Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (44 page)

When the Zulu War broke out in January 1879, Cetshwayo could count on somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 available troops. Six months later the British had shot down at least 10,000 on the various battlefields of Zululand, and no doubt nearly as many later succumbed to wounds. No accurate record of Zulu dead was ever made; but the absence of medical care and the nature of the Martini-Henry .45-caliber slug suggest that thousands of wounded throughout the war died of shock or infection, or simply bled to death. The heavy, soft projectile of a Martini-Henry rifle, not to mention the ordnance of the Gatling gun and artillery piece, made a horrific hole in the human body, as the crippled and ugly scarred bodies of the few surviving Zulu veterans attested. Indeed, on one of the worst days in English colonial history, January 22, 1879, the British army nevertheless may well have killed more than 5,000 Zulus at Isandhlwana, Rorke’s Drift, and Ineyzane, or between 12 and 16 percent of the entire Zulu army.

By war’s end most of the Zulu nation’s cattle were killed, scattered, or stolen. Its system of imperial regimentation was shattered, as the British imposed an unworkable peace, by dividing up Cetshwayo’s kingdom into thirteen warring states—a solution that by design precluded prosperity in Zululand and further war against its neighboring European colonies. The “victory” of 1879 was achieved at the cost of only 1,007 British soldiers killed in battle, along with 76 officers. A small, undetermined number of additional troops succumbed to tropical disease and wounds. For the six months of the war the British soldier had on average killed ten or more Zulus for every trooper lost, despite being generally outnumbered at various battles by magnitudes of between five and forty to one. The legacy of the British invasion, battlefield conquest, and rather shameful settlement that divided the Zulu people into impotent warring factions was the end of an independent state and the virtual destruction of an entire way of life.

ZULU POWER AND IMPOTENCE

Shaka

Africa produced no more warlike tribe than the Zulus. Of the hundreds of tribal armies of the continent, none were as sophisticated as Zulu
impis
in either their organization or their command structure. In native wars on the continent no other tribe could match Zulu discipline. Alone of native armies, the Zulus had largely abandoned missile weapons, in favor of a short spear in order to fight at close ranges. Yet a minuscule British force obliterated Africa’s most feared military in a matter of months. How was that possible?

Like the Aztec empire before the Spanish invasion, the Zulu nation was a relatively new creation when the Europeans arrived in Natal in real numbers during the nineteenth century. For nearly three hundred years prior to 1800, the Zulus were but one of dozens of nomadic Bantu-speaking tribes who slowly migrated into what is now Natal and Zululand. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Dingiswayo, a chief of the Mthethwa, one of many Nguni tribes, radically departed from the traditional Bantu practice of local raiding and skirmishing by seeking to incorporate defeated tribes into a national army.

In his effort to build a federated system through the creation of a professional military, Dingiswayo curtailed the past practice of ritualistic wars fought mostly with missile weapons over grazing rights, in which casualties remained relatively light and noncombatants were largely untouched. In the eight years of his reign (1808–16) Dingiswayo laid the foundations for the Zulu empire by overturning the ancestral protocols of Bantu culture in southwest Africa, incorporating rather than exterminating or enslaving defeated tribes, seeking commerce with the Portuguese along the coast, and making civilian life itself subservient to military training. One of his most successful lieutenants, the revolutionary leader Shaka of the tiny Zulu tribe, eventually assumed control of the empire (1816–28) and transformed it to serve an enormous standing army, in ways unimagined even by old Dingiswayo himself. Shaka’s revolutionary changes in military practice mark the real rise of Zulu power, a warring kingdom that would exist for the next sixty years (1816–76) until the British conquest. Before being murdered by his siblings in 1828, Shaka had entirely altered the African manner of war, resisted white encroachment, slaughtered 50,000 of his enemies in battle, and gratuitously murdered thousands more of his own citizens in increasingly frequent bouts of imperial dementia. The legacy of Shaka’s twelve-year reign was a loose imperial coalition of some half million subjects and a national army of nearly 50,000 warriors. During the decade of formation of the new Zulu empire perhaps as many as 1 million native Africans had been killed or starved to death as a direct result of Shaka’s imperial dreams. South Africa thus illustrates a mostly unrecognized characteristic of the European colonial military experience: in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, both indigenous tribes and Europeans usually killed more of their own people in battle than they did one another. Between 1820 and 1902, for example, Shaka and his successors killed vastly more Zulus than did Lord Chelmsford, and the Boers slaughtered far more British than did Cetshwayo.

A
Garrison
State

Much myth and romance surround the Zulu military, but we can dispense with the popular idea that its warriors fought so well because of enforced sexual celibacy or the use of stimulant drugs—or even that they learned their regimental system and terrifying tactics of envelopment from British or Dutch tradesmen. Zulu men had plenty of sexual outlets before marriage, carried mostly snuff on campaign, only occasionally smoked cannabis, drank a mild beer, and created their method of battle advance entirely from their own experience from decades of defeating tribal warriors. The general idea of military regimentation, perhaps even the knowledge of casting high-quality metal spearheads, may have been derived from observation of early European colonial armies, but the refined system of age-class regiments and attacking in the manner of the buffalo were entirely indigenous developments.

The undeniable Zulu preponderance of power derived from three traditional sources of military efficacy: manpower, mobilization, and tactics. All three were at odds with almost all native African methods of fighting. The conquest of Bantu tribes in southeast Africa under Shaka’s leadership meant that for most of the nineteenth century until the British conquest—during the subsequent reigns of Kings Dingane (1828–40), Mpande (1840–72), and Cetshwayo (1872–79)—the Zulus controlled a population ranging between 250,000 and 500,000 and could muster an army of some 40,000 to 50,000 in some thirty-five
impis,
many times larger than any force, black or white, that Africa might field.

Unlike most other tribal armies of the bush, the Zulus were no mere horde that fought as an ad hoc throng. They did not stage ritual fights in which customary protocols and missile warfare discouraged lethality. Rather, Zulu
impis
were reflections of fundamental social mores of the Zulu nation itself, which was a society designed in almost every facet for the continuous acquisition of booty and the need for individual subjects to taste killing firsthand. If the Aztec warrior sought a record of captive-taking to advance his standing, then a Zulu could find little status or the chance to create his own household until he had “washed his spear” in the blood of an enemy.

The entire nation was regimented—as in the manner of classical Sparta—by age-class systems that might supersede even tribal affiliations. Boys were to undergo formal military training and serve as baggage carriers at fourteen or fifteen. By late adolescence most Zulu males were expected to be full-fledged warriors who could run fifty miles a day without shoes as they entered the
impis.
Cohorts of bachelors were arranged into lifelong regiments, and men were not allowed to marry officially until their late thirties without special compensation; thus the ability to establish an independent family served as a great social dividing line within the army. Under Shaka’s system as many as 20,000 males under the age of thirty-five were to remain unmarried and subject to constant military service. Even the older warriors, who could take legal wives and establish their own kraals, or autonomous households, often found themselves instead on lengthy campaigns.

Yet a notion of enforced “celibacy” among warriors is exaggerated, since Zulu males routinely engaged in a variety of sexual activities short of full penetration with women. Rather, “celibacy” meant that warriors were not allowed to pair off with permanent mates to form autonomous households or to have intercourse with virgins until their late thirties. Since the delay in childbearing among young women meant a reduction in Zulu fertility itself, such age-class rites may in fact have been intended by Shaka to control the population of Zululand—and the unsustainable exploitation of grazing land by cattle ranching in an already overpopulated landscape.

Whatever the exact cause of the peculiar practice of age-class regimentation, the result was an unusual esprit de corps among troops, as
impis—
marked by distinctive names, particular headdresses, jewelry, feathers, and shield insignia—usually fought as separate units for the entire life span of their warrior age-cohorts. Tactically, the Zulu mode of attack was simple but efficient. Battle deployment was named after the Cape buffalo, as each
impi
was divided into four groups, comprising the flanks or “horns” of two younger regiments. These wings quickly spread out around both sides of the enemy, hoping to encircle the opposing force and drive it back against the “chest” or veteran regiment of the
impis,
while the “loins” or aged reserves would then come up when the hostile force was fully engaged. While predictable, the standardization of attack proved successful against rival tribes of the plains, given the Zulus’ uncanny ability to sneak undetected through the grass and brush, sprint to surround and enclose a surprised enemy, and then finish him off in close combat with stabbing spears and billy clubs.

Under Shaka’s reign, the army had largely abandoned the throwing spear for the short stabbing assegai—now to be called the iKlwa from the sucking noise it made when being pulled from the chest or belly of an enemy—and tall cowhide shield. The new assegai had a much larger and heavier iron blade than its throwing counterpart, and a far shorter shaft, inasmuch as it was to be used most often as an underhand stabbing weapon in concert with the larger shield. Like a Roman legionary, who likewise closed with his enemy to battle face-to-face, the Zulu warrior could bang or catch his shield on the enemy as he came up quickly with a sharp upward thrust from his assegai, whose relatively small size and sharp edge made it more similar to a
gladius
than to a Greek spear. Each warrior also brandished a knobkerrie, or hardwood club with a knob on the end. Unlike nearly every other tribal force in Africa, the Zulus waged war hand-to-hand, without missiles, and expected to meet the enemy head-on and defeat him through greater courage, weapons skill, and muscular strength. Bright uniforms—including feathers of various kinds, cow-tail tassels, and leather necklaces and headdresses—war shouts, the beating of spear against shield, and pre-battle dances were aimed at striking fear into the enemy before the initial onslaught.

Typically, a Zulu
impi
might cover as much as one hundred to two hundred miles in a campaign in a matter of three days, as it brought along little food or supplies, but was expected to live off the captured cattle of its enemy. Young boys, or uDibi, carried along sleeping mats and what food they could manage to pack and still keep up with the
impis.
Once the enemy was targeted, leaders of the
impis
met to assign respective regiments to the horns, chest, and loins. The army approached the enemy at a run, intending to surround and crush it in a matter of minutes, followed by plundering the defeated’s territory before striking for home. In battle itself, the lifelong training with the assegai and knobkerrie, together with the tough conditioning of the
impis
and the expertise at rapid envelopment, resulted in a marked fighting edge for Zulu warriors during the hand-to-hand fighting. Yet both past and present panegyrists of Zulu courage have largely forgotten the inherent military weakness of the entire system, inherent flaws that made it extremely vulnerable not only to formal European armies such as the British but even to vastly outnumbered, less well trained colonial militias of Boers and English settlers.

First, while Zulu warriors endured a tough course of military training, and then submitted to a lifelong and often brutal regimentation in their
impis,
their resulting courage and ferocity did not result in anything comparable to the European notion of military discipline, which emphasized drill, close-order formation of line and column, synchronized group volleys, a strict chain of command, abstract notions of tactics and strategy, and a written code of military justice. Instead, rival
impis
were likely to brawl and even fight to the death in internecine disputes, far exceeding any of the typical fistfights in the British army between regiments.

Nor was there a true system of command, as individual
impis
often disobeyed direct orders from their king—the uThulwana, uDloko, and inDlu-yengwe regiments at Rorke’s Drift ignored Cetshwayo’s orders not to attack the fortified position or venture into Natal—fighting as independent units without synchronized command. Thus, the uThulwana and uDloko met the inDlu-yengwe regiment largely by chance, as the younger inDlu-yengwe dared Prince Dabulamanzi to join his two older impis for an ad hoc assault on Rorke’s Drift. Other than a loose, formulaic plan of attack, there was no systematic approach to drill and close-order marching, resulting in a general chaos during the actual fighting and little chance that retreats would not turn into simple routs or that attacks would follow in ordered waves. While the Zulus fought face-to-face, they did so as individuals; the
impis
did not rely on serried ranks and simultaneous spear thrusting to achieve a shock effect at the first collision. Against Rorke’s Drift, a series of uncoordinated assaults resulted in dissipation of Zulu strength. In contrast, a sudden mass assault designed to put thousands of warriors at a concentrated point of the barricade within a few minutes would have overwhelmed the tiny garrison.

The Zulu warrior lived in a world of spirits and witchcraft that was antithetical to the rather godless European emphasis on sheer military efficacy governed by abstract rules, regulations, and the technology of brutal rifles, Gatling guns, and artillery. Before battle, witch doctors concocted potions of sacrificial bull’s intestines, herbs, and water to give warriors strength for the ordeal to come. Zulus were put on strict diets and given emetics—which could only have weakened their stamina—and pieces of ceremonial human flesh. After slaying a foe, the corpse was disemboweled to allow the spirit to escape and to prevent retribution against the killer. Sorcerers sought to hex rival clans through voodoolike curses and incantations. The mysterious ability of British soldiers to slaughter thousands of attacking Zulus with rifle fire while losing very few was likewise explicable only through magic, not the logic of training, science, and discipline. Thus, after each terrible slaughter, Zulu tactics changed not at all, as superstition was invoked to explain the miraculous curtain of lead that met the
impis
as they neared the British lines.

In the Zulu mind witchcraft explained why the British killed hundreds with their rifles, whereas Zulus, with the same captured weapons, invariably hit a small percentage of their targets—in every case, almost always firing far too high (to give the bullet “power”) and never in coordinated volleys. After the terrible Zulu defeat at Kambula, the surviving warriors were convinced of the intervention of supernatural creatures on the British side, and so quizzed Cornelius Vign as to why “so many white birds, such as they had never seen before, came flying over them from the side of the Whites? And why were they attacked also by dogs and apes, clothed and carrying fire-arms on their shoulders? One of them even told me he had even seen four lions in the
laager.
They said, ‘The Whites don’t fight fairly; they bring animals to draw down destruction upon us’ ” (C. Vign,
Cetshwayo’s Dutchman,
38). In later attacks against Europeans tribal attackers shot their rifles at artillery explosions, believing that shells contained little white men who burst out to kill everyone in their midst. In the aftermath of the war, veterans were convinced they had been beaten by a protective curtain of steel that the British had hung over their army, perhaps a divine explanation for either the wall of lead put down by the redcoats or the reflections from British bayonets.