Map 5. Southern Africa: The Lands of the Zulu and the Tonga, and the Four South African Colonies
*
—
In watching, apparently quite calmly, the advance of the Zulu army, Smith-Dorrien witnessed one of the great tactical innovations that had helped empower the Zulu state, the “horns of the buffalo.” This was a military formation created by Shaka Zulu, the founder of the state, where the army formed into four main components: the chest of the buffalo at the center, the loins behind it, and two horns on either side that encircled the enemy. Smith-Dorrien also saw some of Shaka’s other innovations in action—the disciplined regiments that were formed when Shaka took traditional ritual associations and militarized them, and the iklwa, a short stabbing spear with which Shaka had replaced the previous weapon of choice, the assegai, a javelin.
The Wrong Doer Who Knows No Law
Shaka was born around 1787, the illegitimate son of the then Zulu chief. At that time the Zulu formed a small chieftaincy among many others spread out over southern South Africa. Something of an outcast because of her illegitimate child, Shaka’s mother took refuge with a neighboring people, the Mthethwa. In 1800 the Mthethwa had a new chief, named Dingiswayo. Dingiswayo anticipated some of Shaka’s subsequent reforms and began a highly successful military and territorial expansion, conquering about thirty surrounding groups, including the Zulu. The young Shaka, called into the Mthethwa army, became one of its most effective warriors, soon known for his bravery and unscrupulousness. Dingiswayo tried to behave magnanimously toward defeated enemies; not so Shaka, who was typically in favor of massacring them all. His behavior won him the moniker “the wrong doer who knows no law.” Shaka made his way up through the ranks until eventually he was promoted to be head of the army. In 1816, when Shaka’s father died, Dingiswayo made sure that Shaka became the new chief of the Zulu.
Shaka immediately set about reorganizing Zulu society and those that he conquered into a new type of social system. He first called up all of the adult males and separated them into four regiments, which would form his first buffalo’s chest, loins, and horns. Probably only about 400 men appeared at this juncture. He started to train them in the use of the iklwa, the spear that he had blacksmiths forge, and a new type of battle shield. He made them throw away their sandals and walk barefoot, which allowed them to move faster. Then with his first serious military force ready for action, he began to conquer surrounding areas. First were the eLangeni, who quickly succumbed and were incorporated into his rule. Next came the Butelezi, who put up a fight and were massacred. Within one year Shaka’s army grew to 2,000 men. By the next year Dingiswayo was killed and Shaka made himself king of the Mthethwa. His ruthless tactics subdued one tribe after another, incorporating many into the expanding Zulu state. As one oral history records:
The Butelezi, amaQungebe, Imbuyeni, amaCunu, Majola, Xulu, Sikakane, are all tribes which were quite close … Tshaka attacked and killed off these tribes; he crept up on them in the night. Tribes further off were the amaMbata, Gasa, Kumalo, Hlubi, Qwabe, Dube, Langeni, Tembu, Zungu, Makoba.
The phrase “killed off” had different meanings in different contexts. In some cases, like the Butelezi, it seems to literally describe what happened. But in others the tribe was simply incorporated into the expanding Zulu state. Still others stayed more distant but declared themselves tributaries to the Zulus and paid “taxes” in cattle and young women. By 1819 Shaka had expanded the Zulu territory from about 100 square miles to 11,500, and his army stood at 20,000.
Shaka built a new capital at Bulawayo (marked on Map 5), and we have a firsthand description of it from 1824, when a party of English traders from Port Natal, now Durban, visited it. One of them, Henry Flynn, left a written record:
On entering the great cattle kraal we found drawn up within about 80,000 natives in their war attire … Shaka then raised the stick in his hand and after striking with it right and left and springing out from amidst the chiefs, the whole mass broke from their position and formed up into regiments. Portions of these rushed to the river and the surrounding hills, whilst the remainder, forming themselves into a circle, commenced dancing with Shaka in their midst. It was an exciting scene, surprising to us, who could not have imagined that a nation termed “savages” could be so well disciplined. Regiments of girls, headed by officers of their own sex then entered the center of the arena to the number of 8,000 to 10,000 each holding a slight staff in her hand. They joined in the dance, which continued for about two hours.
Shaka also started the process of transforming existing norms. Instead of being based on kinship and clan, Shaka’s state was based on two new axes. One was age. In many parts of Africa and elsewhere, when boys and girls come of age, they are initiated into the secret lore of the society, a process that typically goes along with circumcision and scarification. It involves staying for long periods in the wilderness and various types of ordeals. In some African societies these initiations became so institutionalized that when a cohort of boys, and sometimes even girls, was initiated, they became inducted into a group known as an “age set” (or “age grade”) to which they would belong for their entire life.
In many parts of East Africa, whole peoples became organized not around kinship or a state, but around a sequence of these age grades. The grades undertook different functions as their members grew older, for example young men would be warriors, protecting the people or cattle. As they got older and a new cohort came along, they would transition into marriage and economic activities such as farming. Among the Zulu and other related peoples in Southern Africa these social structures were already present, even if in a rudimentary form. Shaka took them and militarized them. He turned age grades into military regiments and got them to live together in separate barracks. He also started recruiting the youth of the peoples he conquered. These regiments provided a way of breaking down the ties of family and integrating people into the new state. The role of the age sets in creating a new Zulu identity is revealed by an interchange at the annual harvest festival of Umkosi. At this time it was permissible for anyone to ask any question of the chief, and one impertinent soldier asked Shaka, “Why are outsiders promoted over the heads of Zulus?” To which Shaka supposedly retorted, “Any man who joins the Zulu army becomes a Zulu. Thereafter his promotion is purely a question of merit, irrespective of the road he came by.”
The other new axis was geographic. Shaka divided the territory into counties and either left existing chiefs in place, though making it clear they now served at his pleasure, or appointed loyal soldiers of his army as governors.
In the process, Shaka centralized many functions into his own hands. Previously the harvest festival of Umkosi had been celebrated widely in the region, with individual chiefs conducting the ceremony. Now only Shaka presided over the annual rites. He also created a centralized court. Although chiefs could adjudicate disputes and solve local problems, ultimate appeal could be made to Shaka in Bulawayo.
A primary way in which Shaka maintained his system was tribute and its distribution among his supporters. As he conquered or subdued surrounding peoples, he forcibly demanded huge numbers of cows and women. He endowed his regiments with cattle in reward for their services and organized women into age regiments as well, and segregated them, forbidding the men to marry or have sexual relations with them until he allowed it.
Of course this was a state that was not bureaucratized in the way modern states are. Though Shaka had advisers, the state was run by the army and his appointed chiefs, and in the absence of writing, laws and rules were oral. Bureaucratized or unbureaucratized, Shaka’s state-building project had to break parts of the cage of norms that were inhibiting the emergence of political hierarchy and Shaka’s authority. A pillar of these norms, just as with the Tiv’s norms we saw in Chapter 2, was the complex of supernatural beliefs often used for grinding down anyone getting too big for their boots.