Man, Past and PresentKeane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
History
Man, Past and Present
Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
Anthropology; Ethnology
Beyond Sofala we enter the domain of the _Ama-Zulu_, the _Ama-Xosa_, and
others whom I have collectively called _Zulu-Xosas_[253], and who are in
some respects the most remarkable ethnical group in all Bantuland.
Indeed they are by common consent regarded as Bantus in a preeminent
sense, and this conventional term _Bantu_ itself is taken from their
typical Bantu language[254]. There is clear evidence that they are
comparatively recent arrivals, necessarily from the north, in their
present territory, which was still occupied by Bushman and Hottentot
tribes probably within the last thousand years or so. Before the Kafir
wars with the English (1811-77) this territory extended much farther
round the coast than at present, and for many years the Great Kei River
has formed the frontier between the white settlements and the Xosas.
But what they have lost in this direction the Zulu-Xosas, or at least
the Zulus, have recovered a hundredfold by their expansion northwards
during the nineteenth century. After the establishment of the Zulu
military power under Dingiswayo and his successor Chaka (1793-1828),
half the continent was overrun by organised Zulu hordes, who ranged as
far north as Victoria Nyanza, and in many places founded more or less
unstable kingdoms or chieftaincies on the model of the terrible
despotism set up in Zululand. Such were, beyond the Limpopo, the states
of Gazaland and Matabililand, the latter established about 1838 by
Umsilikatzi, father of Lobengula, who perished in a hopeless struggle
with the English in 1894. Gungunhana, last of the Swazi (Zulu) chiefs in
Gazaland, where the A-Ngoni had overrun the Ba-Thonga (Ba-Ronga)[255],
was similarly dispossessed by the Portuguese in 1896.
North of Zambesi the Zulu bands--Ma-Situ, Ma-Viti, Ma-Ngoni (A-Ngoni),
and others--nowhere developed large political states except for a short
time under the ubiquitous Mirambo in Unyamweziland. But some, especially
the A-Ngoni[256], were long troublesome in the Nyasa district, and
others about the Lower Zambesi, where they are known to the Portuguese
as "Landins." The A-Ngoni power was finally broken by the English early
in 1898, and the reflux movement has now entirely subsided, and cannot
be revived, the disturbing elements having been extinguished at the
fountain-head by the absorption of Zululand itself in the British Colony
of Natal (1895).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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