ZULU
ZU’LU, or AMAZULU, is the name of that portion of the Kaffir race who inhabit Natal and the region north-east of it, until they gradually merge into the mere negro of the east coast, north of the Zambesi. The Kaffir organization appears to hold an intermediate place between that of the negro and a higher type; and as we go south and west, from the swamps and malaria of Delagoa Bay and Sofala to the more healthy and bracing regions of Natal and Independent Kaffraria, the Kaffir features appear, as it were, to grow more refined—the mouth protrudes less, the lips are less thick, and the nose assimilates more to that of the European, although the distinguishing type of woolly hair may still continue.
The Z. Kaffir is a far more amiable savage than his brother the Amakosa of the Cape frontier districts. He is less warlike and predatory, more industrious, and far more willing to act in the capacity of a farm-laborer or domestic servant. In language, customs, habits, &c., although certain tribal and local differences occur, yet they may be called common to all the nation, as a Z. Kaffir has no difficulty in understanding a native of British Kaffraria; and his views of a future state, purchase of wives, &c., are pretty similar. The Z. is by nature social, light of heart, and cheerful; his affections are gentle, steady, and enduring; his passions are, however, strong, and called out when in a state of war. He is comparatively chaste; crimes which stain European or Eastern civilization are unknown to him. He is hospitable and honest, yet greedy and stingy; he is kind to his own family, yet cruel to dumb animals; and whatever the better nature of his impulses may be, yet when his great chief commands war, he is converted into a demon. He is proud, and very easily can distinguish between an English gentleman and the loafing tribe with which too many of our colonies are afflicted. The writer of this article, by the exercise of a little kindness and firmness, has experienced the most utter devotion from individuals of the Kaffir race generally. Their reasoning powers are good, and with an improved education, a Z. rationalist might not disgrace a chair in the Sorbonne. It is from the Z. country, however, that those terrible tyrants who so long devastated South-eastern Africa, the chiefs Chaka, Dingaan, Moselikatze, &c. issued. The training of their subjects to a peculiar mode of warfare spread desolation and havoc for many years amongst the Betjuana and other tribes of the interior, until eventually these mighty chiefs with their thousands of followers, fighting, like Homer’s heroes, hand to hand, armed with stabbing assagais and shields of ox-hide, the colors of which distinguished the different regiments they were formed into, melted way with broken power into comparative insignificance before the terrible rifles of a few hundred emigrant Dutch Boers, who, in their turn, gave way to the energetic action of the British authorities (see natal). The Zulus, although they have very often serious intestine wars amongst themselves, have generally lived on friendly terms with the Natal colonists. That their warlike qualities have not decayed was sufficiently shown in the war that broke out in 1879 between England and Ketchwayo (Cetewayo), the Zulu king. Within a week or two after the British forces crossed the Natal frontier, the Zulus inflicted a severe blow on the invaders by surrounding a camp at Isandhlwana and annihilating the defenders. They repulsed several attacks on their strongholds; but after the British had received reinforcements, were defeated at Ginghilovo, and completely broken by Lord Chelmsford at Ulundi on the 3d July. The king was captured shortly afterwards, and deported to Cape Town.
The Zulu country was divided amongst twelve chiefs (having four British residents). But in 1883, Ketchwayo was reinstated in the central portion of his kingdom, under certain restrictions, with an English resident. The north-east part of his former domains is under a chief independent of the Zulu king; and on the south, adjoining the Natal border, another strip of territory is reserved for the chiefs unwilling to come again under Ketchwayo’s authority (one of whom, John Dunn, is of English blood).
A number of missionary societies of the Wesleyan, American, Norwegian, and Episcopal churches labor amongst these tribes. Considerable interest was some time ago provoked with regard to Bishop Colenso’s peculiar views for evangelizing these heathens; and Colenso’s Zulu was for a while almost as famous as Macaulay’s New Zealander.
The Amafengu tribe, now settled along the Cape frontier, are a broken tribe of Zulus, driven far to the south-west by Chaka or Dingaan. then reduced to slavery by the Amakosa Kaffirs, and freed by Sir B. Durban in the Kaffir war of 1834—1835. The principal Z. tribes are the Amazulu, the Amahute, Amazwazi, and Amatabele. The last emigrated far northwards to the mountains which separate the basins of the Limpopo and Zambesi.