History of the Zulu War

by Alexander Wilmot

NATIVE POLICY IN NATAL. LAWS, CUSTOMS, AND RELIGION OF THE ZULUS.

The protection of the natives was the professed object of the British Government in taking possession of Natal. The conquests of Chaka had driven no fewer than 100,000 fugitives to the westward of the Tugela river, and how to rule this vast and fast increasing number of natives soon became a problem fraught both with difficulty and danger. Mr. Theophilus Shepstone, son of a Wesleyan missionary, thoroughly conversant with the Kafir language, customs, manners, and habits, was appointed to take charge of the numerous natives of Natal. His policy can be very briefly described. It was to keep all the coloured races entirely distinct from the white population. They were collected in locations, and governed by their own laws, through their own chiefs, under Mr. Shepstone as the great chief. Large tracts of country, rugged and mountainous, were set apart for the various tribes, and there, in an Italian climate, and in the lap of a most productive and generous soil, they increased and multiplied. Christianity and real civilization were ignored, and a most dangerous imperium in imperio created. The wretched refugees who fled from the Zulu tyrant found their lot in Natal incomparably more happy than in the precarious existence of former days. Their easy, savage, sensuous life made them useless citizens, and when labour was required for the sugar plantations on the coast, it had to be obtained from India. However smoothly and well the native policy seemed to work, it soon became very evident that the 20,000 white people of Natal were really seated on a political volcano. Three hundred thousand heathen savages of an alien race had the power to rise and destroy them at any moment, and it was impossible to be sure that they might not at any time have the inclination. All the checks which religion and civilization place on men had been deliberately cast aside. No doubt the Zulu monarch was feared; but there can be no doubt also that if the dread paramount ruler of the Zulu race had at any time crossed the Tugela as a conqueror, tens of thousands of his own race in the colony would have joined him out of fear, and hastened to prove their loyalty by the massacre of every white inhabitant of Natal. This is no fanciful idea, but sober earnest fact.[8]

The Shepstone native policy.

There was no difficulty at first in subjecting to proper control the broken, dispirited bands of refugees, who sought shelter, food, and protection in Natal; and if right methods had been adopted, one of the finest races of the African continent would have been raised from a state of loathsome degradation to one of civilization—saved from heathenism themselves to become coadjutors with the white races in raising the country to real prosperity. In place of this, the cruel slavery of polygamy was permitted, which allows the men to live in independent idleness by means of the severe drudgery of their oppressed wives. Grossly impure and inhuman laws and practices, including the vile superstitions of witchcraft, were tolerated and allowed. No country could advance under such circumstances, and the colony of Natal, therefore, remains at the present day what it has always been—immeasurably behind the Cape of Good Hope; a land of samples in which nothing really succeeds, and where sugar, which forms its principal export, is even now a doubtful experiment, on which labour imported from India at enormous cost has to be employed; a lovely country, whose fertility is almost as great as its beauty, but cursed by a most unchristian, wicked, and foolish system of government, so far as the great bulk of the population is concerned. It would have been very easy at the outset to establish comparatively small locations, presided over by British magistrates, who would have administered justice according to British law. If, in addition, title-deeds had been given in such a manner as to give individual rights, then, in the words of the Rev. W. C. Holden,[9] the large number of natives within the colony might have been converted into men who would take a real interest in the country and soil, for the defence of which they would fight and die. They would have become a strong wall of defence against the Zulu on the east, and the Amaxosa on the west, instead of a source of continual danger and alarm.[10] Slavery was abolished everywhere throughout the British dominions, with the one exception of Natal. There 50,000 women were sold for wives to the highest bidder, as horses, cattle, and goods at an auction mart, under the special sanction and special arrangement of the Queen's Government.

Before proceeding further, it is necessary to pass briefly in review the laws, manners, and customs of the Zulu race. Without a knowledge of this subject it will be perfectly impossible to appreciate the policy of Sir Bartle Frere, or to understand either the real causes of the war, or of many events in its progress. We have seen that Chaka, the Zulu conqueror, formed a great military nation. His successors were specially warriors, and as the people chose similar weapons to those with which the ancient Romans conquered the world, so, like that people, were they fully animated with the feeling that virtus, or the highest possible merit, consisted in bravery in the field of battle. The Boers despised the enemy, and hundreds of their bravest men fell victims. Almost about the same time, the English settlers at D'Urban made the same mistake, and 2000 of their Kafir allies, as well as several of their own number, were slaughtered and left to be devoured by beasts of prey on the hills of Zululand. History repeats itself: Lord Chelmsford made the same mistake, which was expiated in the blood of hundreds of British soldiers on the field of Isandhlwana.

Zulu customs.

Among the Zulus every female child is so much property, and in this respect treated exactly like a chattel or beast of burden. Her life is one of the grossest degradation and slavery. When she has reached the age of puberty disgusting ceremonies are performed, and there is no idea or appreciation of chastity. The most brutal lust is not only tolerated, but actually enforced by law. When a girl is married, she is merely sold to the highest bidder, entirely without reference to her own consent, and then becomes the slave of her husband, for whom she has to labour in the field and perform menial work. The day after the party of a bride has arrived at her owner's hut, the peculiar ceremony takes place of the woman being allowed and enjoined to tax her powers to the utmost to use abusive language to her lord. She pours every insulting and provoking epithet she can think of upon him, this being the last time in which she is permitted to act and speak independently. At last she takes a certain feather out of her head, by means of which the act of marriage, or rather of going into slavery, becomes complete. Mr. Holden speaks of the great obscenity at "marriage" celebrations, and remarks that "no respectable pages can be defiled with a description of what then takes place, especially in connection with the marriage of men of rank and chiefs. There is full licence given to wholesale debauchery, and both men and women glory in their shame."[11] It is impossible to pursue this subject further. This is certain, that the very grossest and most filthy obscenities and immoralities are absolutely enjoined and required by Zulu law and custom. Marriage is entirely a misnomer. To quote from an excellent authority, "No word corresponding to the Saxon word 'wife' is found in the Zulu language. The term most nearly approaching to it is umkake, and its correlatives umkako and umkami, which means his she or female. The man owns his wives as truly, according to native law, as he does his spear or his goat, and he speaks of them accordingly." The owner of the woman says, "I have paid so many cattle for you; therefore you are my slave, my dog, and your proper place is under my feet." One of these poor slaves, when seen standing by a load far too great for her strength, was asked if she could carry it. She stood up and ingenuously remarked, "If I were a man I could not, but I am a woman." There is no slavery in the world more sad or deplorable than that to which the poor women of the Zulu nation are subjected.[12]

Religion of the Zulus.

Spiritualism is the religion of the Zulu, and witchcraft is the machinery by means of which it is practised. Only a very vague idea exists about a Supreme Being, and the definite national faith embraces only a belief in the influence of the spirits of deceased ancestors. The ghosts of departed chiefs and warriors are specially respected and feared. It is to these spirits that they attribute all the power given by Christians to God, and the witch-doctors are the mediums or priests of the worship. A knowledge of subtle and powerful vegetable poisons exists, and so common is the practice of secret poisoning that universal safeguards are used against it. Every one who gives food to another takes a part himself, in proof that it contains no poison. Besides deadly drugs, there is what is styled the "ubuti," or bewitching matter, which is supposed to be deposited in some secret place, and to be made the instrument of evil by means of supernatural agency. The "isanusi," or witch-doctors, are the go-betweens, whose duty it is to discover and to avert evil. These men fill the threefold office of doctors, priests, and soothsayers. They heal diseases, offer sacrifices, and exercise the art of divination. As they are assumed to have full power over the invisible world, their influence is enormous, and is readily taken advantage of by chiefs and powerful men, for the purpose of destroying enemies and promoting schemes of war and plunder. A youth who aspires to be enrolled among the isanusi gives early signs of being destined for the office. He dreams of the spirits of the departed chiefs of his people, sees visions, falls into fits of frenzy; he catches snakes and twists them round his person, seeks out medicinal roots, and goes for instruction to experienced isanusi. At last what is called a "change in the moon" takes place within him; he becomes a medium fitted to hold converse with spirits, and is able to communicate with them. One of the greatest authorities who has ever lived with and studied the Kafir races—Mr. Warner—says, "It is impossible to suppose that these priests are not, to a considerable extent, self-deceived, as well as the deceivers of others; and there is no difficulty, to one who believes the Bible to be a divine revelation, in supposing that they are also to a certain extent under Satanic influence; for the idolatrous and heathen nations of the earth are declared in the inspired volume to be, in a peculiar manner, under the influence and power of the devil."

Witch doctors.