The natives of British Central AfricaWerner, Alice
History
The natives of British Central Africa
Werner, Alice
Ethnology -- Malawi; Malawi -- Description and travel; Malawi -- Social conditions
The Makalanga speak much the same language as the various tribes
comprehended under the general name of Anyanja, and may, at one time,
have formed a homogeneous body with them. The kingdom of the Makalanga,
as described by the Portuguese writers, would almost seem to have
been something more than an ordinary African state; but their way of
describing everything, so to speak, in terms of Europe, is somewhat
misleading. Probably it was not unlike the ‘empire’ of Undi at a later
date and fell to pieces much in the same way. These decentralised
agricultural tribes either fell victims to internal quarrels, or to
aggressive action on the part of some warlike neighbour—or, very
possibly, to both together.
It is not known when the Zulus moved southward into the territory they
now occupy, and where they must have been settled for some generations
before the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the graves of at
least four kings (some say eight), of earlier date than that epoch, are
still to be seen at Mahlabatini, in the valley of the White Umfolozi.
In 1687 they, and tribes allied to them, seem to have been in peaceful
occupation of Natal and Zululand, living so close together that migration
on a large scale was impossible. Yet, about the same time, the Amaxosa,
or ‘Cape Kafirs,’ who are very closely related to them, seem to have
been pressing on to the south; and they reached the Great Fish River
soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century. However this may be,
the Zulu king Senzagakona had, about 1800, risen to a position of some
importance, though still subject to Dingiswayo, chief of the Umtetwas in
Natal. His son, Tshaka, succeeded in 1810, and, after Dingiswayo’s death,
assumed a paramount position, his career resembling that of Napoleon,
or rather (since he may be said to have consolidated, if not erected,
a nation), Theodoric or Charlemagne. But what chiefly concerns us here
is the _northward_ migration of the Zulus which took place in his time.
Umziligazi, one of his captains, quarrelled with him and fled, taking his
clan with him. These are the people now known as the Matabele, having
settled in the early thirties between the Limpopo and Zambezi.
Another chief, Manukosi, seceded about 1819, and invaded the country
about Delagoa Bay, gradually subduing the Tonga tribes. This branch
of the Zulus is called Gaza; their last king, Gungunyana (Manukosi’s
grandson), was deposed by the Portuguese in 1896.
[Illustration: ANGONI WARRIORS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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