: John Laband
: The Eight Zulu Kings From Shaka to Goodwill Zwelithini
: Jonathan Ball
: 9781868428397
: 1
: CHF 9.90
:
: Regional- und Ländergeschichte
: English
: 440
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In Eight Zulu Kings, well-respected and widely published historian John Laband examines the reigns of the eight Zulu kings from 1816 to the present. Starting with King Shaka, the renowned founder of the Zulu kingdom, he charts the lives of the kings Dingane, Mpande, Cetshwayo, Dinuzulu, Solomon and Cyprian, to today's King Goodwill Zwelithini whose role is little more than ceremonial. In the course of this investigation Laband places the Zulu monarchy in the context of African kingship and tracks and analyses the trajectory of the Zulu kings from independent and powerful pre-colonial African rulers to largely powerless traditionalist figures in post-apartheid South Africa.

JOHN LABAND is the author of several books on the Zulu kingdom, including the seminal Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century and The Assassination of King Shaka. He is associated with a number of eminent institutions, including the universities of Cambridge, Wilfrid Laurier in Canada, and KwaZulu-Natal and Stellenbosch. He lives in Greyton in the Western Cape.

INTRODUCTION

THE LION

Thirty-five years ago I witnessed a spectacle of potent symbolism. I was among the guests of the reigning Zulu1 monarch,Ingonyama (‘Lion’ in an honorific sense, meaning His Majesty) Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu.2 We were gathered on Saturday, 20 August 1983 to attend the official opening of oNdini, the partially restoredikhanda, or military homestead and royal residence, of his great-great-grandfather, King Cetshwayo kaMpande.

In 1873 Cetshwayo had ordered the construction of oNdini, envisioned as his principalikhanda, in the thorn-bush country of the Mahlabathini plain on the northern banks of the White Mfolozi River, right in the heart of the Zulu kingdom. Theikhanda was an immense, elliptical assemblage of close to 1 400 beehive-shaped thatched huts enclosing a vast parade ground. A palisade constructed of a double row of stout timbers two and a half metres high enclosed the whole complex, which had an outer circumference of some 2 169 metres.3 ONdini was built on a gentle slope allowing for natural drainage down to the Mbilane stream, and the slight elevation of the site exposed it to cooling breezes and presented sweeping views across the level plain towards the ring of hills to the north. Nowadays, the plain in the vicinity of oNdini is criss-crossed with roads, railways and power lines and is thickly cluttered with dwellings. The ugly, sprawling modern town of Ulundi laps about its site ever more densely, and the airport is only five kilometres away to the west. But in 1873 there was little to distract the eye other than grazing herds of royal cattle and a further eight, somewhat smalleramakhanda erected in the vicinity of oNdini. Just southwest across the White Mfolozi eight moreamakhanda were clustered in the emaKhosini valley, or the ‘Valley of the Kings’. This was hallowed ground reserved for royal homesteads (imizi) andamakhanda because it was the sacred burial place for Zulu, Ntombela, Phunga, Mageba, Ndaba, Jama and Senzangakhona, the semi-legendaryamakhosi (chiefs) of the petty Zulu chiefdom who were the ancestors of King Shaka, the founder of the Zulu kingdom.

The layout of oNdini was identical in almost every particular except its mammoth scale to that of the otheramakhanda in the emaKhosini valley and the Mahlabathini plain, as well as a further tenamakhanda positioned across the kingdom as regional centres of royal authority and as the mobilisation points for the age-grade regiments of warriors, oramabutho. At the top of theikhanda and directly opposite the main gate across the open parade ground was the royal enclosure, orisigodlo, which was divided into two sections of about 50 huts in all. In the central, ‘black’ section were the king’s private sleepi