Anglo-Zulu War

The Anglo-Zulu War was a short but very important war fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom, an independent African state in the region that is now KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It lasted about six months. The British started it, even though the Zulu king had not attacked them.

Many people know the war because of two battles fought on the same day, 22 January 1879. At Isandlwana, a Zulu army destroyed most of a British camp, killing more than 1,300 soldiers and helpers. A few hours later, at a small mission station called Rorke’s Drift, about 150 British and colonial soldiers held off thousands of Zulu attackers through the night. One battle became a symbol of African military skill; the other became a Victorian legend of British courage.

But the war is about much more than battles. It is the story of how a proud African kingdom, built up over two generations, lost its independence. It shows how European empires in the late nineteenth century used ultimatums, alliances and military force to take over African land, and how Africans resisted.

In the early 1800s the Zulu were a small chiefdom among many Nguni-speaking communities between the Drakensberg mountains and the Indian Ocean. Under Shaka kaSenzangakhona (ruled about 1816–1828) the Zulu became the centre of a large and powerful kingdom. Shaka and his successors brought many neighbouring peoples under their rule, sometimes by agreement and often by war.

The heart of the kingdom was the amabutho system. Young men of about the same age were formed into regiments (singular ibutho) that served the king. They lived for periods at royal homesteads (amakhanda), herded the king’s cattle, worked his fields and fought in his wars. A man could marry only when the king gave his regiment permission. This system linked every household to the king and gave the kingdom a trained army that could gather quickly.

Cattle were the most important form of wealth. They were used for bride-wealth (ilobolo), for gifts, for sacrifices to the ancestors and for food. Most people lived in homesteads (imizi) of round, thatched houses around a cattle enclosure. When we talk about the destruction caused by the war, the loss of cattle and the burning of homesteads mattered as much as deaths on the battlefield.

Cetshwayo kaMpande became king after his father Mpande died in 1872. He had won a bloody succession struggle against his brother Mbuyazi at Ndondakusuka in 1856. He wanted to restore the strength of the monarchy while keeping peace with the British colony of Natal to the south and the Boer republic of the Transvaal to the north-west.

In the 1870s the British Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, wanted to join the British colonies, the Boer republics and the African kingdoms of southern Africa into one “confederation” under British control, as had been done in Canada. In 1877 Britain annexed the Boer republic of the Transvaal. By doing so it also took over the Transvaal’s long quarrel with the Zulu about land along their shared border.

Sir Henry Bartle Frere, sent as High Commissioner in 1877, believed that an independent Zulu Kingdom with a large army stood in the way of confederation. A boundary commission set up in 1878 actually decided that most of the disputed land belonged to the Zulu, which was awkward for Frere. He delayed announcing the result and used other incidents as reasons for action. The most famous was in 1878, when sons of the Zulu chief Sihayo crossed into Natal, seized two of his wives who had fled there, and killed them.

On 11 December 1878, at the Lower Thukela river, Frere’s representatives read out the boundary award together with an ultimatum. Among other things, it demanded that Cetshwayo hand over Sihayo’s sons, pay fines in cattle, disband the amabutho system, allow young men to marry freely, and accept a British Resident. Accepting would have meant giving up the kingdom’s independence. The British government in London had not wanted a new war, but slow communications allowed Frere to act on his own. When the deadline passed, British forces crossed the border on 11 January 1879.

From the Zulu point of view, the war was an invasion by a neighbour with whom the king had tried hard to stay on good terms. Cetshwayo told his people to fight only on Zulu soil and not to invade Natal, and he sent messengers to ask for peace several times during the war.

The British commander, Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford, had about 16,000–17,000 men for the first invasion. Only part of them were British regular soldiers with breech-loading Martini-Henry rifles and a few pieces of artillery. Many were white colonial volunteers and mounted police, and several thousand were Africans recruited in Natal into the Natal Native Contingent. These African soldiers were often poorly equipped (at first only about one in ten had a firearm), and their role and losses are often left out of popular accounts.

The Zulu army could gather perhaps 35,000–40,000 men. Most fought with a cowhide shield and the short stabbing spear (iklwa) together with throwing spears. Many also had firearms, mostly old muskets bought through traders, but they had little training with them and poor ammunition. The Zulu were fast, disciplined and experienced; their classic attack was the “horns of the buffalo”: the centre (chest) held the enemy while two wings (horns) swept round to surround them, with a reserve (loins) behind.

Chelmsford divided his force into several columns that would enter Zululand from different directions and meet at the king’s capital, oNdini (which the British called Ulundi). He expected the Zulu to be defeated quickly.

The central column, with Chelmsford himself, crossed the Mzinyathi (Buffalo) River at Rorke’s Drift and camped below the rocky hill of Isandlwana. The camp was not fortified. Early on 22 January Chelmsford took about half the force away to search for the Zulu army, which he thought was further east. In fact the main Zulu army, perhaps 20,000–25,000 men under the commanders Ntshingwayo kaMahole and Mavumengwana kaNdlela, was hidden in a valley only a few kilometres away.

When British scouts found the Zulu army, it attacked. The regiments spread out in the horns formation and advanced across open ground under rifle fire. The British and colonial line, under Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine and Colonel Anthony Durnford, was too thinly spread. Within a few hours the horns closed around the camp and the defenders were overwhelmed. More than 1,300 men on the British side died, including many soldiers of the Natal Native Contingent; only a small number escaped. A partial eclipse of the sun darkened the sky during the final stage, and it was later remembered in both British and Zulu accounts. Zulu losses were also heavy, perhaps 1,000–3,000 killed, and many more wounded.

Zulu accounts collected later explain actions that shocked the British, such as cutting open the bodies of the dead. In Zulu belief this released the spirit of the dead man and protected the warrior who had killed him; it was a ritual, not simple cruelty. Cetshwayo is reported to have said that the victory was like “a spear thrust into the belly of the nation” because so many young men had died.

That afternoon and night, 3,000–4,000 men of the Zulu reserve, led by the king’s half-brother Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, crossed into Natal against Cetshwayo’s orders and attacked the small post at Rorke’s Drift. About 150 defenders, behind walls of mealie bags and biscuit boxes, held out for about ten hours. Eleven Victoria Crosses, Britain’s highest award for bravery, were given for this defence, an unusually large number for a single engagement. Historians have noted that the British government had strong reasons to celebrate Rorke’s Drift in order to distract attention from the disaster at Isandlwana.

Isandlwana stopped the British invasion. On the coast, the right column under Colonel Charles Pearson won a battle at Nyezane on 22 January but was then shut in at the mission station of Eshowe for more than two months. In the north-west, Colonel Evelyn Wood’s column raided Zulu communities and cattle. The panic in Natal was great, but the Zulu, following Cetshwayo’s instructions, did not invade the colony.

Britain sent reinforcements from across the empire. At the end of March the war turned. On 28 March Zulu forces, joined by the local abaQulusi, defeated a British mounted attack on Hlobane mountain. But the next day the main Zulu army attacked Wood’s fortified camp at Kambula and suffered very heavy losses against rifles and artillery fired from behind barricades. On 2 April another Zulu army was defeated at Gingindlovu, and Eshowe was relieved.

In the second invasion Chelmsford moved slowly and carefully, building fortified camps. On 1 June the exiled French Prince Imperial, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who had joined the British forces as an observer, was killed by Zulu soldiers on a patrol, an event that caused a sensation in Europe. The British government had meanwhile sent Sir Garnet Wolseley to replace Chelmsford, but Chelmsford wanted to finish the war first.

On 4 July 1879 at Ulundi, Chelmsford formed about 5,000 men into a large hollow square with artillery and Gatling guns. The Zulu regiments attacked bravely but could not reach the square. After about half an hour they withdrew, and the British burned the royal homestead of oNdini. Cetshwayo escaped, but he was hunted down and captured in the Ngome forest on 28 August 1879.

Exact numbers are uncertain. British records list about 1,900 dead on their side, including African soldiers from Natal whose deaths were counted less carefully than those of white soldiers. Zulu battlefield deaths are only estimates, made by British officers who counted bodies or guessed; figures of about 6,000–7,000 are often given, and some historians think the true number, including men who died later of wounds, was higher, perhaps around 10,000. The Zulu army had no medical service, and many wounded men died at home.

The war also struck civilians. British columns and their African allies burned homesteads and royal kraals, and they seized tens of thousands of cattle as a deliberate way of weakening the kingdom. For Zulu families this meant losing food, wealth and the animals needed for marriage and religious ceremonies. Planting and harvesting were disrupted.

Many Africans in Natal were also affected. Some served willingly in the Natal Native Contingent, sometimes because of old conflicts with the Zulu royal house; others were pressed into service or worked as transport drivers and labourers. Their experiences were rarely written down and have been studied seriously only in recent decades.

Wolseley did not annex Zululand. Instead, in September 1879, he divided it into thirteen chiefdoms under appointed chiefs. Some were men who had helped the British, such as Zibhebhu kaMaphitha, Cetshwayo’s brother Hamu, and even a white trader and hunter, John Dunn. The aim was to make sure that no single Zulu ruler would be strong again. The amabutho system was banned.

The result was disaster. The appointed chiefs fought with supporters of the royal house, the uSuthu. Cetshwayo, held in Cape Town, campaigned to return. He visited London in 1882 and met Queen Victoria. In 1883 Britain restored him to only part of his old kingdom, with Zibhebhu left independent beside him. Zibhebhu attacked and destroyed oNdini in July 1883, killing many leading men. Cetshwayo fled and died at Eshowe in February 1884; the cause of his death is uncertain, and some suspected poison.

His son Dinuzulu won Boer help against Zibhebhu, but in return the Boers took a large piece of Zulu land, which they called the New Republic. In 1887 Britain annexed what was left of Zululand, and in 1897 it was joined to Natal. Much Zulu land was later opened to white settlement. Historians such as Jeff Guy have argued that the post-war settlement and civil war did even more damage to Zulu society than the invasion itself.

The war was also part of a wider story. In 1880–81 the Transvaal Boers rose against British rule and won independence again in the First Boer War. In 1906, the Bambatha Rebellion against colonial taxes in Natal was crushed with great loss of African life. In each case the military defeat of African states opened the way for the land laws and labour system of twentieth-century South Africa.

In Britain the war was remembered mainly through Rorke’s Drift and heroic images of soldiers. Paintings, poems and later films, especially Zulu (1964) and Zulu Dawn (1979), shaped the popular picture. Zulu (1964), which depicts Rorke’s Drift, is admired as a film but has been criticised for showing Zulu warriors mostly as a nameless mass. Notably, the part of Cetshwayo was played by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a real descendant of the Zulu royal family who later became a leading South African politician.

For Zulu people, Isandlwana is a source of pride and a proof that an African army could defeat a modern European force. Praise poems (izibongo) and oral tradition kept alive the names of regiments and commanders. Today the battle is commemorated at the site each year, often in the presence of the Zulu king, and a memorial to the Zulu dead stands at Isandlwana beside the many British memorials. The war has also been used in modern politics, for example in Zulu nationalist movements, which shows that memory can be shaped to serve present-day aims.

In South Africa as a whole, post-apartheid heritage policy has tried to present the battlefields as shared history, including the Black soldiers who fought on the British side. Some people at the time also criticised the war in Britain itself: Bishop John William Colenso of Natal and his daughters defended Cetshwayo and argued that Frere had forced the war on him. The debate about whether the war was a justified act of defence or an unprovoked invasion began in 1879 and has continued ever since.

The written record is dominated by British sources: official dispatches, the proceedings of the court of inquiry into Isandlwana, parliamentary papers, regimental records, soldiers’ letters and diaries, and reports by newspaper correspondents. These are rich but one-sided. They often exaggerate Zulu numbers, under-count African auxiliaries and Zulu casualties, and reflect the racial assumptions of the time.

Zulu perspectives survive in several kinds of sources. After the war, British officials and missionaries recorded statements by Zulu veterans about Isandlwana and other battles. Cetshwayo himself dictated accounts of Zulu history and customs while in captivity; these were later edited by Colin Webb and John Wright as A Zulu King Speaks (1978). The James Stuart Archive, a large collection of oral testimonies recorded by the Natal official James Stuart in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and published in several volumes by Webb and Wright, is a key source for Zulu society and memory, though historians must remember that Stuart chose the questions and translated the answers.

Material evidence adds more. The battlefields of Isandlwana and Ulundi have been surveyed, and cartridges, buttons and other objects show where fighting took place. Such evidence has been used to test the traditional written accounts of how the British line at Isandlwana collapsed.

Early histories focused on blame within the British command. Who was responsible for Isandlwana: Chelmsford, who split his force and left the camp unfortified, or Durnford and Pulleine, who were in command on the spot and died there? Chelmsford’s supporters tended to blame Durnford. Another long-running debate concerns ammunition supply: an older story held that the British line collapsed because reserve ammunition boxes could not be opened quickly enough. Many later historians have doubted this and stress instead the thinly stretched line, the speed of the Zulu advance and the sheer size of the Zulu army.

Donald Morris’s The Washing of the Spears (1965) was a hugely popular narrative of the rise and fall of the Zulu nation, but it relied mostly on British sources and has been criticised for repeating colonial stereotypes. From the late 1970s a new generation of historians, especially Jeff Guy in The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom (1979), shifted attention to Zulu society, the economy of cattle and labour, and the post-war settlement. Guy argued that the war was a product of imperial policy aimed at breaking an independent African state and turning its people into a source of labour for colonial South Africa.

John Laband and others have written detailed studies of the Zulu military system and Zulu strategy, treating Cetshwayo as a rational ruler who tried to fight a defensive war and seek negotiations, rather than as a “savage” despot. Current research also looks at the African soldiers on the British side, at women and civilians, and at how the war has been remembered and used in later South African politics. There is still debate over how far Frere was acting alone and how far he was carrying out the broader aims of British policy.