The deeds of Chaka are too many to write of here. Seldom has there been
a monarch, black or white, so terrible or so absolute, and never perhaps
has a man lived more wicked or more clever. Out of 'nothing,' as the
Kafirs say, he made the Amazulu, or the 'people of heaven,' so
powerful, that before he died he could send out an army of a hundred
thousand men to destroy those whom he feared or hated or whose cattle he
coveted. These soldiers were never beaten; if they dared to turn their
back upon an enemy, however numerous, they were killed when the battle
was done, so that soon they learned to choose death with honour before
the foe in preference to death with shame at the hands of the
executioner. Where Chaka's armies went they conquered, till the country
was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length,
after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than
a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as
the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the
stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body
servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their spear thrusts,
it is said that the great king prophesied of the coming of white men who
should conquer the land that he had won.
'What,' he said, 'do you slay me, my brothers--dogs of mine own house
whom I have fed, thinking to possess the land? I tell you that I hear
the sound of running feet, the feet of a great white people, and they
shall stamp you flat, children of my father.'
After the death of Chaka his brother Dingaan reigned who had murdered
him. In due course he was murdered also, and his brother Panda succeeded
to the throne. Panda was a man of peace, and the only one of the four
Zulu kings who died a natural death; for though it is not commonly
known, the last of these kings, our enemy Cetywayo, is believed to have
met his end by poison. In 1873, Cetywayo was crowned king of Zululand in
succession to his father Panda on behalf of the English Government by
Sir Theophilus Shepstone. He remained a firm friend to the British till
Sir Bartle Frere declared war on him in 1879. Sir Bartle Frere made war
upon the Zulus because he was afraid of their power, and the Zulus
accepted the challenge because we annexed the Transvaal and would not
allow them to fight the Boers or the Swazis. They made a brave
resistance, and it was not until there were nearly as many English
soldiers in their country armed with breech-loading rifles as they had
effective warriors left alive in it, for the most part armed with spears
only, that at length we conquered them. But their heart was never in the
war; they defended their country against invasion indeed, but by
Cetywayo's orders they never attacked ours. Had they wished to do so,
there was nothing to prevent them from sweeping the outlying districts
of Natal and the Transvaal after our first great defeat at Isandhlwana,
but they spared us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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