Zulu War, 1879; Zululand (South Africa) -- History -- To 1879
During the whole period of the war of 1835 a very small section of
colonists had endeavoured to poison the minds of our Downing Street
rulers. Their arguments were based on several fictions, including
affirmations about violence on the part of colonists having begot
violence on the part of Kafirs, and that the great body of Kafirs
had never offended us. They even went so far as to make use of
glaring untruths respecting Hintza not having been engaged in the
war, and misled Lord Glenelg so much respecting the particulars
of that chief's death as to induce his lordship to make use of
expressions which he was afterwards compelled to retract. A steady
fire of prejudice, fed by pre-conceived ideas, constantly existed
at home in favour of the Kafir tribes—and indeed all savages—which
required very little effort to turn into a consuming fire of anger
and indignation. These little efforts were sedulously made and
constantly continued in South Africa with the most disastrous
results. A number of well-meaning and prejudiced men, who can be
styled the Exeter Hall party, declaimed with virulence against
the colonists, and unfortunately Lord Glenelg was enrolled among
their number. This nobleman evidently considered that humanitarian
efforts were due to savages only, not to colonists, and through
his contemptible folly became the means of inflicting the most
severe injuries upon both. Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who was completely
master of the situation, and had proved himself an honest and wise
administrator, was entirely ignored, his policy was stigmatized in
the most insulting manner, and the sentimental ideas of theorists
made to take its place. In a despatch, dated 28th December,
1835, the Secretary of State entirely exculpates the Kafirs and
censures both Sir Benjamin D'Urban and the colonists. He says:
"In the conduct which was pursued towards the Kafir nation by the
colonists, and the public authorities of the colony, through a long
series of years, the Kafirs had ample justification of the late
war; they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment, however
hopeless, of extorting by force that redress which they could not
expect otherwise to obtain; and the claim of sovereignty over
the new province, bounded by the Keiskamma and the Kei, must be
renounced. It rests upon a conquest resulting from a war in which,
as far as I am at present able to judge, the original justice is
on the side of the conquered, not of the conquering party." The
governor is severely reproved for styling the Kafirs "irreclaimable
savages," and the Wesleyan missionaries are also censured. As a
sequence the whole country between the Fish and Buffalo rivers
had to be handed over to the Kafirs, although that portion of
this territory which extended between the Fish and Keiskamma
rivers had been ceded by Gaika to the colony so far back as the
year 1819, and was therefore not conquered in the recent war. The
extraordinary fatuity of this course, judged from a military point
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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