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British Political Hegemony and Imperialism: Crushing of the Usuthu and the Onkweni Sections of the Zulu Royal Family, 1880s–1913

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2026

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Siyabonga Nxumalo*
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Thabo Mbeki African School of International and Public Affairs, University of South Africa, South Africa
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Abstract

The British invasion of the Zulu kingdom in January 1879, the imposition of British colonial rule from 1880 onwards, and the subsequent undermining of the Zulu royal family and the destruction of the kingdom from the 1880s to the early twentieth century have received attention in numerous historical publications and dissertations. While the primary focus of these studies is on how the British colonists placed the primary members of the Zulu royal family such as King Cetshwayo kaMpande and King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo under siege, none has explored the impact of the British hostility toward other senior members of the Zulu royal family, such as Prince Ndabuko kaMpande and Prince Shingana kaMpande. Only Robert R. R. Dlomo and Jeff Guy have made brief references to these issues in their biographies of Kings Cetshwayo and Dinuzulu and Harriette Colenso. It will be shown below that the incarceration of Shingana and Ndabuko alongside their nephew, Dinuzulu, from 1889 to 1898, and the re-arrest, trial, and banishment of Shingana to kwaThoyana near Amanzimtoti from 1910 to 1911, and the re-arrest, retrial, conviction, and banishment of Dinuzulu to Middelburg from 1911 to 1913 were part of the British efforts to completely destroy the senior section of the Zulu royal family popularly known as the Usuthu.

Keywords

Southern AfricaSouth Africacolonialismwarchieftaincy

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Research Article
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The Journal of African History , Volume 67 , 2026 , e8
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press.

British Colonial Strategy and the Divide-and-Rule System

The British invasion of the Zulu kingdom in 1879 and the subsequent imposition of colonial rule, which dismantled the Zulu monarchy throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have been widely discussed in historical literature. Much of the focus has been on the British efforts to undermine key figures, particularly King Cetshwayo and King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, often emphasising their sieges and political downfall. However, existing scholarship has largely overlooked the broader British hostility towards other senior members of the royal family, notably Prince Ndabuko and Prince Shingana kaMpande. This oversight results in an incomplete understanding of the full extent of British efforts to neutralize the Zulu royal house.

Scholars such as Robert Dlomo, Jeff Guy, and Harriette Colenso have briefly mentioned these figures, but their treatment remains cursory, often overshadowed by the kings’ narratives.Footnote 1 A more thorough examination of the fates of Shingana and Ndabuko reveals a crucial aspect of British colonial strategy: targeting not just the kings, but dismantling the entire senior lineage of the Zulu royal family, particularly the Usuthu faction. The princes’ incarceration from 1889 to 1898, followed by Shingana’s exile and Dinuzulu’s subsequent banishment, were key parts of this strategy. Re-evaluating these overlooked events offers a more comprehensive understanding of the Zulu kingdom’s destruction under British rule.

This study expands the scope of analysis by examining the Usuthu and Onkweni sections of the Zulu royal family, tracing how the British—through a combination of military defeat, political manipulation, legal persecution, and administrative restructuring—sought to extinguish the political influence of these royal houses. It demonstrates that the repression of the royal family ironically fostered new political alliances between African traditional elites, a mission-educated African intelligentsia, and liberal-minded white allies—particularly the Colenso family—whose activism helped lay the intellectual and organizational foundations for African nationalism and the formation of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in 1912.

Dividing the narrative into four chronological and thematic sections, this article provides a clearer narrative structure, restores the often-overlooked role of the Colenso family, and situates the struggles of the Usuthu and Onkweni within broader debates about colonial authority, African resistance, and emerging political consciousness. Each section deepens the analysis of how colonial policy, local conflicts, and shifting alliances shaped the Zulu political landscape from the 1880s through the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the banishments of 1913.

Onkweni was the territory governed by Shingana, while Usuthu was the kraal of Dinuzulu, from which he led and administered his followers. Shingana—who was a politically influential uncle to Dinuzulu and a half-brother to Cetshwayo—shot to prominence during the early 1880s when he, Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, and Ndabuko of the kwaMinya royal homestead served as political advisors during the Zulu monarch’s confrontation with invading British colonial forces. Guy describes him as the next in line, in terms of seniority, to Prince Ndabuko. Furthermore, he is described as quicker in mind and body than Prince Ndabuko, and as less morose.Footnote 2 His chiefdom and original royal homestead were at kwaNobamba near the Emakhosini valley, the place of the kings where the original Zulu leaders had lived and were buried.Footnote 3 King Mpande ka Senzangakhona allocated him land at the Emhlabathini plains—to the southeast of King Cetshwayo’s Ondini royal residence—where he established his Onkweni residence.Footnote 4

The Anglo-Zulu War, Wolseley’s Settlement, and the Political Landscape of the 1880s

The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 fundamentally altered the political structure of the Zulu Kingdom. After defeating the Zulu forces at the Battle of Ulundi in July 1879, the British dismantled the monarchy and subdivided the kingdom into thirteen artificially created chieftaincies (see Fig. 1, below).Footnote 5 These were ruled by iziphakanyiswa (those who were colonially-elevated into positions of influence and authority) with the aim of extending the Natal Secretary of Native Affairs Theophilus Shepstone’s “divide and rule” strategy to the north of the Thukela River.Footnote 6 This arrangement, introduced by Sir Garnet Wolseley, was designed to destroy the centralized Zulu polity and replace it with small, mutually hostile units incapable of unified resistance.Footnote 7 Wolseley’s settlement must be understood as part of a broader imperial pattern across Africa and Asia: conquering powers often weakened centralized indigenous systems by installing multiple competing authorities, thereby ensuring the colonial government’s security and economic advantage.Footnote 8 Two of the iziphakanyiswa were members of the Zulu royal family who had defected to the side of the British towards the end of the Anglo-Zulu War: Prince Hamu kaNzibe kaSenzangakhona and Zibhebhu kaMaphitha, of the Ngenetsheni and the Mandlakazi sections of the Zulu royal family, respectively.Footnote 9 The British also sought to position Shingana and Chief Mnyamana Buthelezi as iziphakanyiswa. Initially, both of them rejected the offer although the latter later defected to the side of the British from 1887 until his death in 1893.

Source: Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository (PAR), 1/NGA, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3]. “Zululand Delimitation Commission, Zululand: Numbering and Boundaries of Reserves on Map Accompanying Fourth Report,” Part 1, 1903.

Figure 1. Partition of Zulu Land, 1879.

The Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family responded to these developments through armed resistance at the Battles of Tshaneni in 1884 and Ndunu Hill (kwaNongoma) and Hlophekhulu in 1888.Footnote 10 Shingana emerged as a key figure in this early political resistance. He led the delegation to Pietermaritzburg in 1880, articulating concerns about livestock seizures, harassment by Hamu and Zibhebhu, and the breakdown of traditional authority.Footnote 11 The colonial authorities dismissed his delegation, but the interaction also marked the Usuthu’s first sustained contact with the Colenso family. During the 1880 deputation and again in the 1882 visit, the Usuthu leaders stayed at Ekukhanyeni, the Colenso residence at Bishopstowe, which provided them with a sympathetic base of support. While the full significance of this relationship became clearer only in later years, these early encounters laid the foundations for a deeper political collaboration between the Colensos and the Zulu royal family.Footnote 12

John Dunn also played a crucial yet contradictory role. Initially a British ally—and later appointed chief—Dunn was positioned between colonial authorities and African communities. His territory became both a refuge and a site of surveillance. His complex relationship with the Zulu, involving marriage alliances and his role in enforcing colonial directives, made him a controversial figure whom the Usuthu regarded with suspicion.Footnote 13 Dunn played a pivotal role in suppressing the Usuthu by acting as a loyal collaborator and local enforcer of British colonial policy after the Anglo-Zulu War. As a state-appointed chief, he helped reinforce the Wolseley settlement by assisting in the violent suppression of resistance—such as aiding Chief Mlandela in crushing Stimela Mthethwa’s revolt—and by using these incidents, alongside Hamu and Zibhebhu, to justify renewed persecution of Usuthu supporters.Footnote 14 Dunn also exercised strict control over the movement of Usuthu people in his territory, with Governor Henry Bulwer reprimanding delegates in 1882 for travelling to Pietermaritzburg without Dunn’s permission, while Dunn attended the meeting specifically to identify men for potential punishment.Footnote 15 Furthermore, he benefited materially from the dispossession of the Usuthu through confiscations of cattle and land, and he actively shaped colonial narratives by reporting on supposed “rebellious” behaviour, thereby influencing officials like Melmoth Osborn and Bulwer to view Ndabuko, Ziwedu, and others as dangerous agitators.Footnote 16 In all these ways, Dunn functioned as a key African agent of the colonial administration, helping to undermine the Zulu royal family and suppress efforts to restore Cetshwayo’s authority.

By 1889, British colonial authorities had resolved to neutralize the most influential leaders of the royal family. Dinuzulu, Shingana, and Ndabuko were arrested following the conflicts involving the Mandlakazi and banished to the island of St. Helena.Footnote 17

1889–1905: Imprisonment, Political Reconfiguration, and the Impact of Gelejane’s Death

After Shingana and Dinuzulu were deposed and exiled by the colonial government, their polities and land were reallocated to chiefs loyal to the colonial authorities. Dinuzulu’s dominion was handed out to chiefs who were hostile to the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family: Mchitheki kaZibhebhu, who was serving as the acting chief of the Mandlakazi polity while Zibhebhu kaMaphitha’s heir and successor, Bhokwe, was still a minor; Mpikanina kaZiwedu, whose father, Prince Ziwedu kaMpande Zulu, had defected to the British side in 1888; Mkhandumba kaTshanibezwe Buthelezi, a grandson of Mnyamana Buthelezi (discussed above); and Moya kaMgojana, a descendant of King Zwide kaLanga of the Ndwande Kingdom, whose father named Mgojana was appointed by the British colonial authorities as one of the thirteen iziphakanyiswa in 1879 but killed by Cetshwayo and the Usuthu in 1888.Footnote 18

The Onkweni chiefdom was also subdivided and its territories allocated to chiefdoms loyal to the British. One of these chiefdoms was the Mlaba chiefdom which the British had created in the Mahlabathini area as a reward to the Ximba people for their conspicuous military services to the British colonial forces during Anglo-Zulu War.Footnote 19 The Mlaba chief named Mqundane moved over from Natal, with a number of his followers, after the British colonists had created chieftainship for him in the Mahlabathini area in the late 1880s. The Ximba/Mlaba people were allocated a piece of land to the east of the Ulundi plain where the chiefdom still exists. Their main responsibility was to keep an eye on the Zulu people under the leadership of Shingana “whose loyalty could not be relied upon.”Footnote 20 Mqundane Mlaba died in about 1890 and his son named Sigungu Mlaba succeeded him as the chief of the Ximba people at the Mahlabathini Magisterial District.Footnote 21 Other Ximba chiefdoms are found at the Mkhambathini and Ntembeni areas in the Thekwini Metro and the Umgungundlovu District Municipality. Historically, the Ximba people originated in Lesotho under the leadership of Mabhoyi kaNondlolo Ximba in the early nineteenth century. They pledged their loyalty (ukukhonza) to the abaMbo polity of Zihlandlo kaGcwabe in the uThukela area of the western boundary of the Zulu Kingdom.Footnote 22

The main Zungu chiefdom in the Mahlabathini area—one of the hereditary chieftaincies which King Shaka kaSenzangakhona conquered and incorporated into the Zulu Kingdom during the early nineteenth century—was ruled by Mdabula Zungu until the early 1900s. He ascended to power following the killing of his father, Chief Mfanawendlela Zungu, during the British-inspired Zulu civil war in December 1883.Footnote 23 The Zungu people, whose leaders were aligned to the Mandlakazi section of Zibhebhu kaMaphitha had fled into John Dunn’s territory south of the Umhlathuze River after the Usuthu forces of Dinuzulu defeated the Mandlakazi at the Battle of Tshaneni in June 1884. They only returned to their chiefdom in 1888 and remained loyal to the British colonial administration in Zululand. Mdabula Zungu was directly succeeded by Magojela kaMfanawendlela Zungu as ibambabukhosi (regent).Footnote 24 As we will see below, the Zungu became the second polity to acquire parts of Shingana’s chieftaincy in 1911—as part of the continuing fallout from the 1906 killing of magistrate and commissioner Herbert Stainbank.

The British colonial authorities created the other two Zungu chiefdoms, found in Lower Mfolozi area, in 1890. The first was an offshoot of the Dube people created when the British recognised Chief Lokothwayo Zungu as its chief in 1890. After his death he was succeeded by his son, Zanya Zungu.Footnote 25 The second was a comparatively smaller offshoot of the first, constituted by people who had severed ties with Chief Lokothwayo during the war involving the Usuthu and the Mandlakazi groups in 1888. The British also recognised Ndabayakhe Zungu as this community’s chief in 1890. While Lokothwayo's chiefdom was made up of approximately 443 huts, the followers of Ndabayakhe Zungu populated some 146 huts in 1903.Footnote 26

It is unclear when the Ntombela people established themselves at KwaNobamba, where Shingana’s original Onkweni homestead was located.Footnote 27 The Ntombela are the descendants of a prominent line of loyal Zulu chiefs which include among them, Chief Ndabankulu kaLukhwazi Ntombela—who Jeff Guy has described as an independent and aggressive Usuthu supporter from the north-western district of the Zulu kingdom during the reigns of King Cetshwayo and his son and successor, Dinuzulu.Footnote 28 Chief Ndabankulu Ntombela had formed part of the Zulu deputation to Pietermaritzburg which Shingana led in May 1880. He emerged as one of the key Usuthu leaders after the killing of most of its senior leaders during the Mandlakazi raid and burning of King Cetshwayo’s Ulundi royal homestead on 21 July 1883.Footnote 29

Oral traditions and official archival sources suggest that the main, and the only hereditary Mpungose chiefdom in the KwaZulu-Natal Province, is presently found in the Eshowe and the Mthonjaneni areas of the Uthungulu District Municipality.Footnote 30 The main Mpungose section originally came from the Thalaneni area near Inkandla. This section in particular, and the other Mpungose people in general, are said to have ancestral links with the Zulu royal family through undlunkulu uNozinja, the wife of Malandela, who was the mother of Qwabe and Zulu. While Reggie Khumalo suggests that the founder of the Mpungose people, named Phahla Mpungose, secured a piece of land at the Thalaneni area near Inkandla because he was a blood relative of undlunkulu uNozinja, the officials of the Native Affairs Department (NAD) described Phahla as the domestic servant (translated imprecisely as isinqila) of undlunkulu uNozinja.Footnote 31 Baleni kaSilwana Mpungose, on the other hand, informed James Stuart that it was his ancestors—named Khuba and Ndlovu—who pledged Mpungose loyalty (khonza’d) to Senzangakhona kaJama. They helped him fight and defeat Makhasana kaJama during a conflict over the Zulu chieftainship. They subsequently formed part of the Zulu armed forces which fought and conquered the Chunu people during the reign of Senzangakhona. The Chunu were consequently incorporated into the Mpungose chieftainship in the Thalaneni area near Inkandla.

These claims, however, require further interrogation. The notion that Zulu forces under Senzangakhona “fought and conquered” the Chunu people would be contested by Chunu historians—especially those who are familiar with the later movements of Macingwane during Shaka’s reign. The concept of “conquest” arguably oversimplifies the complex interactions between the Zulu and the Chunu, offering an alternative view of resistance, negotiation, and shifting power dynamics that challenges the narrative of a straightforward military victory. Baleni notes that Senzangakhona again conquered and incorporated the Xulu people into the newly created Mpungose chiefdom after they had provided conspicuous military services to the Zulu triumph over Gxabhashe.Footnote 32

However, both Arthur Bryant and Carolyn Hamilton have disputed this view. They have argued that it was Dingiswayo kaJobe of the Mthethwa Kingdom who had the neighbouring Xulu chief, Gxabashe, kaDanda murdered in the early nineteenth century, and then raised up a new dynasty under Mapholoba of the Ngcobo.Footnote 33 So if Senzangakhona led the raid against the Xulu chiefdom, he did this at the behest of the Mthethwa king. Whether this gave Senzangakhona the power and authority to appoint the Mpungose to chieftainship is therefore questionable. What seems more likely is that it was Shaka who elevated Ndlovu kaKhuba Mpungose to chieftainship in the Thalaneni area and Mpande kaSenzangakhona who incorporated the Xulu territory into the Mpungose chiefdom in the Mthonjaneni area.Footnote 34 Both Baleni kaSilwana Mpungose and Magojela kaMfanawendlela Zungu informed James Stuart that the Mpungose people sprang from the Zungu people.Footnote 35 Magojela says the name Mpungose comes from the impunga (grey) bull that the Zungu people gave to the people of Phahla when they came over to the Zungu royal household to cleanse themselves at the end of the mourning period following the death of one of the Zungu chiefs.Footnote 36 Whatever its origins, the main Mpungose chiefdom was well established by the advent of British colonialism in Zululand in 1879. Its territory stretched from Eshowe to Emthonjaneni and the Nkandla areas. It had a total of 1157 huts recorded in 1903 tax returns.Footnote 37 The British appointed its leader, Chief Gawozi kaSilwane kaNdlovu kaKhuba Mpungose, as one of the thirteen iziphakanyiswa in 1879.Footnote 38 For its genealogy, see Fig. 2, below.

Sources: PAR, 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Report of R. Loram on the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968; and Reggie Khumalo, Uphoko, umqulu 1 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995), 105.

Figure 2. The Genealogical Tree of the Main Mpungose Chieftaincy.

The second Mpungose chiefdom was located in the Nkandla area of Zululand at the turn of the twentieth century. It was comprised of people who took refuge in the John Dunn reserve during periods of warfare—first between Usuthu forces that supported Cetshwayo and the Zibhebhu in 1883–84, and later between Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo and Zibhebhu kaMaphitha during the battles at Hlophekhulu and Ndunu Hill in 1888. When Chief Gawozi Mpungose died in 1880, the British appointed his brother, Siyunguza Mpungose, as chief. It only had a total of 469 huts recorded in 1903 tax returns.Footnote 39 It was the third Mpungose chiefdom which directly benefited from the deposition and banishment of Shingana. It is situated in the Mahlabathini area of the Zululand District Municipality in present-day KwaZulu-Natal Province. This chiefdom was originally made up of the largest number of African refugees from the Vryheid District who had fled the area after the Boers acquired it in the Battle of Tshaneni in June 1884 and turned it into private commercial farms.Footnote 40 The resident commissioner and chief magistrate of the British Colony of Zululand, Melmoth Osborn, appointed Ngobozana kaVukuza Mpungose—the paternal cousin of Gawozi kaSilwane, chief of the main section of the Mpungose chiefdom—to lead the Mpungose chiefdom in the Mahlabathini area. This decision was made on the recommendation of Shingana after he, and Dinuzulu and Prince Ndabuko, had been arrested for their roles in the Battles of Hlophekhulu and Ndunu Hill in 1888.Footnote 41

Mvayisa kaTshingili kaNqaba kaJingwe Shange traces the abakwaShange to the Esiklebheni area of Mahlabathini in the KwaZulu-Natal Province in the 1850s.Footnote 42 They were displaced from that locality during the Battle of Ndondakusuka, fought between the Usuthu forces of Cetshwayo and Prince Mbuyazi kaMpande.Footnote 43 They migrated south and it is not known exactly where they subsequently settled and established their chiefdom. Magema Fuze says that the abaMbo of the Mkhize and the Shange were blood relatives.Footnote 44 It is unclear how the Shange benefited from Prince Shingana’s lands since one part of his former chiefdom was allocated to the Nqodi Mbatha—and not to the Shange people—when Ngobozana Mpungose was deposed and his chiefdom was divided into three parts in 1911.Footnote 45

John Locke Knight, the assistant commissioner and resident magistrate for the Mthonjaneni Magisterial District, had suggested the appointment of Sikhandi Shange as a regent (ibambabukhosi) during the incarceration of Shingana at St. Helena prison. However, the latter objected and recommended that Ngobozana Mpungose should instead be appointed to this position.Footnote 46 This was for two reasons. First, prior to this appointment, Ngobozana Mpungose had served as an induna (headman) for King Mpande kaSenzangakhona and Cetshwayo. He consequently became one of the three senior Zulu officials who accompanied Cetshwayo to meet Queen Victoria in England from July to September 1882.Footnote 47 Second, Ngobozana’s five sons had fought in Shingana’s forces at Hlophekhulu in 1888.Footnote 48 Seemingly, Shingana arrived at this position after close discussions with Ndabuko, and Dinuzulu. They apparently concluded that since Ngobozana Mpungose was loyal to the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family, he would hand over the chieftainship when required to do so. This turned out to be a great miscalculation on their part: the Mpungose chieftaincy is to this day still in charge of the lands that previously belonged to Prince Shingana’s Onkweni chieftaincy.

Shingana, Ndabuko, and Dinuzulu were released from St. Helena prison and returned to Zululand in 1898.Footnote 49 At first Shingana recommended that Ngobozana continue to serve as his regent while he recuperated from his long incarceration. Thereafter he and his family tried unsuccessfully to have their chieftainship restored to them. But the chieftaincy was instead handed down to the descendants of Ngobozana. For the genealogical tree of this Mpungose chieftaincy, see Fig. 3, above.Footnote 50

Sources: PAR, 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Report of R. Loram on the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968. PAR, Chief Native Commissioner’s (CNC) Papers 2/73/40, Reference No.57/106: R. W. Hancock (Magistrate for Mahlabathini) to CNC Pietermaritzburg, 17 Sep. 1927; Statement of P. E, Nxele, Maqiyana kaNgobozana Mpungose, Godlomkhonto kaNgobozana Mpungose, Madotyeni kaNgobozana Mpungose, Mapelu kaMkhosana Zungu and Corporal Siki Ngcobo before Charles Wheelwright (CNC for Natal), Pietermaritzburg, 5 July 1927; Folio 311, “Amalgamation of the Mpungose Tribe [sic] and Appointment of Maqiyana kaNgobozana Mpungose as chief on Probation,” 1 Oct. 1929; 3141/1922, “Confirmed of the Maqiyana KaNgobozana Mpungose to Mpungose Chieftaincy at Mahlabathini,” 1 July 1935.Pietermaritzburg Offices of the Traditional Affairs Unit of the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, File 13/496, “Speech of Prince Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi on the Occasion of the Opening of the Tribal Court of Chief Khalelumuzi kaMbhasobheni Mpungose, Ulundi,” 7 Sep. 1985.

Figure 3. Genealogical Tree of the Mpungose Chieftaincy at the Mahlabathini Area of the KwaZulu-Natal Province.

Shingana tried to have his son and heir, Prince Gelejana kaShingana Zulu, appointed inkosi—on the advice of Herbert Munro Stainbank, the native commissioner and magistrate for the Mahlabathini Magisterial District—for two reasons. The first was that Gelejana had just come of age in 1900. The second was that Stainbank was unhappy with Ngobozana Mpungose’s leadership.Footnote 51 However, Gelejana Zulu was killed during a stick-fighting contest (umgangela) at the Simelane wedding ceremony in Mthonjaneni on 12 December 1900—an event that became a significant source of trauma for the Shingana family.Footnote 52 Umgangela is a form of organised refereed “inter-district” stick fighting designed as a social release valve for the violence of ukuphindisela (to avenge), even if not always successfully.Footnote 53

The reports of the medical practitioner, who examined the corpse of the deceased, and the police officer, who conducted the investigation at the scene, concluded that he had died from multiple injuries to the head and other parts of the body as a result of an attack by number of assailants.Footnote 54 Maqubhana kaNomahala was accused of having started the fight which led to the death of Prince Gelejana.Footnote 55 Witnesses stated that the men from Shingana and Prince Sitheku’s side appeared to be only defending themselves when the men from Chief Ngobozana Mpungose’s side attacked. The Mpungose men were fully armed on the occasion of this wedding and were not dressed formally for a wedding ceremony, unlike the people from Shingana and Sitheku’s side.Footnote 56 Chief Ngobozana Mpungose’s induna, Nyosana kaMasiphula, confirmed that the men of Shingana and Sitheku fled when they were attacked. He added that during the inquiry that he and Chief Ngobozana Mpungose held, one of the Mpungose men admitted that he had thrown the stone which hit Gelejana at the back of his head while he was running away. The other Mpungose men then fatally wounded him.Footnote 57 Seemingly this act was aimed at eliminating the possible threat to the Mpungose’s hold on the chieftainship in the Onkweni/Mahlabathini area. However, the trial court focused on the charge of “faction fighting” and found five of the Mpungose men guilty. They were each sentenced to a four-month term in prison with hard labour and a fine of twenty pounds.Footnote 58

The remainder of Chief Ngobozana Mpungose’s men who had participated in the fighting were sentenced to fines of one hundred pounds each, Shingana’s men were fined forty-five pounds each, and Sitheku’s followers were fined fifty-four pounds each. No one was charged and sentenced for the murder of Gelejana Zulu.Footnote 59 The colonial administration in Zululand made a sum of eighty-five pounds from the fines and considered the matter closed. Shingana—who was undoubtedly heartbroken and outraged by the killing of his son and heir—could not do anything as he had made an oath to live peacefully after his release from St. Helena prison. The death of Gelejana set back the initial efforts to have the ubukhosi basOnkweni returned to its rightful owners by a number of years.

1906–13: The Poll Tax Uprisings, Stainbank Murder, and Union of South Africa

The 1906 Poll Tax Uprisings, often associated with Chief Bhambatha Zondi, marked a watershed moment. For many African communities, the new tax symbolized deepening colonial intrusion into African life—compelling men into wage labour, enforcing new forms of surveillance, and reducing African autonomy.Footnote 60 In 1909, Dinuzulu and Shingana were re-arrested and put on trial for their ostensible role in the uprisings.Footnote 61 Dinuzulu was charged with twenty-three counts of treason and found guilty on four—including that he had allowed rebel leaders, Bhambatha kaMancinza Zondi and Mangathi, to visit his home, and that he had harboured Bhambatha’s wife and children at his Osuthu royal homestead.Footnote 62 Despite strong evidence that Dinuzulu had neither personally planned nor participated in the uprising, he was detained at the Pietermaritzburg old prison and later sentenced to a four-year term which he began serving at Newcastle prison beginning in March 1909. In addition, he was fined a total of one hundred pounds or a twelve-month prison sentence.Footnote 63

Charles Saunders, the chief magistrate and civil commissioner and later the native commissioner for the Ndwandwe Magisterial District in Zululand between 1897–1909, testified to Dinuzulu’s innocence when he said: “It would have been no use demanding guns from Dinuzulu or sending to search unless such search would have been successful. Only act when sure of success in finding what one wants.”Footnote 64 The first prime minister of the Union of South Africa, General Louis Botha, released Dinuzulu from prison in 1911 and banished him to a farm called Rietfontein in Middelburg in the eastern Transvaal. His royal residence in Middelburg became known as KwaThengisangaye, which literally means a place where he was sold-out or betrayed. He died there on 18 October 1913.Footnote 65

There are strong indications that the Natal colonial authorities were obsessed with fuelling divisions and factionalism as part of their divide-and-rule strategy aimed at undermining and possibly removing Dinuzulu from the leadership of the Zulu royal family, especially during the last decade or so of his life. For example, Saunders identified Prince Manzolwandle kaCetshwayo as a good trump card against Dinuzulu while contemplating fomenting a dispute over the Zulu throne in December 1906. He added that “there should by rights be a civil war between Dinuzulu and Manzolwandle, for succession is not guided by principle of law but by might.”Footnote 66 Prince Manzolwandle was Dinuzulu’s half-brother and his main political rival.Footnote 67 He collaborated with Mchitheki kaZibhebhu of the Mandlakazi section of the Zulu royal family in their efforts to topple the king. In June 1907, S. O. Samuelson, the Undersecretary of Native Affairs in the Natal Colony, described this collaboration as “Manzolwandle and Mchitheki hobknobbing together against Dinuzulu.”Footnote 68 Colonial authorities also arrested other influential members of the Zulu royal family as retribution, including Mankulumana kaSomaphunga Ndwandwe, King Dinuzulu’s main induna. He was only released from prison shortly before the formation of the Union of South Africa in May 1910.Footnote 69 He was, however, prohibited from returning to Zululand.Footnote 70

The killing of Stainbank, the native commissioner and resident magistrate for Mahlabathini Magisterial District, was a major setback for the efforts to restore the ubukhosi basOnkweni to Shingana and his family. Unknown gunmen shot and killed the magistrate at his camp near the White Mfolozi River during the night of 3 May 1906.Footnote 71 After a long and unsuccessful investigation, the Natal colonial authorities strongly suspected that Shingana and his nephew, Dinuzulu, had hatched the plan to have Stainbank assassinated. Saunders informed the Natal Prime Minister that, “there is evidence … to attach grave suspicion that Tshingana, an uncle of Dinuzulu’s and those exiled with him, if not the instigator of the whole affair was cognizant of all that was going on, and that the plot… was discussed at one of his kraals from whence the murderers set forth.”Footnote 72

The Natal colonial authorities expressed grave concern about the political influence which Shingana wielded within his former chiefdom between the death of his son, Gelejana Zulu, in 1900 and the outbreak of the Poll Tax Uprisings in 1906.Footnote 73 Failure to obtain incriminating evidence against him in the murder of Stainbank did not stop the authorities from taking action against the prince: he was formally deposed as inkosi yasOnkweni and, on 27 April 1910, banished—along with 75 members of his family—to the kwaThoyana chiefdom of Chief Ogle Zembe, near Amanzimtoti. He lived in poverty there despite the wealth he held in Mahlabathini.Footnote 74 This case of banishment to Zembe lands was part of a broader strategy of expunging abatshokobezi (rebels) to Highflats, Ixopo, and areas of southern Natal. AmaZondi—certainly those closely allied to the late Chube/Shezi Sigananda during the armed eNkandla fighting—were hauled down there too, some after serving prison time with lashes and hard labour.Footnote 75 Harriette Colenso tried desperately to have the banished prince’s cattle and goats transferred from Mahlabathini to Amanzimtoti to provide food, milk, and amasi (sour milk) for the sustenance of Shingana and his children.Footnote 76 Natal Authorities refused to change their stance, despite the numerous petitions from Colenso in 1910 and 1911. They prohibited the transfer of the prince’s cattle on the grounds that there was an outbreak of East Coast Fever.Footnote 77 They even refused to purchase any cattle for him around Durban when Colenso suggested this as an alternative option, on the grounds that he should pay for any expenses he incurred despite the fact that he was living under house arrest and unable to secure any income in Amanzimtoti.Footnote 78

Shingana died a pauper on 22 March 1911 and was buried at Ndulinde.Footnote 79 His descendants suspect that he was poisoned. The first motive cited is that he had contributed to the death of many British troops by fighting at Isandlwana in 1879 and Hlophekhulu in 1888. The second was the lingering British hostility rooted in their suspicion of the prince’s involvement in the murder of Stainbank.Footnote 80 After Shingana’s death, the state discontinued paying his stipend, forcing his destitute family to apply for permission to return to Mahlabathini.Footnote 81 They were ultimately allowed to return conditionally to live as the subjects of the Mpungose, Zungu, and Mbatha chiefs named Bhulingwe, Majojela, and Nqodi, respectively.

The Native Affairs Department also deposed Chief Ngobozana kaVukaza Mpungose in 1911 for his failure to help identify the murderers of Stainbank. His chiefdom was subdivided and allocated to Chief Bhulingwe Mpungose in the Mthonjaneni area, Chief Magojela (and later Mqiniseni) Zungu at Mahlabathini, and Chief Nqodi Mbatha also at Mahlabathini.Footnote 82

Only in July 1912 was someone—Mayatana kaSintwangu Cele—brought to trial and convicted for the murder of Stainbank.Footnote 83 It took an additional sixteen years before applications for the resuscitation of the Mpungose chieftaincy and the reinstatement of Shingana’s descendants to the Onkweni chieftaincy were resubmitted.

Ultimately, the continued colonial persecution turned the Usuthu and the Onkweni sections of the Zulu royal family into symbols of political resistance, especially during the 1906 Poll Tax Uprisings.Footnote 84 Indeed, Saunders complained to Stuart in December 1906 that “all Natives in Natal saw the Usuthu as their head.”Footnote 85

The Genesis of Multi-Class Cooperation and Non-Racial Resistance Politics, 1880s–1910

Another important unintended consequence of colonial persecution of the royal family was the seeding of non-racial and cross-class resistance politics in Natal, notably in the cooperation between the Zulu royal family, the Colenso family, and prominent members of the African intelligentsia—in both Natal and the Eastern Cape—who would play a pivotal role in founding the SANNC in 1912.Footnote 86 In addition to the cross-racial ties between the Usuthu section and the white Colenso family mentioned above, the legal struggles pushed members of the monarchy closer to African members of the mission-educated middle class, notably including Chief Martin Luthuli from Groutville and Josiah Tshangana Gumede from Pietermaritzburg.

Luthuli served as the personal secretary to King Dinuzulu during the 1880s.Footnote 87 He was consequently involved in the negotiations between the Usuthu and the British colonialists at the Government House in Pietermaritzburg in the mid-1880s.Footnote 88 He was also present when the British conveyed their plan for the dismemberment of the Zulu kingdom to the King’s closest advisors.Footnote 89 However, there was always a possibility of the distortion of the essence of the discussions and agreements because the Zulu people were an oral society at the time. André Odendaal has shown how “as members of an oral culture, the Zulu had conventionally expressed their positions through the spoken word, which the British colonial authorities could manipulate and misrepresent.”Footnote 90 Guy notes that the formal official report of the meeting between the Zulu royal delegation and the colonial government officials held in Pietermaritzburg on 26 May 1880, for example, was only written ten months later and only in response to questions which Harriette Colenso had raised.Footnote 91 Senior members of the Zulu royal family later questioned the (mis)representation of the proceedings of this meeting when they met with Bulwer in 1882.Footnote 92

In order to circumvent the possibility of future misrepresentation of the proceedings of their meetings with the Natal colonial authorities, the royal family engaged the services of Chief Martin Luthuli and Josiah T. Gumede. From that point onwards Chief Martin Luthuli, according to Odendaal, could put down for posterity what Shingana, the trusted advisor to the Zulu king, “dictated to him.”Footnote 93 Shingana is quoted as saying: “We bear earnest witness that this cutting off of the Zulu, without our having been given an opportunity.”Footnote 94

Josiah Gumede, who at the time was a young teacher at the Amanzimtoti Institute at the Adam’s Mission, helped Martin Luthuli.Footnote 95 He later became the president-general of the African National Congress (ANC, the successor to the SANNC in 1923) from 1927 to 1930.Footnote 96 Gumede served as the main negotiator over land between the Zulu royal family and the Afrikaners of the New Republic before and after the Battle of Tshaneni in June 1884.Footnote 97

Chief Martin Luthuli, Josiah Gumede, Saul Msane (later the deputy president of the ANC in 1912 and its general secretary from 1917 to 1923), and Harriette and Agnes Colenso, among others, explored setting up the Natal Native Congress (NNC) as a political formation that would focus on the political rights of the African people who were under siege from the British colonial authorities in Natal in 1899.Footnote 98 Luthuli was elected the chairperson of the NNC in the early 1900s and Josiah Gumede served as its general secretary. Martin Luthuli was also the paternal uncle of future ANC president, and 1960 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Albert John Luthuli.

Pixley kaIsaka Seme, the British- and American-trained lawyer and one of the founding fathers of the ANC, also supported Dinuzulu and the members of the Usuthu in their political trials and tribulations. He ultimately married one of the king’s daughters named Princess Phikisinkosi kaDinuzulu.Footnote 99 Most of these early activists had firm links with their counterparts from the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State. Gumede, Msane, and other early political activists such as Bryant Cele, Cleopas Kunene, and Mark Radebe had attended mission schools in the Cape Colony.Footnote 100 Gumede went to school at Lovedale in Grahamstown while Saul Msane studied at Healdtown, where Walter Rubusana also studied. Odendaal says these schools fulfilled the same grooming role in southern Africa that Oxford and Cambridge did for the ruling class in England.Footnote 101 Non-racialism and African unity, despite diverse ethnic backgrounds, were inculcated as essential during their school years. They subsequently became the key foundations on which the national movement would be founded in 1912.Footnote 102

Conclusion

This article has shown that the expansion of British imperialism significantly reshaped the political landscape of the region. Independent African polities, such as the Zulu kingdom, were conquered, and their royal families were subjugated and oppressed. Larger chiefdoms were also politically harassed, and disloyal chieftaincies were weakened through divide-and-rule initiatives, which often involved subdividing them and placing them under leaders loyal to the British-backed colonial authorities of the Natal and Cape Colonies.

The Natal colonial administration deliberately targeted and oppressed the Usuthu and Onkweni chieftaincies from the late 1880s until the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. These political developments led to the imprisonment and banishment of Shingana and his nephew, King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, first from 1889 to 1898, and again during the Poll Tax Uprisings in Natal. Shingana was later banished to kwaThoyana near Amanzimtoti in 1910, where he died in 1911. King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo was imprisoned at the Pietermaritzburg Old Prison from 1907 to 1909 and at Newcastle Prison from 1909 to 1911, before being banished to the kwaThengisangayo Zulu royal residence in the eastern Transvaal, where he died in 1913. Influential members of King Dinuzulu’s inner circle were also imprisoned and banished following the Poll Tax Uprisings. The second round of trials, convictions, and banishments demonstrates the hostile response of colonial authorities toward the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family. The authorities recognized that the earlier imprisonment of senior members between 1889 and 1898 had produced unintended consequences: rather than diminishing their stature, the royal family had become a rallying symbol of resistance during the Poll Tax Uprisings, indicating that their support base had expanded among the African population in Natal. Indeed, the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family became a rallying point for ordinary people of Natal who were feeling the indignity of colonial oppression and exploitation, which boiled over into the uprising against poll taxes in 1906 and, later, to the armed resistance to the whole architecture of apartheid from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

The victimisation of the members of the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family further facilitated closer cooperation between the traditional leadership, on the one hand, and the emerging African middle classes, on the other. Martin Luthuli, Josiah Tshangana Gumede, and Pixley kaIsaka Seme, among others, helped the Usuthu section of the Zulu royal family between the 1880s and 1913. This paved the way for Dinuzulu’s support for the formation of the SANNC in 1912, which served as the main vehicle for the decades-long struggle that culminated with the birth of an inclusive South African democracy in April 1994.

References

1 Robert R. R. Dlomo, UCetshwayo (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1948); Robert R. R. Dlomo, UDinuzulu kaCetshwayo (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1968); Harriette E. Colenso, Zululand, the Exiled Chiefs, Natal, and the Colonial Office: 1893–1895 (London: Burt & Sons, 1895); and Jeff Guy, The View Across the River: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu Struggle against Imperialism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

2 Jeff Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom (London: Longman, 1979), 38, 99.

3 Ibid., 38.

4 Ibid.

5 Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 63; John Laband and Paul Thompson, “The Reduction of Zululand,” The Journal of African History 23, no. 2 (1982): 201–2; and John Laband, The Kingdom in Crisis: Zululand and the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879–1887 (London: Longman, 1985), 237. For the origins of the Usuthu, see Dlomo, UCetshwayo, 1 –6.

6 Dlomo, UCetshwayo, 74–84; See also Jeff Guy, The Political Economy of Shepstone’s Rule: A Study in Colonial Power (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1990), 78; Anthony McClendon, The Native Policy of Sir Theophilus Shepstone in Colonial Natal: Economic and Social Dimensions (Durban: University of Natal Press, 1989), 45; Jill Kelly, To Swim with Crocodiles: The Life and Legacy of Sir Theophilus Shepstone (Durban: University of Natal Press, 2005), 112.

7 John Laband, The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1997), 281.

8 Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 10.

9 Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 73–75; John Philip Christopher Laband, “The Cohesion of the Zulu Polity under the Impact of the Anglo-Zulu War: A Reassessment,” Journal of Natal and Zulu History 8 (1985): 58–62. The other iziphakanyiswa were Mfanawendlela Zungu, John Dunn, Hlubi Molefe of the Tlokoa Sotho chiefdom in the Nquthu area, Mlandela Mthethwa, Somkhele Mkhwanazi of the Mpukunyoni Chiefdom, Mgojana Ndwandwe, Mgitshwa Biyela, Faku Ntombela, Gawozi kaNdlovu Mpungose, Sekethwayo kaNhlaka Mdlalose, and Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza. See Ndukwana kaMbengwana to Stuart, 28 Oct. 1902, in The James Stuart Archive, vol. 4, eds. C. de B. Webb and J. B. Wright (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1986), 358, 400; Laband and Thompson, “The Reduction of Zululand, 1878–1904,” 203; Laband, The Kingdom in Crisis, 248–249; Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 32, 72–74, 249; Jabulani Maphalala, Umlando Wamakhosi (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 2013), 86.

10 Dlomo, UDinuzulu, 32–37, 62–75.

11 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 99.

12 André Odendaal, The Founders: The Origins of the African National Congress and the Struggle for Democracy in South Africa, 1912–1923 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984), 161.

13 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 114.

14 Ibid,.115.

15 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 137 and 140; Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), Colenso Collection, Box 73, H. Colenso to Havelock, 26 Sep. 1888, 204.

16 Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 138.

17 Ibid., 76–84; John Bainbridge, “A Picture of the Past: South Africans Can Find Much to Connect with on a Visit to St Helena,” Skyways: Periodical of the South African Airlink, Dec. 2019, 22; Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 99, 238, and 251;Guy, The View from Across the River, 309–13, 334–39, and 428–29. Dinuzulu fathered eight children, including his successor, King Solomon, during his stay at St Helena. Two of his children named uNomfino and uMohlozana died at the ages of three months and three years in 1891 and 1894 respectively, and their remains were interred on the island: see KwaZulu-Natal Heritage Unit, Office of the Premier, Jabulani Sithole interview with Mamama Helen Seme, the daughter of Pixley kaIsaka Seme and Princess Phikisinkosi (Phikisile) kaDinuzulu.

18 However, Mkhandumba Buthelezi was sentenced to death for murder and Muzimubi replaced him as an acting chief or (ibambela/ibambabukhosi). Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository, KwaZulu Natal Province (PAR), CNC 144, J. Y. Memorandum of J. Y. Gibson, 5 Aug. 1914, 4–6.

19 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), Secretary for Native Affairs 1/9/6, “Chiefdom 74: Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe or a Section of Each Tribe in the Province of Zululand for which the Zululand Lands Delimitation Commission was required to delimit reserves,” 7th Administrative Interim Report (AIR) of the Zululand Lands Delimitation Commission (ZLDC), 11 Jan. 1904.

20 PAR, “Chiefdom 75, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 7th AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904.

21 Ibid.

22 Jabulani Maphalala, Izingxabo Zamakhosi Esifundazweni Sakwazulu (Dlangezwa: Prince Ndabuko Publishers, 2014), 622.

23 Ndukwana kaMbengwana to James Stuart, 24 Oct 1902, in Webb and Wright JSA 4, 358; Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 32, 219–220, 249.

24 PAR, “Chiefdom 75, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 7th AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904.

25 PAR, “Chiefdom 13, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 2nd AIR of the ZLDC,” 9 Dec. 1902.

26 PAR, “Chiefdom 14, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 2nd AIR of the ZLDC,” 9 Dec. 1902.

27 Interview with Shingana family, Zululand District, 11 July 2016.

28 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 250.

29 Ibid., 30, 32, 99, 220.

30 PAR, “Chiefdom No. 39, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe Seventh AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904; Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], E. N. Braatvedt to Carle Faye, 29 Mar. 1929; and Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Report of R. Loram on the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968.

31 Reggie Khumalo, Uphoko (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995), 105. Cf. PAR, “Report of R. Loram on the Notes of the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968.

32 Baleni kaSilwana to James Stuart, 10 May 1914, in Webb and Wright, JSA 4, 21–22.

33 Arthur Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London: Longmans, Green, 1929), 101 and 243; Carolyn Hamilton, “Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom” (M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985), 129.

34 PAR, “Chiefdom No.39.”, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe Seventh AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904.

35 Baleni kaSilwana to James Stuart, 10 May 1914, in Webb and Wright, JSA 4, 21; Magojela kaMfanawendlela to James Stuart, 30 June 1907, in Webb and Wright, JSA 2, 104.

36 Magojela kaMfanawendlela to James Stuart, 30 June 1907, in Webb and Wright, JSA 2, 104.

37 PAR, “Chiefdom 39.”, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe Seventh AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904.

38 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 73; Laband and Thompson, “The Reduction of Zululand,” 203; Laband, Kingdom in Crisis, 248–49.

39 PAR, “Chiefdom 65, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 7th AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904; Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 75.

40 PAR, “Chiefdom 73, Brief Sketch of History of Each Tribe in the 7th AIR of the ZLDC,” 11 Jan. 1904.

41 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), 1/NGA, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Statement of Johnson Zulu to the Assistant Native Commissioner for the Mahlabathini Magisterial District (Ashton),” 8 Oct. 1935; Laband and Thompson, “Reduction of Zululand,” 219.

42 Mvayisa kaTshingili Shange to James Stuart, 8 June 1914, in Webb and Wright, JSA 4, 165.

43 Ibid., 165–66.

44 Magema Fuze, Black People and From Whence They Came, (Durban: University of Natal Press, 1979), 20.

45 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), Chief Native Commissioner 2/73/40, Theodore W. C. Norton (CNC for Natal) to R. W. Hancock (Native Commissioner and Magistrate for Mahlabathini), 17 Sep. 1927; Chief Native Commissioner for Natal to Secretary for Native Affairs (Daniel L. Smit), 27 May 1929.

46 PAR, “Statement of Johnson Zulu to the Assistant Native Commissioner for the Mahlabathini Magisterial District (Ashton),” 8 Oct. 1935

47 PAR, “Chiefdom 73.” The two others were Mkhosana Zungu and Ngcongwana Zulu. See also Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 150–51, 250.

48 Interview with Shingana family.

49 Guy, The View from Across the River, 363–72, 375, 377, 389–91, 436–67, and 441–42; Charles C. Saunders to James Stuart, 5 Dec. 1906, in Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 266.

50 This genealogical tree reveals clearly that it is vastly different from that of the main Mpungose chieftaincy.

51 Interview with Shingana family.

52 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), Colonial Secretary Office 10, Ref.B396/01, ‘“Death of Gelejana kaTshingana at a Faction Fight,’,” 11 May 1901.

53 Skeyi Clegg, “The Continuance of Zulu Martial Traditions: Stick Fighting and Identity in the Colonial Era,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 25 (2018).

54 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR), DPH 54, Ref.B732/01, “Report of James Petrie, District Surgeon for Mthonjaneni,” 29 March 1901.

55 PAR, “Statement of Nyosana kaMasiphula to A Hulley (RM for Mthonjaneni),” 23 Mar. 1901.

56 PAR, “Testimonies of Ndhlovu and Nokede during the Cross Examination at the Trial for the Faction Fighting,” 20–21 Mar. 1901.

57 PAR, “Testimony of the Induna Nyosana kaMasiphula during the Cross Examination at the Trial for the Faction Fighting,” 21 Mar. 1901.

58 PAR, “Sentences and Fines at the Conclusion of the Trial for the Faction Fighting,” 29 Mar. 1901.

59 Ibid.

60 Paul S. Thompson, Bambatha Reconsidered: The 1906 Rebellion in Natal (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1975), 15–30.

61 Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906–1908 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Bongani Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme (Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa, 2017), 97–99.

62 Dlomo, UDinuzulu, 129–30.

63 Central Archives Depot, Pretoria (CAD), Secretary for Native Affairs Correspondence Series (NTS), 3800, File 2568/308, “The Treason Trial of Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, 1908-3.” Mar. 1909; Dlomo, UDinuzulu, 130–34; Ngqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC, 97–99.

64 Saunders to James Stuart, 5 Dec. 1906, Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 264–65.

65 PAR CNC 144, Memorandum of J.Y. Gibson (Native Commissioner for Nongoma), 5 Aug. 1914, 4-6; PAR, Blue Book (BB) on Native Affairs, U17,1911, 43; Archive, Headline?, Natal Mercury, 5 Jan. 1917; Fuze, Black People, 145; Killie Campbell Africana Library and Museum, Durban (KCALM), KCM98/23/16665, no author, “UMaphelu kaMkhosana Zungu’s Account,” DKCM spell this out], 1938, 95. See also Dlomo, UDinuzulu, 162–64; Nqqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC, 98–103.

66 Saunders to James Stuart, 5 Dec. 1906, Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 265.

67 Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 262n6, 266n10.

68 Samuel Otto Samuelson to James Stuart, 28 June 1907, Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 262. See also Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 263n1.

69 Anthony Trevor Cope, To Bind the Nation: The African National Congress and the National Liberation Struggle in South Africa, 1912–1960 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), 7.

70 Cope, To Bind the Nation, 8; Nqqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC, 103–7.

71 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) ZA 28, Confidential Report (Conf.) R64/1906, J. Y. Gibson (NC and RM for Mahlabathini) to Charles R. Saunders (Commissioner for Native Affairs in Zululand), 8 Sep. 1906 and 26 Nov. 1906. See also Marks, Reluctant Rebellion, 216; John Lambert, “From Independence to Rebellion: African Society in Crisis, c.1880–1906,” in Natal and Zululand, eds. Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal, 1989), 389; John Shepstone to James Stuart, 18 Apr. 1912, Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 311 and 325n157.

72 PAR ZA 28, Conf. R51/1906, C. R. Saunders to Prime Minister of Natal, 11 Sep. 1906, 2.

73 PAR ZA 28, Conf. R64/1906: Charles R. Saunders to Prime Minister of Natal, 30 Sep. 1906; C. R. Saunders to PM of Natal, “Notes on the Case Rex vs Mpetha and Others,” 28 Nov. 1906, 2 –3.

74 PAR SNA 619/1911, NC and RM for the Pinetown District to SNA, 22 Mar. 1911; Cope, To Bind the Nation, 7. See also Onkweni Submission, “Annexure E”; Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Secretary for Native Affairs 113/1912, Ref.No.52/12, A. D. Graham (NC and RM for Mahlabathini) to District Native Commissioner and Resident Magistrate for Zululand, 5 Feb. 1912.

75 Jonny Steinberg, Midlands (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2002), 58.

76 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Secretary for Native Affairs 619/1911, Telegram from Harriette Colenso to Native Commissioner and Resident Magistrate for Pinetown, 8 Aug. 1910. For petitions to the Natal Provincial Authorities to have his cattle transferred to Amanzimtoti, see PAR SNA 1/1/471, Ref.No2751/1910: “Minute RVS 3752: Asks whether it is possible to purchase a cow and calf for Tshingana,” Assistant Magistrate for the Pinetown District to Acting Under Secretary for Native Affairs, Pietermaritzburg, 17 Aug. 1910; Acting USNA (Arthur Shepstone) to Assistant Magistrate for the Umlazi Division of the Pinetown District, 9 Sep. 1910; Assistant Magistrate Pinetown to Acting Under SNA, 1 Sep. 1910; Assistant Under SNA to Assistant Magistrate Pinetown, 6 Sep. 1910; Magistrate for Pinetown District to D.V.S. Amos, 19 Sep. 1910; District Veterinary Surgeon to Magistrate for Pinetown District, 13 Sep. 1910; Assistant Magistrate for Pinetown to District Veterinary Surgeon Harber, 27 Oct. 1910; Assistant Magistrate for Pinetown to Under SNA, 19 Nov. 1910; Acting SNA to District Native Commissioner for Zululand, 25 Nov. 1910; Acting USNA (Arthur J. Shepstone) to DNA for Zululand (R. H. Addison), 19 Jan. 1911; R. H. Addison to A. J. Shepstone, 27 Jan. 1911.

77 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Secretary for Native Affairs 1/1/471, Ref.1147/1910: NAD Offices Pietermaritzburg to Anon, 19 Jan. 1911; Magistrate for the Mahlabathini to District NC for Zululand, 1 Feb. 1911.

78 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Secretary for Native Affairs 1/1/471, Ref.1147/1910, Assistant for Pinetown to Acting Under SNA, 25 Mar. 1911.

79 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Secretary for Native Affairs 619/1911, Ref.2751/10 and 7/11: NC and RM for Pinetown to Acting SNA, 22 Mar. 1911; Assistant Magistrate for Pinetown to District Veterinary Surgeon Harber, 27 Oct. 1910; Assistant Magistrate for Pinetown to Under SNA, 19 Nov. 1910; R. H. Addison to A. J. Shepstone, 27 Jan. 1911. PAR SNA 619/1911, Ref.1147/1910, NAD Offices Pietermaritzburg to Anon, 19 Jan. 1911. PAR SNA 1/1/471, Ref.No2751/1910, “Minute RVS 3752: Asks whether it is possible to purchase a cow and calf for Tshingana,” Assistant Magistrate for Pinetown District to Acting Under SNA, Pietermaritzburg, 17 Aug. 1910.

80 Onkweni Submission, 7.

81 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Chief Native Commissioner 619/1912, Ref 52/1912: Application of Mahlathini for Continuation of late Tshingana’s Stipend, 24 Jan. 1912; R. H. Addison (District NC for Zululand) to Acting CNC for Natal, 9 Feb.1912.

82 Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, KwaZulu-Natal (PAR) Chief Native Commissioner 2/73/40: R. W. Hancock to CNC for Natal, 17 Sep. 1927; Testimony of Johnson Zulu during the Application of the Ubukhosi basOnkweni by the Descendants of Prince Shingana kaMpande before the NC and Magistrate, Ashton, 8 Oct. 1935.

83 PAR CNC 2/73/40, CNC to R. W. Hancock, 17 Sep. 1927; Cope, To Bind the Nation, 125.

84 Ibid., 7.

85 Saunders to James Stuart, 5 Dec. 1906, in Webb and Wright, JSA 5, 265.

86 Although the Indian immigrants are not the focus of this study it is worth mentioning that the Natal colonial authorities had brought two groups of Indian immigrants to the colony between the 1860s and 1914. One group were the sugarcane workers who indentured to work on the sugarcane plantations for fixed periods and the second group were traders who are sometimes called the Arabs who often voluntarily came Natal from the 1870s onwards. Although they too were oppressed they only joined forces with their African counterparts in the resistance struggles in the 1940s. For more on this see: Abikal Borah, “Capitalist Flows and Working-Class Conditions: Colonial Labor Management and Racial Formations in Southeastern Africa, 1851–1900,” The Journal of African History 66 (2025); Michael Swanson, “‘The Asiatic Menace’: Creating Segregation in Durban, 1870–1900,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 16, no. 3 (1983); Goolam Vahed, “Constructions of Community and Identity among Indians in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910: The Role of the Muharram Festival,” The Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002); Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Inside Indian Indenture: A South African Story, 1860–1914, (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 2010); Paul La Hausse, Restless Identities: The Politics of Culture and Identity in Contemporary South Africa (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2001), 132.

87 Odendaal, The Founders, 161.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Guy, Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 118–19.

92 PAR, Colenso Collection, Series 2, 204; Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, 138.

93 Odendaal, The Founders, 161.

94 Guy, The View from Across the River, 160; and Odendaal, The Founders, 161. See also La Hausse, Restless Identities, 124.

95 Odendaal, The Founders, 161.

96 Ibid., 34, 161, 247; and Frederick Meli, South Africa Belongs to Us (London: Indiana University Press), 67, 74–78.

97 Odendaal, The Founders, 161–62.

98 Tom Karis and Gail M. Carter, eds., From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1884 to 1972, Vol 1, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972), 29 and Meli, South Africa Belongs to Us, 22 and 74. See also Marks, “Harriette Colenso and the Zulus, 1874–1913,” The Journal of African History 4, no. 3 (1963): 403–11.

99 Guy, The View Across the River, p. and 358, 369–71, 373–79, 405–6, and 422–27; Nqqulunga, The Man Who Founded the ANC, 160–61.

100 Odendaal, The Founders, 163–64, and Meli, South Africa Belongs to Us, 74.

101 Odendaal, The Founders, 33–34.

102 Ibid., 34.

Figure 0

Figure 1. Partition of Zulu Land, 1879.

Source: Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository (PAR), 1/NGA, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3]. “Zululand Delimitation Commission, Zululand: Numbering and Boundaries of Reserves on Map Accompanying Fourth Report,” Part 1, 1903.
Figure 1

Figure 2. The Genealogical Tree of the Main Mpungose Chieftaincy.

Sources: PAR, 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Report of R. Loram on the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968; and Reggie Khumalo, Uphoko, umqulu 1 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995), 105.
Figure 2

Figure 3. Genealogical Tree of the Mpungose Chieftaincy at the Mahlabathini Area of the KwaZulu-Natal Province.

Sources: PAR, 1/Native Government Affairs, Vol. 3/3/2/4, File N1/14/3 [2/13/3], “Report of R. Loram on the AbakwaMpungose, Eshowe District,” 21 May 1968. PAR, Chief Native Commissioner’s (CNC) Papers 2/73/40, Reference No.57/106: R. W. Hancock (Magistrate for Mahlabathini) to CNC Pietermaritzburg, 17 Sep. 1927; Statement of P. E, Nxele, Maqiyana kaNgobozana Mpungose, Godlomkhonto kaNgobozana Mpungose, Madotyeni kaNgobozana Mpungose, Mapelu kaMkhosana Zungu and Corporal Siki Ngcobo before Charles Wheelwright (CNC for Natal), Pietermaritzburg, 5 July 1927; Folio 311, “Amalgamation of the Mpungose Tribe [sic] and Appointment of Maqiyana kaNgobozana Mpungose as chief on Probation,” 1 Oct. 1929; 3141/1922, “Confirmed of the Maqiyana KaNgobozana Mpungose to Mpungose Chieftaincy at Mahlabathini,” 1 July 1935.Pietermaritzburg Offices of the Traditional Affairs Unit of the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, File 13/496, “Speech of Prince Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi on the Occasion of the Opening of the Tribal Court of Chief Khalelumuzi kaMbhasobheni Mpungose, Ulundi,” 7 Sep. 1985.