Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (10 page)

The Battle of Isandlwana

In the Zulu language, “Isandlwana” is a word with more than one meaning. The most literal translation is something about “that hill looks like a little house”—and from some angles the steep-sided 300-foot-high bluff of rock that bears the name does suggest the outline of a Zulu hut. Sometimes it looks more like a weathered and rounded sphinx. Light and shade dress it in different colors as the sun passes across the sky. Little house, lion—in sunshine or in shadow—the hill is the central character in a story that hangs around it like smoke. Isandlwana dominates the landscape, catching the eye from miles off and holding the gaze on the long approach down a deeply rutted dirt road. As visitors draw close, passing through the gates of the reserve, they emerge onto a stage always set for drama. The battle seems very close.

It’s easy to overlook the memorial lying off to the left, just beyond the gates. Low to the ground, it’s the most discreet of the many erected around the site in the years since January 22, 1879. It was unveiled in 1999, 120 years to the day after the fighting stopped, and takes the form of a necklace called an
iziqu.
Pronounced in the Zulu way, with a click forming part of the last syllable,
iziqu
sounds like the letters “e” and “c” followed by an exasperated “tut”—“e-c-tut!”

This decoration is the Zulu equivalent of the Medal of Honor—the highest award given by the king to the bravest of the brave. The
iziqu
monument at Isandlwana is modeled in bronze, 10 feet or so across and made up of thorn-shaped beads interspersed with lions’ claws. Lying on its foot-high circular plinth, it has the look of something cast aside—an afterthought—yet it’s the most poignant memorial of all on this battlefield, placed by a nation whose light burned brightest in its final moments.

Toward the end of 1878 the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, set about provoking a war. His aim was to create a confederation of states in southern Africa, bringing the whole place under British influence without the trouble and expense of imposing direct rule. It was a land of opportunity and as far as Frere was concerned those opportunities ought to be at Britain’s disposal. As he and others saw it, the only obstacle was the independent kingdom of Zululand.

Zululand was and still is an astonishingly lovely place, ranging from the heights of the Drakensberg—the Dragon Mountains—in the west, through the gently rolling grasslands of the interior, down to the subtropical coast of the Indian Ocean. Legend has it that when the Bantu-speaking peoples first ventured into the area from further north, they were so struck by its beauty they called it
kwaZulu
, “the place where heaven is”—and themselves
amaZulu
, “the people of heaven.”

The Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande wanted to be left alone to rule this land and its people as he saw fit. The nation was young—created just 60 years before under the martial brilliance of Shaka—and had no need of trouble from a force as powerful as the British Empire. Cetshwayo had no clearly defined interest in any territory outside his own borders and just wanted to keep hold of what he had. But the boundary between Zululand and Natal had often been a blurred one, and toward the end of the 1870s the British authorities encouraged whites living in the northern fringes of their colony to fear imminent invasion by their black neighbors.

This anxiety on the part of the whites was based largely upon a British misunderstanding of the nature of the Zulu “army.” Men like Frere believed Cetshwayo held a force of as many as 40,000 warriors in constant readiness, eager to do his bidding—a weapon of mass destruction, if you will. More unsettling still was the knowl
edge that Zulu warriors were forbidden to marry without the express permission of the king. It was widely believed this permission was only granted once braves had “washed their spears” in enemy blood. Not only was this army huge, then, it consisted of sexually frustrated young men whose only hope of relief lay in the murder of white men, women and children! The continued existence of such a volatile force could hardly be tolerated. The sooner those restless warriors were stood down from their perpetual state of military readiness, and returned to the life of peaceful farmers, the better. And as peaceful farmers they could of course be put busily to work for the good of Britain, the Empire and the confederation.

The truth of the matter was rather different. Cetshwayo’s authority did depend upon his control of the young men of his kingdom, but it was hardly a standing army. From about the age of 18 every Zulu boy was placed in an
ibutho
, or regiment, made up of other boys the same age. He would owe allegiance to this same regiment for the rest of his life. Throughout the year the king might call upon one or more of the regiments—collectively the
amabutho
—to come to his capital at Ulundi and provide some service or other for him. It might occasionally be military service but was just as likely to be laboring in the king’s fields, repairing his huts or hunting for his food. For the rest of the time, the men were returned to their homes and families to tend their own animals and crops. It was true that Zulu men could not marry without the king’s permission—and this permission was unlikely to be granted before the age of 30—but Zulu society allowed a fair degree of sexual activity outside marriage, provided no pregnancy resulted. In effect, the Zulu army was not the permanent fighting force the British imagined, but something more like a version of the US National Guard.

Nonetheless, British minds were made up and Cetshwayo was handed an ultimatum. By January 11, 1879, he was to do away with
all the regiments. Zulu men were to be freed from any obligation to the king and allowed to marry whenever they pleased. There were other similarly humiliating conditions, and the king had also to accept a representative who would live in the royal homestead at Ulundi, enforcing the British will. Failure to submit to all of this would be interpreted as an act of war and would swiftly be followed by invasion.

As Frere well knew, all of this trapped Cetshwayo between a rock and a hard place. If he met the demands he would make himself powerless within his own kingdom. If he refused he would be invaded by a vastly superior military force and have his power taken forcibly from him. Left with no room for maneuver, he summoned the
amabutho
to his kraal. He told them to bring only their weapons and to be ready for war. The deadline for the ultimatum came and went without word from Cetshwayo—as Frere had always known it would—and a British force promptly crossed from Natal into Zululand.

Lieutenant General Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, the senior British commander in southern Africa, was the man in charge of the invasion. He was a 51-year-old career soldier, tall and statesmanlike with a carefully trimmed goatee. Well liked by his men, he had a reputation for being cool under fire. He had fought in India and Abyssinia and, more importantly, had already drawn blood on African soil—fighting the warriors of the Xhosa tribe on the Cape Frontier of southern Africa.

For the invasion of Zululand Chelmsford had split his force into three columns. The right crossed the Thukela River and headed toward the country’s east coast, while the left was directed toward the west. Chelmsford himself rode at the head of the center column as it splashed through the Mzinyathi River into Zululand at a crossing called Rorke’s Drift. As the General watched his 4,000-strong force step out on to the Zulu bank, he was planning to deal with the new
foe like he’d dealt with the Xhosa. In that earlier, ultimately successful campaign, he’d had to cope with the guerrilla tactics of a people who avoided pitched battle at all costs. Chelmsford put this down to cowardice as much as anything and firmly believed the Zulus would behave the same way. As the men and wagons progressed slowly into Zululand, he was convinced its inhabitants would flee before him, forcing him to hunt them down.

As it turned out, the Zulus had different tactics in mind. These were not soldiers who ran from a fight. Rather they ran toward it, barefoot over thorn and rock, thinking nothing of covering tens of miles before engaging the enemy. This was no standing army, but each man within it understood and venerated personal bravery above all things. Not for him the relative security of standing back from an enemy and firing bullets at him either. Instead the Zulu brave did his killing face-to-face. To do anything less was to show a lack of respect for self and foe. He was armed with shield, spear and club. Training had taught him to use the outside edge of his six-foot-tall hide-covered war-shield to drag down the weapon of his foe, while with the other hand he plunged his short, broad-bladed stabbing spear into the exposed upper body. We give those spears the name
assegai
, but to the Zulu they were
iklwa
—the sucking sound made by the blade as it was tugged back out of the flesh. If the spear was dropped or knocked aside he could use the
knobkerrie,
a ball-ended club shaped from a single piece of wood and more than enough to crack a man’s head open like an egg.

The Zulu religion taught that killing a man was an unclean act. Each brave had to go through complex rituals before a battle to ensure he was protected from the taint of causing the deaths of other men. Regimental chaplains—
izinyanga
—conducted the necessary ceremonies beforehand and would be ready again after the fighting to help each man cleanse his body and soul. Living close to death as they did—the death of animals and humans alike—Zulus
were familiar with what happened to corpses left lying around in a hot climate. They believed the bloating of the dead body was caused by the struggling of the soul trapped inside the stomach. After killing a man a brave would therefore split open the belly with his
iklwa
to ensure the soul could fly free. Failure to do this, the Zulus believed, would lead to their own, unclean but still living bodies swelling up the same way. It was also important to wear a piece of the dead man’s clothing until such times as the
izinyanga
could perform the cleansing rituals—and for this reason they were also in the habit of stripping the bodies of their slain.

On January 17, outside his kraal at Ulundi, Cetshwayo addressed the largest army ever to gather before a Zulu king. He was a handsome man: over six feet tall, broad-chested and heavily set. In his full ceremonial regalia he was a towering sight. Those who knew him well understood that while he could be easy-going and warm, he was shot through with a ruthless streak. He was understood to be at his most dangerous when backed into a corner.

Perhaps as many as 24,000 men, purified by their
izinyangas
and existing now in a place set apart from the world of everyday life, a place of war, listened as their great king asked them a question: “I have not gone over the seas to look for the white man yet they have come into my country…I have nothing against the white man and I cannot tell why they came to me. They want to take me. What shall I do?”

His braves bellowed back that they would not allow their king to be taken while even one of them remained alive.

Cetshwayo said they must kill the red soldiers (the British infantry men wore red tunics) who had come into Zululand to take away the king and the womenfolk and the cattle. Most prophetically of all, he urged them to stay clear of those red soldiers wherever they had dug trenches or forts to protect themselves.

Find them out in the open, he said, where they have failed to
build up their defenses, and: “you will be able to eat him up.”

He sent them away from him then, with instructions to the commanders—the
indunas
—to set a relaxed pace. They would need all possible energy for the fight ahead.

Battle-ready too were the men now marching into Zululand. Many of the British soldiers had been fighting for years in the service of the Empire. They’d grown accustomed to the conditions in the hot places of the world, their faces, necks and hands tanned by the sun, their once-white pith helmets darkened by dust and sweat to a more practical light brown. The infantry soldiers were armed with the state-of-the-art firearm of the day, the Martini-Henry rifle. It was loaded with a 0.45-caliber cartridge and delivered a lead bullet not much smaller than the last joint of a man’s little finger. One round could stop a buffalo and a hit anywhere on a man’s body above the knees was likely to cause enough damage to kill or at least permanently disable him.

The force under Chelmsford’s command was by no means all-British. Along for the fight as well were men of the Natal Native Horse (NNH), the Natal Mounted Police (NMP) and the Natal Carbineers (NC)—locals with lifelong experience of the terrain and of fighting their black neighbors. It wasn’t an all-white army either. Disaffected Zulus, together with men of other neighbors tribes, formed companies of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC) under the command of white officers. These were dressed and armed like the enemy, with spears and shields, and wore colored headbands to enable the whites to tell them apart from other Zulus in the heat of fighting.

By January 20 Chelmsford was watching his men make camp on the level ground in the shadow of the east face of Isandlwana mountain. A few days before he’d notched up a minor victory against the braves of a local Zulu chief called Sihayo—and the way the enemy had broken and run before his men deepened his
conviction that no Zulu army would willingly stand before him. He didn’t order his men to dig trenches around the camp—or even to arrange the wagons in a protective ring or
laager
around it. He would say later that he saw no need for such defenses—demanded by the textbook in the case of fighting in enemy territory—because it was always his intention to move the camp forward within days. The ground was anyway, he said, too hard for digging.