History of the Zulu war and its origin

by Frances Ellen Colenso

2. The Zulus deny ever having relinquished any part of their country to the Boers, who on the other hand assert that formal cessions had been made to them of considerable districts. With the latter rested the obligation of proving their assertions, which were simply denied by the Zulus, who accordingly, as they said themselves, “had no witnesses to call,” having received no authority from the king to do more than point out the boundary claimed[82] (2242, p. 80).

The Boer delegates brought various documents, from which they professed to prove the truth of their assertions, but which were decided by the Commissioners to be wholly worthless, from the glaring discrepancies and palpable falsehoods which they contained. One of these documents, dated March 16th, 1861, “purporting to give an account of a meeting between Sir T. Shepstone, Panda, and Cetshwayo,” they decided to be plainly a fabrication, as Sir T. Shepstone did not arrive at Nodwengu,[83] from Natal, to meet Panda and Cetshwayo, until May 9th, 1861.

Other records of cessions of land professed to be signed by the king, but were witnessed by neither Boer nor Zulu, or else by Boers alone. A definition of boundaries was in one case ratified by one Zulu only, a man of no rank or importance; and in other documents alterations were made, and dates inserted, clearly at another time.

Meanwhile it was apparent, from authentic Boer official papers, that the Zulus were threatened by the Boer Government that, if they dared to complain again to the British Government, the South African Republic “would deal severely with them, and that they would also endanger their lives;” while such expressions used by the Volksraad of the South African Republic as the following, when they resolve “to direct the Government to continue in the course it had adopted with reference to the policy on the eastern frontier, with such caution as the Volksraad expects from the Government with confidence; and in this matter to give it the right to take such steps as will more fully benefit the interests of the population than the strict words of the law of the country lay down” (2220, p. 337), convicts them of dishonesty out of their own mouths.

Finally the Commissioners report that in their judgment, east of the Buffalo, “there has been no cession of land at all by the Zulu kings, past or present, or by the nation.”

They consider, however, that—as the Utrecht district has long been inhabited by Boers, who have laid out the site for a town, and built upon it, and as the Zulu nation had virtually acquiesced in the Boer authority over it by treating with them for the rendition of fugitives who had taken refuge there—the Transvaal should be allowed to retain that portion of the land in dispute, compensation being given to the Zulus inhabiting that district if they surrendered the lands occupied by them and returned to Zululand, or permission being given them to become British subjects and to continue to occupy the land.

Sir Bartle Frere’s version of this is as follows:

“The Commissioners propose to divide the area in dispute between the Blood River and the Pongolo, giving to neither party the whole of its claim.” He then quotes the recommendation of the Commissioners, that compensation should be given to Zulus leaving the Utrecht district, and wants to know what is to be done for the farmers who “in good faith, and relying on the right and power of the Transvaal Government to protect them, had settled for many years past on the tract which the Commission proposes to assign to the Zulus.” He wishes to know how they are to be placed on an equality with the Zulus from the Utrecht district. To this Sir Henry Bulwer ably replies by pointing out that compensation to the said farmers lies with their own Government, by whose sanction or permission they had occupied land over which that Government had no power by right. In fact, far from “dividing the area in dispute,” and giving half to either party on equal terms, the reservation of the Utrecht district was rather an unavoidable concession to the Boers who had long had actual possession of it—which, with due compensation, the Zulus would have been ready enough to make, while receiving back so much of their own land—than an acknowledgment that they could make good their original claim to it. The Commissioners indeed say distinctly “there has been no cession of land at all by the Zulu king, past or present, or by the nation.”