu army suffered heavy casualties who began to cover themselves with warriors from allied tribes and proceeded to further strengthen the army's discipline to remedy any shortcomings.

Later in 1819, Shaka was informed by Zulu scouts that Zwide's army was preparing an attack to which he reacted by initially abandoning many of the Zulu settlements north of KwaBulawayo and calling up all available men to reinforce his army.

His strategy consisted of gradually withdrawing his troops as the enemy advanced so that, after a few days, Zwide's army ran out of supplies and, to increase fear in the enemy ranks, had parties of Zulu warriors infiltrated the enemy camp with the objective of undermining their morale, which facilitated their defeat when they entered into battle and as a result the chief Zwide was executed, the survivors persecuted and the enemy's capital razed along with all its inhabitants.

After the defeat of the Ndwandwe, Zulu territories stretched from the Drakensberg massif to the sea, with a coastal area stretching from Puerto Natal to Delagoa Bay.

Essential to Zulu territorial expansion was Shaka's reformation of the army. Before the Zulu king the main weapon of the South African tribes was a long, throwing spear with a metal tip, called an assegaya. Battles were limited to throwing this weapon and there was rarely hand-to-hand combat. So not many people died. Shaka introduced a new weapon, a short spear used as a dagger, the iklwa, along with a heavy and much larger shield made of cowhide. The idea was that when protecting with the shield in the left hand from the attacks of the enemy, while stabbing the enemy with the iklwa in the ribs.

Shaka also ruled out the use of sandals to give his warriors greater speed; those who opposed were executed. After this he trained his men to march about 50 miles a day, over hot and rough terrain. He also trained them in encirclement tactics. In order to march barefoot over these terrains several kilometers a day, Shaka ordered his warriors to walk over piles of thorny branches, usually acacias.

For greater logistical support, every male child from the age of six became udibi, a warrior's apprentice and in charge of supplies and weapons, sometimes they were used as light forces to go for tributes (cattle, women and young men) and to attack forces on the flanks (ibutho lempi).

He reorganized the regiments, which continued to be divided by age, and the work was divided among the different members and units. Each regiment was given an insignia and name of its own. Armed forces or armies were called impi (although any force could bear that name). "Regiments", "corps" and "armies" were organized, the number of men varied greatly, according to the needs of the campaign, local manpower and the king's desire. A regiment varied from 400 to 4,000 men.

The main battle tactic was the buffalo horns formation:

• The main force or head attack the enemy on the front and immobilize him. It is made up of the strongest warriors.
• The forces of the flanks or hornswhile the enemy is set by the “head”, the “bottles” attack both flanks of the enemy seeking to catch the enemy.
• The rear or I am. behind the “head”, they came into action if the fence was broken.

The coordination was in charge of the izinduna (heads of regiments) who used hand signals or messengers. It should be noted that all of Shaka's innovations are simple adaptations of native culture with no European influence.

The Heyday

The consolidation of Zulu power had a major impact on the surrounding territories; Some chiefs led their tribes north to present-day Mozambique and Zimbabwe, others fled west over the Drakensberg Mountains, and those who remained were assimilated into the new Zulu Empire as tribute-paying vassals.

At the same time there was a great drought that made Shaka the absolute ruler of almost the entire Natal region by 1824 due to intertribal fights for sources of water and food that caused the disappearance of many minor tribes, thus leaving extensive areas south of the Zulu nation turned into desolate deserts inhabited by cannibals.

The power of the Zulu Empire was based on the wealth provided by cattle and the military supremacy of its army under the direct control of Shaka, who lived as absolute sovereign in a kraal, located near the Tugela River, with a radius of three kilometers protected by a palisade three meters high that had a complex of rooms for the court and the warrior class, and a fenced enclosure for cattle.

Politicalally, Shaka began to increase his power by limiting the privileges of the minor chiefs of the tribe in various ways, including the important role of intermediaries for the ancestral spirits and appointing those he trusted most as regional chiefs.

Apparently, he came to impose increasingly strict rules on Zulu society that led to a complete separation of warriors and women; and there are versions, stating that he had a tendency to order executions capriciously and arbitrarily, like those of a European of unknown nationality, who was at his court and described him as a person of great ability but cruel, capricious, ruthless and aggressive who add to another testimony that describes him as a savage and inhuman tyrant with a mixture of perversity and whose favorite topic of conversation was war.

Regarding aspects of his personal life such as sexuality, there are many conflicting legends but it seems that he was not promiscuous despite the fact that polygamy was common among the Zulus and that he had hundreds of women at his court.

It was then that, in 1824, Dutch and British expeditionaries began to arrive in the area as a factor that was going to alter the general situation in southeast Africa.

The state that Shaka Zulu was configuring based on the measures he took brought about the migration of thousands of people[1]. This is the period known as Mfecane, in which there were various clashes between the different chiefdoms for hegemony in the region between 1820 and 1830. As a result of these events, a period of wars and successive migrations. Despite this, there is a debate as to why the Zulu kingdom was not the only engine that gave rise to different kingdoms in this region, but that slavers, traders and European settlers also came into play in the process. We must not forget that in the year 1820 the English and Dutch settled in the Cape of Good Hope who wanted to expand inland, which was causing clashes with the tribes that already lived in those areas:

“Rather it was the complex interaction of African societies with white labour, ivory and slave traders that led African chieftains to engage in aggressive defense strategies to consolidate their kingdoms emerging” [2].

[1] GOLAN, D. (1990). The Life Story of King Shaka and Gender Tensions in the Zulu State. History in Africa, vol.17, p.105.

[2] MACKINNON. ACE. (2005). Shaka and Zulu Kingdom, 1810-1840. In Shillington, K. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of African History. p.1351. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Shaka's women

Shaka reneged on marriage, since he considered that the union meant that young people were not totally efficient when establishing family ties. Despite her radical position, Nandi repeatedly tried to convince him to marry and give him a grandson.

Shaka had a large harem, but none of them were married and he called them 'sisters'. Despite this, if anything shows throughout his life it is his love for Pampata, a friend of his sister (Nomcoba).

Shaka tried not to have children but Mbuzikazi - one of his harem girls - became pregnant. After Shaka's notice to all her lovers that she would not allow them to have a child from her, she decided to keep it a secret and gave birth with the help of Nandi. Shaka's mother hid the existence of the grandson from her, but one day she was surprised by Shaka. She did not react as she thought and she was friendly with the boy.

If something is clear, it is that Pampata always occupied Shaka's heart, while Mbuzikazi was the owner of his lust. The true love of her was her mother, Nandi. When she passed away, she was devastated and the "black" era began. of Shaka, in which he originated several massacres. At this time he relied on Pampata, who was the only one who could control the madness of the Zulu king.

Eventually, Shaka had a harem of over 1,200 women who were located in Bulawayo and its various military kraals.

Last years

South Africa, 1885.

Until the early 19th century century, European invasion of the area had been limited to coastal regions such as the Portuguese settlement of Maputo, in Delagoa Bay, north of Zulu territory and from which the Portuguese traded mainly in ivory, and sporadically in slaves; but from the 1820s the situation would begin to change, the Dutch and British began to settle in the Cape of Good Hope and penetrate into the interior of Africa, thus taking place the first confrontations with the natives.

The first important conflict was with the Xhosa tribe after which, years later, a prominent member of that tribe named Jakot, who after having been a slave to the Dutch and British managed to learn their languages until he became an interpreter, appeared at the Shaka's court after a shipwreck of a British expedition in which he was traveling and informed him of the presence of Europeans in the area and their customs. Shaka took him into his service after exhaustive questioning and spent many years at the Zulu court as his adviser and confidant.

In 1824, a group of young British and Dutch men arrived in KwaBulawayo and witnessed an attempt to impress them with gifts of ivory and a kind of ceremony consisting of a dance performed by young women, a parade of Zulu troops, and a display of huge herds of cattle with the intention of demonstrating to them the wealth and power of the Zulu nation.

During this visit, Shaka suffered an assassination attempt in which he was seriously injured and received medical care from one of the Europeans, Henry Finn, who managed to cure him and thus obtain great prestige among the Zulus, which made Shaka intuit the potential power of the Europeans and began to be interested in obtaining the medicine practiced by them.

To do this, he began making plans to form an alliance with the British and gain their support by establishing important trade relations with them. He managed to obtain the commitment of several characters from Port Natal (present-day Durban) to reach an agreement through a public proposal in Cape Town (South Africa) to hold an interview for which King George IV proposed to Shaka that he send a representation to City Cape. Simultaneously with the negotiations with the British, Shaka also began a military campaign on his northern border against the Ndwandwe, whom he had already defeated in 1818, in which Henry Finn accompanied the expedition as an ally and hostage, for which reason He was an eyewitness to many events during it.

Actually, there were several important men besides Henry Finn and a local native chief in Cape Town who wanted to take advantage of the circumstances to gain unlimited trading rights and the native chief had pretended to negotiate with Shaka as mediator for Britain but the reality it was that he had no authority to make any deal on behalf of the British.

This was a time when land was the key factor in the conflict between European settlers and native Africans that lasted into the 17th century XX. Most Africans did not have the European concept of property and therefore fell victim to a blatant fraud by unscrupulous settlers that consisted of using thumb prints as signatures to fraudulently make legal property documents for then present them to the colonial authorities and claim the land. This was done using weapons or gin as gifts to the natives. Unfortunately, Shaka was also the target of this deception, whereby he was induced to hand over some of the Zulu land in Port Natal (present-day Durban).

Shaka's military organization reached its peak during this campaign. The Zulu army advanced in a column formation using teenage boys to drive the cattle and young girls to transport food and drink while boys roamed the territories secured by the army to hunt and increase the food supply.

Ahead of the main body of the army, Shaka sent out an advance party of trained scouts and spies to act as decoys and discover the location of the enemy, who they discovered in the Dololwane Hills after which the boys returned to Zulu territory for safety reasons. and going into battle, Shaka ordered his troops to use the usual tactics, dividing into four formations as the warriors advanced from the top of a hillside, with many women and children bringing up their rear. The battle took place in three head-on clashes during which the Zulu army repulsed the Ndwandwe attack and drove the enemy into retreat, harassing them in a pursuit in which the surviving warriors were killed along with the women and children in the rear, and the They seized their cattle.

This victory was decisive over the Ndwandwe and placed Shaka at the height of his power, securing his northern border and causing other tribes suspicious of Zulu power to flee to Lake Tanganyika; and his social system was consolidated thanks to the effectiveness of his army during the rest of his reign. But then a series of events occurred that affected Shaka psychologically and made his behavior more erratic and unpredictable than usual.

Shaka thought it necessary to move the capital away from KwaBulawayo but was unable to make a final decision on the matter, as one of the reasons for doing so was his interest in making deals with the British in Port Natal and accessing the growing arms market of fire coming to the area.

It was then that an event occurred that affected Shaka deeply: the death of his mother, an event of which the circumstances have been reconstructed through descriptions by Henry Finn and the compilations of the Zulu oral tradition, which is why there are two versions. Finn tells in his chronicles that he saw Nandi a few hours before she supposedly died of dysentery, but Zulu oral tradition suggests that Nandi tricked his son into having a grandson, as he was always paranoid about the possibility of a child. took the throne from him and forced their wives to abort or sacrifice their children as soon as they were born and that Shaka stabbed Nandi in a fit of rage when he discovered the deception. He then tried to save her, to no avail.

After Nandi's death, Henry Finn estimated that some 7,000 people were executed for failing to show enough sadness to prove their innocence in what appeared to be some kind of plot to assassinate Nandi, and for a year Shaka banned the Zulus drink milk, plant crops and have sex so any woman who became pregnant at that time was executed along with her husband.

Meanwhile, Shaka had chosen a chief to sail a delegation to Cape Town with eighty elephant tusks as a gift to King George IV and make a deal with the British. The delegation sailed in May 1828 but never reached Cape Town as it was detained in Port Elizabeth for several weeks and then an envoy from the British Governor in Cape Town appeared before them, telling them flatly that he had no confidence in the delegation., that the Zulu king had no status for his government and that he had not come there to do business with them. After which the delegation had no choice but to return to the Zulu court to inform him of what had happened and soon after the head of the delegation died of illness from which Shaka suspected that he had been poisoned.

Shaka reacted patiently to the failure of the delegation, but he began to realize that the Europeans had interests contrary to his own and that these were a threat to him and his people that they would have to confront sooner or later.

Simultaneously, Shaka organized a military expedition against the Mpondo tribe to secure their southern border and capture large herds of cattle to reward their allies, culminating in a quick victory but counterproductive long-term results, as some Some of the defeated tribes fled south and to Cape Town, the British began to hear about Shaka's brutality and also many of their enemies had fled to Port Natal hoping to find support to undermine Shaka's power.

By August 1828, Shaka was immersed in a deep political crisis as a result of the failure of negotiations with the British, who had sent a powerful contingent of troops to the Zulu borders to impose their will when the conflict with the latter had barely ended. I mpondo them.

All this exacerbated his fears regarding the future and made him more unstable, so before his army returned from the campaign against the Mpondo, he ordered the execution of the wives of 400 warriors for alleged practices of witchcraft and decided to send his army of 50,000 men to Delagoa Bay, making his half-brothers accompany the army to keep them away from the Court but they pretended to be sick so they could return to KwaBulawayo without Shaka's knowledge, and with the complicity of Shaka's personal servant They waited until Shaka sat at the entrance to his palace to receive a delegation on the night of September 23, 1828, and stabbed him repeatedly until they ensured that he died.