Cetshwayo

Cetshwayo kaMpande was the last king of an independent Zulu Kingdom, ruling from 1873 until the British invasion of 1879. Though he tried to avoid war and repeatedly sought peace, he led the Zulu during the Anglo-Zulu War, in which his army won a famous victory over the British at Isandlwana before being crushed. Deposed and exiled, he was briefly restored and died amid civil war in 1884.

He was born around 1826, a son of the future king Mpande and his wife Ngqumbazi, and so a half-nephew of Shaka, founder of the Zulu state. Rivalry between Cetshwayo and his younger brother Mbuyazi exploded into civil war in 1856. At the battle of Ndondakusuka on 2 December that year Cetshwayo's Usuthu faction defeated Mbuyazi and annihilated most of his followers, five of Cetshwayo's own brothers among them. Mpande formally recognised Cetshwayo as heir in 1861. With the help of a white trader turned adviser, John Dunn, he made sure that imported firearms went to his own supporters, and he dealt ruthlessly with possible rivals, ordering the killing of one of his father's wives and her children.

Mpande died in 1872, and Cetshwayo was installed as king on 1 September 1873, with the Natal official Theophilus Shepstone present to proclaim a set of "coronation laws". He built a new royal capital at Ulundi. Historians disagree about how popular his rule was: in 1876, after he allowed two regiments to marry, many young couples fled across the borders and some of the women who remained were killed on his orders, and he grew increasingly hostile to Christian missionaries. At first his foreign policy rested on friendship with British Natal, but when Britain annexed the Transvaal in 1877 it inherited a long-running Zulu border dispute with the Boers.

A boundary commission found in 1878 largely in the Zulu's favour, but the high commissioner, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, who saw the Zulu kingdom as an obstacle to his plan to federate South Africa, held back its findings. Citing minor border incidents, of which Cetshwayo knew nothing, Frere issued an ultimatum on 11 December 1878 demanding that the Zulu military system be dismantled within thirty days. It could not realistically be met, and British troops crossed into Zululand on 11 January 1879. Cetshwayo sent envoys to ask for talks, but they were detained.

His regiments then overran a British column's camp at the Battle of Isandlwana, a costly victory. Further Zulu successes followed at Intombe and Hlobane, but British defences held at Rorke's Drift and Kambula. Cetshwayo refused to invade Natal, hoping to repel the invasion and negotiate. Reinforced, the British returned and on 4 July 1879 broke the Zulu army at Ulundi, firing from a hollow square armed with artillery and Gatling guns, then burned the capital.

Cetshwayo was deposed and sent into exile, first to Cape Town and later to London, where his dignified bearing and the campaigning of supporters such as the journalist Lady Florence Dixie won him public sympathy. By 1882 a blood feud had broken out in Zululand between his Usuthu supporters and rivals led by Zibhebhu. In 1883 the British restored Cetshwayo to part of his former territory, but on 22 July Zibhebhu, aided by Boer mercenaries, attacked his new homestead at Ulundi. The wounded king fled to the Nkandla forest and then, at the British resident's urging, moved to Eshowe. He died there on 8 February 1884, probably of a heart attack, though some suspected poison. His son Dinuzulu succeeded him.

Our 1878 map shows the Zulu kingdom on the eve of the British invasion, beside the Cape Colony and Natal; later maps show the region under colonial rule, today part of South Africa.