A history of the Zulu Rebellion, 1906, and of Dinuzulu's arrest, trial, and expatriation

by James Stuart

There was yet another phenomenon which attracted widespread attention, and became invested by the Natives with special significance, namely, a hailstorm of unusual severity on the 31st May, 1905. It swept violently through the whole Colony, including large areas adjacent thereto. Not for more than a generation had there been anything so furious and destructive. At first the incident seemed to pass without any special comment, but towards the end of the year, about September or October, and just before the provisions of the Poll Tax Act were explained by the Magistrates, certain strange rumours, directly connected with the storm, began to make themselves heard. So curious were these, that one could not help pricking up his ears to listen, only, however, to laugh at their utter absurdity.

Owing to the fact that, ridiculous as they appeared to Europeans to be, the rumours were believed, and what is more, began to be acted on, by Natives in many parts, it is necessary to consider them seriously, and in so doing, it is possible that some light may be thrown on the inner workings of the black man's mind, and that some of the mystery which still enshrouds the underlying causes of the Rebellion may be removed.

The rumours were in the form of a fiat or command, and associated with a personality whose name was never revealed. Neither place nor time was given. All that was known was that the command existed, purported to have come from some one in supreme authority, and peremptorily demanded obedience. The following is the message, given as nearly as possible in the form in which it circulated among the Natives: "All pigs must be destroyed, as also all white fowls. Every European utensil hitherto used for holding food or eating out of must be discarded and thrown away. Anyone failing to comply will have his kraal struck by a thunderbolt when, at some date in the near future, he sends a storm more terrible than the last, which was brought on by the Basuto king in his wrath against the white race for having carried a railway to the immediate vicinity of his ancestral stronghold."

In some places, it was believed white goats and white cattle were also to be destroyed. Pigs, although kept by many Natives to sell or barter to Europeans, were not eaten by them. They had been introduced by the white race, and were regarded by Natives as creatures whose flesh "smells." The same prejudice did not exist in regard to fowls, for whose presence in the country Europeans, for all the Natives knew, were not responsible. To discriminate, therefore, between white ones and others, as well as between utensils of European manufacture and those of their own, could carry but one meaning to any intelligent mind, and that was that drastic aggressive measures of some kind against the white race were intended. What these were to be every Native knew quite well. He knew it was proposed to rise simultaneously and massacre the whites, although the time the butchery was to take place had still to be fixed. The word "thunderbolt," too, bore metonymic interpretation. The acts or characteristics of a Zulu monarch were frequently, in ordinary parlance, compared with the fury of the elements. On the other hand, in accordance with naïve and deeply-rooted belief, the King, to whom the sky was said to belong, was supposed to be able to cause the heavens to pour down or withhold rain at his pleasure, though, to do this, he might be obliged to invoke the assistance of Native kings of other countries. It was, for instance, believed that gentle, copious rains could be induced by the Swazi kings, whilst the kings of Basutoland possessed drugs for bringing on violent thunderstorms, accompanied by lightning, wind and hail. Whenever any of these natural phenomena was specially required in Zululand,—ordinary rains, of course, were greatly in demand in times of drought,—it devolved on the King to furnish the oxen, as a rule about ten, necessary for presentation at the foreign court, before the "lord of the elements" would consent to exercise his skill. Hence, "thunderbolt," in such context as the above, means either the King's own army (which never went through a country but its devastations resembled those of a hurricane), or a storm brought about through the King interceding with such other king as could bring it on.

It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that, on hearing the command noised abroad, Natal Chiefs should have at once concluded it emanated from Dinuzulu who, though not a King, was the recognised representative of the Zulu royal house. Chiefs like Mveli near Pietermaritzburg, Mtambo and Ndunge near Durban, Tilonko and Sikukuku near Mid Illovo, and Mtele and Nondubela of Umsinga, and others, accordingly thought it right to dispatch messengers direct to Dinuzulu to ascertain if such order had or had not originated from him. Tilonko went further and asked Dinuzulu if he was to pay the poll tax or not. Dinuzulu promptly denied having issued any such "word." He added that if the people wished to conform to the supposed order it was no affair of his; they could please themselves. This denial, however, did not amount to much, for admission, assuming him to have been the originator, would have been tantamount to saying he was guilty of sedition. No assertion is here made that it did emanate from him. The reader must be left to draw his own inference. It is not a little remarkable that the Chiefs named should have associated Dinuzulu with the order and gone to the trouble of communicating with him at a distance of 200 miles without reference to the Government. That they should have done so is, perhaps, accounted for by Dinuzulu's having posed as agent-in-chief of the Zulu people. In connection with the locust invasion, for instance, partly civilized though he was, he is alleged to have sent ten oxen all the way to the notorious witch Mabelemade in the Transvaal to implore her to remove the plague. The plague afterwards vanished. If Dinuzulu did act in this way, to whom are ignorant Natives likely to have ascribed the relief they then got? And to whom would they look for deliverance on subsequent occasions of general misfortune?

Under the Zulu regime, no king would have dreamt of issuing so vague and mysterious an order. Had he wished anything to be done, he would have communicated his instructions to his indunas, who would have transmitted them by recognized messengers to the Chiefs, these to the headmen who, in their turn, would have advised the heads of families immediately under their respective supervision. Everything would have taken place openly, speedily, definitely. The precise meaning of the royal intentions would have become known from the outset to every soul. In 1905, however, something had to be done against, and under the very eyes and nose of, a power to whom Dinuzulu and all his former followers were, and had for long been, subject. Hence the necessity for issue of an anonymous type of order, and, as no Native of Natal or Zululand had ever had experience of such message, it followed that communication with Dinuzulu was necessary to ascertain if he had issued it, and, if so, what his plans were.

In the district of Weenen, inhabited by two of the largest tribes in Natal or Zululand, viz. those of Silwana and Ngqambuzana,[80] the Magistrate was successful in tracing the rumours to a definite source. They had been disseminated there by three Natives, who, under the rôle of messengers from Dinuzulu, had also traversed Newcastle, Dundee and Klip River divisions. They visited the kraals of Chiefs and others along their route. "They led the Natives," says the Magistrate, "to believe that war would shortly be declared by Dinuzulu, and those who failed to carry out his instructions as to the killing of pigs and destruction of utensils of European manufacture, and a reversion in general to their primitive mode of living, would be swept away by him. Reference was also made to a Basuto woman who had risen from the dead and was in communication with Dinuzulu. They alleged that 500 emissaries of Dinuzulu were canvassing South Africa." One of the 'messengers' "alleged that he and nine others had been dispatched by the Paramount Chief of [Basutoland] to Dinuzulu, from whom they now bore instructions which were similar in effect to those circulated by the other two men."[81] The Magistrate was unable to find that any of the three 'messengers' had been in communication with Dinuzulu. After trial and conviction, they were severely punished for spreading the false rumours.

These rumours were circulated in Weenen division before the Natives were officially notified of their obligation to pay the poll tax. In view of the mystery that still attaches to this extraordinary incident, it may be of interest, as showing the working of a Native's mind, to compare it with a somewhat similar one in Kaffraria, Cape Colony, which reached its climax in February, 1857. It will be remembered that many thousands of cattle of those parts had recently been swept away by disease; that a Native fanatic, Mhlakaza, thereafter came forward and urged the people to destroy their cattle, desist from cultivation, etc.; and that, after complying with the insane order, some 25,000 Natives are estimated to have perished from starvation, whilst 100,000 went out of the Colony in search of food. An official statement was made in April, 1858, by a prophetess, niece of this man Mhlakaza (then deceased). This is so cleverly descriptive of the stuff in which Native superstition has its roots, and has such obvious affinity with the Zulu propaganda of 1905, that it is inserted hereunder in some detail.[82] An article dealing, inter alia, with superstitions connected with the Matabele Rebellion, 1896, will be found in Appendix X.

It may be argued that the command to kill off pigs and fowls arose in a way similar to that made public by Mhlakaza. But in that case the origin was traced to strangers who communicated their messages to a particular girl, who, in her turn, referred to Mhlakaza, a well-known man. In the pig-and-white-fowl-killing affair, the order seems to have originated with emissaries, careful not to sow the seed in places from which its origin could be traced by the white race. Only by employing secret agents, and making a thorough investigation extending over six weeks, could those who toured Weenen division be traced and apprehended. It is the easiest thing in the world for a stranger, especially if a Native, to utter an alarming rumour to other Natives,—who are an extremely credulous people,—and give out at, say, each of half-a-dozen places that he had heard it in some manner which, in fact, is entirely fictitious. For instance, in the year 1900, a rumour was started in the Lower Tugela division that all pigs were to be killed. An official meeting of Chiefs was promptly called to investigate, but whilst the originator's whereabouts could not be traced, the fact that attention had been publicly directed to the rumour at once put a stop to its further circulation.