History of the Zulu war and its origin

by Frances Ellen Colenso

“While we spoke to Cetshwayo, we saw that what we were saying lifted a great weight from his heart, that they were words which he was glad to hear; and what he said to us as we finished showed us we were right in this belief....

“We could see, when we arrived at the great kraal, that the indunas, and even the king, were not easy in their hearts, and from all we could see and gather, the chief men under the king did not wish for war. After the message was delivered, all of them appeared like men who had been carrying a very heavy burden, and who had only then been told that they could put it down and rest.”

It is best known to himself how, in the face of these words, and with nothing to support his statement, Sir Bartle Frere could venture to assert in his fourth letter to the Bishop, “The offers to arbitrate originated with the Natal Government, and were by no means willingly accepted by Cetshwayo;” Cetshwayo having, in point of fact, earnestly asked for arbitration again and again, as we have already shown, and rejoicing greatly when at last it was offered him. Mr. J. Shepstone’s observation also (2144, p. 184), that “To this suggestion Cetshwayo replied ‘that he had no objection,’” hardly gives a fair view of the state of the case.

But, before this satisfactory agreement had been arrived at, Sir T. Shepstone had managed still further to exasperate the feelings of the Zulus against the new Government of the Transvaal, while the fact that Natal and the Transvaal were one, and that to touch one was to touch the other, and to touch England also, had not been brought home to the king’s mind until he received Sir H. Bulwer’s message.

Before the receipt of that message, Cetshwayo had every reason to believe that the negotiations concerning the disputed territory were broken off. Sir T. Shepstone’s tone on the subject had altered; he had parted with the king’s indunas at the Blood River in anger, and the messenger whom he had promised to send to the king himself had never appeared. Meanwhile, the Boers had gone into laager, by direction, they say, of Sir T. Shepstone himself, and with the full expectation that he was about to make war upon the Zulus. No offer of arbitration had yet been made. Cetshwayo had been played with and baffled by the English Government for sixteen years, and to all appearance nothing whatever was done, or would be done, to settle in a friendly manner this troubled question, unless he took steps himself to assert his rights, and he seems to have taken the mildest possible way of so doing under the circumstances. According to the official reports at the time, he sent a large force of armed men to build a military kraal near Luneburg, north of the Pongolo, in land which was also disputed with the Transvaal Government, but formed no part of the (so called) disputed territory to the south of that river, or as Lord Carnarvon said to a deputation of South African merchants (Guardian, January 9th, 1878): “He (the Zulu king) had proceeded to construct, in opposition to Sir T. Shepstone’s warnings, a fortified kraal in a disputed territory abutting upon English soil.”

But this was a very exaggerated way of describing a comparative trifling circumstance. The erection of a kraal—not, as so frequently asserted, a military one, but merely an ordinary Zulu kraal for the residence of a headman, to keep order among the 15,000 Zulus who lived in that district—had long been contemplated, and had once, during Umpanda’s lifetime, been attempted, though the Boers had driven away the Zulu officer sent for the purpose, and destroyed the work he had commenced.

Cetshwayo himself explains his reason for sending so large a force for the purpose, on the grounds that he wished the kraal to be built in one day, and his men not to be obliged to remain over a night, while, as Colonel Durnford, R.E., says (2144, p. 237), “the fact that the men at work are armed is of no significance, because every Zulu is an armed man, and never moves without his weapon.”

Sir T. Shepstone, however, was greatly alarmed when he first heard of the building of this kraal, and writes concerning it—November 16th, 1877 (1961, p. 224): “I feel, therefore (because of the irritating effect of it upon the Transvaal), that the building of this kraal must be prevented at all hazards.” The “hazards” do not appear to have proved very serious, as a simple representation on the part of Captain Clarke, R.A., and Mr. Rudolph, sent to the spot by Sir T. Shepstone, resulted in the Zulu force retiring, having made only a small cattle kraal and chopped and collected some poles, which they left on the ground, to be used for the building of the huts hereafter, but which were very soon carried off and used as firewood by the Luneburg farmers.

But this did not satisfy Sir T. Shepstone, who sent messengers to Cetshwayo, complaining of what had been done, and of “finding,” as he says, “a Zulu force in the rear of where he was staying;”[78] and saying that, in consequence, and in order to restore confidence amongst those Boers living on the Blood River border, he (Sir T. Shepstone) had decided to send a military force down to the waggon-drift on the Blood River, to encamp there on our side of the river. Cetshwayo replies that he did not send to have the kraal built that trouble might arise, but because his people were already living on the ground in dispute. He admits that of course the administrator could do as he pleased about sending an armed force to encamp on his own borders; but he urges him to think better of it, saying that the Zulus would be frightened and run away, and, if he in his turn should send an armed force to encamp just opposite Sir T. Shepstone’s encampment, to put confidence into his people’s hearts, he asks, somewhat quaintly, “would it be possible for the two forces to be looking at one another for two days without a row?”

Many expressions are scattered through the Blue-books at this period concerning “Zulu aggressions;” and Sir T. Shepstone makes frequent, though vague and unproven, accusations concerning Cetshwayo’s “mischievous humour,” and the terror of the Boer frontier farmers.