AFRICAN HISTORY OF SHAKA ZULU

Shaka, also known as Chaka or Tshaka, was a Zulu chief who reigned from 1816 to 1828 and founded the illustrious Zulu Empire in Southern Africa. His military prowess is unparalleled, and he is credited with creating a fighting force that devastated the entire region. His life is the subject of numerous colourful and exaggerated stories, many of which are debated by historians.

Born in the lap of luxury, Shaka was the son of Senzangakona, chieftain of the Zulu, and Nandi, an orphaned princess of the neighbouring Langeni clan. However, his parents' marriage violated Zulu custom, and the stigma of this extended to the child. The couple separated when Shaka was six, and Nandi took her son back to the Langeni, where he passed a fatherless boyhood among a people who despised his mother. In 1802, the Langeni drove Nandi out, and she finally found shelter with the Dletsheni, a subclan of the powerful Mthethwa. When Shaka was 23, Dingiswayo, the Mthethwa paramount chieftain, called up Shaka’s Dletsheni age group for military service. For the next six years, he served with brilliance as a warrior of the Mthethwa Empire.

Senzangakona died in 1816, and Dingiswayo released Shaka from service and sent him to take over the Zulu, which at this time probably numbered fewer than 1,500, occupying an area on the White Umfolozi River. They were among the smallest of the more than 800 Eastern Nguni–Bantu clans, but from the day of Shaka’s arrival, they commenced their march to greatness. Shaka ruled with an iron hand from the outset, meting out instant death for the slightest opposition.

His first act was to reorganize the army. Like all the clans, the Zulu were armed with oxhide shields and spindly throwing spears. Battles were little more than brief and relatively bloodless clashes in which the outnumbered side prudently gave way before extensive casualties occurred. Shaka first rearmed his men with long-bladed, short-hafted stabbing assegais, which forced them to fight at close quarters. He then instituted the regimental system based on age groups, quartered at separate kraals (villages) and distinguished by uniform markings on shields and by various combinations of headdress and ornaments.

He developed standard tactics, which the Zulu used in every battle. The available regiments (known collectively as the impi) were divided into four groups. The strongest, termed the “chest,” closed with the enemy to pin him down while two “horns” raced out to encircle and attack the foe from behind. A reserve, known as the “loins,” was seated nearby, with its back to the battle so as not to become unduly excited, and could be sent to reinforce any part of the ring if the enemy threatened to break out. The battle was supervised by indunas, or officers, who used hand signals to direct the regiments. An impi consistently covered 50 miles (80 km) a day, living off grain and cattle requisitioned from the kraals it passed and accompanied by boys who carried the warriors’ sleeping mats and cooking pots.

Shaka fought for extermination, incorporating the remnants of the clans he smashed into the Zulu. He first decimated the small clans in his vicinity, starting with the Langeni; he sought out the men who had made his boyhood a misery and impaled them on the sharpened stakes of their own kraal fences. In less than a year, the Zulu—and their army—had quadrupled in number. In 1817 Dingiswayo—still Shaka’s overlord—was murdered, and the last restraint on Zulu expansion was removed.

Within two years, Shaka bested the only clans large enough to threaten him, the Ndwandwe and the Qwabe, and in a series of annual campaigns, he then struck at and smashed the complex network of clans living to the south of the Zulu territories. By 1823, the region was a depopulated ruin of smoking kraals, and the terrified survivors had broken up tribal patterns as far away as the Cape Colony. Shaka's legacy as a military genius and empire builder is unparalleled, and his name will forever be etched in the annals of history.