Thus a man ceased to serve under the chief of his
own clan, but belonged to a king's regiment, which was composed of men
of all tribes. Similar divisions were also made amongst the females,
who had to marry into regiments at the king's commands, though on a
marriage cattle was still handed over to the bride's father or brother.
Furthermore, regiments were not allowed wives till they were entitled to
wear "head-rings," and this did not occur till men had reached forty
years of age. Chaka's next war was against the Swazis, whom he defeated
and made to pay tribute.
In the following year an immense expedition was despatched against the
Sotshangana, a people dwelling across the Somba Mountains, beyond
Delagoa Bay.
So large was this army that Zululand was almost denuded of warriors, an
event which was taken advantage of by Dingaan and five more of the
king's brothers, to treacherously fall upon Chaka, whom they slew,
together with his chief councillor, Umxamana.
The benefits conferred on his people by Chaka can hardly be
over-estimated; he had raised them from a small tribe to a nation, and
that nation a dominant one. As the Quirites were amongst the component
tribes of the earlier Roman kingdom, so were the Zulus or Undabezita
amongst the various tribes subject to the central Zulu authority, and
curiously enough this resemblance extends still further; the Quirites
were subdivided into gentes, or families, each with a distinctive name,
and in a precisely similar manner, as has been before stated, the
Undabezita were divided into sub-tribes or clans, each with its own
gentile or family name. Nor were his people ungrateful to the memory of
their first great king, for after the time of Chaka, the bastard, that
name was never employed in its original signification, but to the
present day a substitute, "Umlandhwana," is always used by a Zulu to
express that idea.
That Chaka was not averse to civilization and white men was evinced by
his treatment of Fynn and five others who were rescued from a shipwreck
in St. Lucia Bay. He even went so far as to accompany Fynn the whole way
to Durban, to see him embark on a ship sent round from Cape Town for
him, and to send at considerable expenditure in the shape of cattle two
envoys to England, which he contemplated visiting himself, if their
report should prove favourable. But this latter project failed in
consequence of the king's murder, and the messengers got no further than
Cape Town.
A year or two after his departure Fynn returned, and with Chaka's
sanction established a trading-station at Durban (1824). Once Fynn and
some white men, being called upon for aid, assisted Chaka to punish a
refractory tribe. When Chaka's army for the second time invaded the
Pondos, it was through Fynn's representations that they would come into
collision with the white men that the army proceeded no further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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