Preface

It is not only in fantasy sagas like George RR Martin’sGame of Thrones that kings fall to the assassin’s blade or poisoned cup. Rulers, no less now than in the past, know that the assassin’s shadow menaces their every step. An attempt on a ruler’s life might fail thanks to lucky chance, or it might succeed despite every precaution taken. The would-be killer might be motivated by private grievance or paranoia, or by religious or ideological conviction.

Especially in a monarchy, the assassin might be driven by personal ambition to usurp the throne. In a traditional society, this was an act not to be undertaken lightly where there was something particularly awful in killing a king whose right to rule was enforced by divine sanction. And what made the deed the more reprehensible was that the assassin would usually possess a plausible hereditary claim to the crown, and this meant that the victim must be of close kin. This in turn required the usurper, once he had seized power, to purge all rival claimants who shared his royal blood lest they challenge him for the crown then or in the future.

The record of Africa, no less than that of Europe, Asia and the Americas, is replete with royal assassinations and their blood-filled aftermaths. There is one instance, though, that eclipses all others in Africa because of the legendary eminence of the victim: Shaka Zulu, whose name so luridly conjures up all the brutal, warlike glamour of the precolonial continent.

In writing this book, my objective is not to undertake another scholarly investigation into the formation of the Zulu kingdom in the reign of King Shaka. Several excellent historians – notably John Wright, Carolyn Hamilton and Elizabeth Eldredge – have already expertly mastered this field. Nor do I wish to attempt a fresh biography of Shaka himself. In several recent books, Dan Wylie has the jump on me there.

Rather, what I am attempting is a focused inquiry into a single, pivotal event in Shaka’s life: his assassination. By teasing out the circumstances surrounding the plot to slay him, by investigating the individuals involved and their possible motives, and by considering the implications and consequences of the violent deed, I hope to throw some strong light on the functioning of the early Zulu kingdom and on the elusive character of Shaka himself.

The reader is invited to follow along with me as I try to make sense of the case. Since writing history is not simply selecting, organising and presenting facts in an objective fashion, but also a literary act in which the author inevitably possesses a personal point of view, I shall be open with the reader. In pursuing my investigation, I shall pose a series of questions seeking answers from the available evidence, and it is up to the reader to decide whether these queries are sufficient, on target or misdirected. Likewise, I shall explain my reasons when I find the answers I come up with to be convincing, or at least plausible, and when I can find no satisfactory answer at all. Once again, it is for the alert reader to better me at my own game.

Of course, to approach the controversial subject of Shaka is to venture into a tangled and dangerous forest with mantraps set across the twisting paths. ‘History perhaps does not furnish an instance of a more despotic and cruel monster than Chaka,’ declared Lieutenant Francis George Farewell, RN, one of the first hunter-traders established at Port Natal in 1824, who witnessed Shaka at the height of his power.1 Through their writings, he and his fellow pioneers, Henry Francis Fynn and Nathaniel Isaacs, disseminated their vision of Shaka as a forbidding savage ruling over a nation in arms, imbued with a fierce military ethos. Indeed, Isaacs went so far as to declare: ‘I am not aware that history ... can produce so horrible and detestable a savage. He has deluged his country in innocent blood.’2 Future white settlers, missionaries, officials and soldiers all elaborated on this ferocious image until it became