South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
By far the greater number of Dutch who had thus made their way over into
Natal were killed,--but a remnant remained sufficient to establish
itself. In these contests the white man always comes off as conqueror at
last. Dingaan, however, carried on the battle for a long time, and
though driven out of Natal was never thoroughly worsted on his own Zulu
territory. Both Dutch and English attacked him in his own stronghold,
but of those who went over the Buffalo or Tugela river in Dingaan’s time
with hostile intentions but few lived to return and tell the tale. There
was one raid across the river in which it is said that 3,000 Zulus were
killed, and that Dingaan was obliged to burn his head kraal or capital,
and fly; but even in this last of their attacks on Zulu land the Dutch
were at first nearly destroyed.
At last these battles with Dingaan were brought to an end by a quarrel
which the emigrants fostered between Dingaan and his brother Panda,--who
was also his heir. I should hardly interest my readers if I were to go
into the details of this family feud. It seems however that in spite of
the excessive superstitious reverence felt by these Savages for their
acknowledged Chief, they were unable to endure the prolonged cruelties
of their tyrant. Panda himself was not a warrior, having been kept by
Dingaan in the back-ground in order that he might not become the leader
of an insurrection against him; but he was put forward as the new king;
and the new king’s party having allied themselves with the Europeans,
Dingaan was driven into banishment and seems to have been murdered by
those among whom he fell. That was the end of Dingaan and has really
been the end, up to this time, of all fighting between the Zulus and the
white occupiers of Natal. From the death of Dingaan the ascendancy of
the white man seems to have been acknowledged in the districts south
and west of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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