John Laband - The Assassination of King Shaka: Zulu Historys Dramatic Moment

It is not only in fantasy sagas like George RR Martins Game of Thrones that kings fall to the assassins blade or poisoned cup. Rulers, no less now than in the past, know that the assassins shadow menaces their every step. An attempt on a rulers life might fail thanks to lucky chance, or it might succeed despite every precaution taken. The would-be killer might be motivated by private grievance or paranoia, or by religious or ideological conviction.

Especially in a monarchy, the assassin might be driven by personal ambition to usurp the throne. In a traditional society, this was an act not to be undertaken lightly where there was something particularly awful in killing a king whose right to rule was enforced by divine sanction. And what made the deed the more reprehensible was that the assassin would usually possess a plausible hereditary claim to the crown, and this meant that the victim must be of close kin. This in turn required the usurper, once he had seized power, to purge all rival claimants who shared his royal blood lest they challenge him for the crown then or in the future.

The record of Africa, no less than that of Europe, Asia and the Americas, is replete with royal assassinations and their blood-filled aftermaths. There is one instance, though, that eclipses all others in Africa because of the legendary eminence of the victim: Shaka Zulu, whose name so luridly conjures up all the brutal, warlike glamour of the precolonial continent.

In writing this book, my objective is not to undertake another scholarly investigation into the formation of the Zulu kingdom in the reign of King Shaka. Several excellent historians notably John Wright, Carolyn Hamilton and Elizabeth Eldredge have already expertly mastered this field. Nor do I wish to attempt a fresh biography of Shaka himself. In several recent books, Dan Wylie has the jump on me there.

Rather, what I am attempting is a focused inquiry into a single, pivotal event in Shakas life: his assassination. By teasing out the circumstances surrounding the plot to slay him, by investigating the individuals involved and their possible motives, and by considering the implications and consequences of the violent deed, I hope to throw some strong light on the functioning of the early Zulu kingdom and on the elusive character of Shaka himself.

The reader is invited to follow along with me as I try to make sense of the case. Since writing history is not simply selecting, organising and presenting facts in an objective fashion, but also a literary act in which the author inevitably possesses a personal point of view, I shall be open with the reader. In pursuing my investigation, I shall pose a series of questions seeking answers from the available evidence, and it is up to the reader to decide whether these queries are sufficient, on target or misdirected. Likewise, I shall explain my reasons when I find the answers I come up with to be convincing, or at least plausible, and when I can find no satisfactory answer at all. Once again, it is for the alert reader to better me at my own game.

Of course, to approach the controversial subject of Shaka is to venture into a tangled and dangerous forest with mantraps set across the twisting paths. History perhaps does not furnish an instance of a more despotic and cruel monster than Chaka, declared Lieutenant Francis George Farewell, RN, one of the first hunter-traders established at Port Natal in 1824, who witnessed Shaka at the height of his power. Future white settlers, missionaries, officials and soldiers all elaborated on this ferocious image until it became fixed in the Western imagination.

Indeed, as the founder of the Zulu warrior kingdom, Shaka has understandably been the subject of biographers, artists and filmmakers. Henry Celes compelling portrayal of Shaka in the lavish ten-part SABC mini-series Shaka Zulu, first screened in 1986, indelibly imbedded screenwriter Joshua Sinclairs and director William Faures larger-than-life vision of Shaka the ruthless warrior-king in viewers minds. Viewers were duly intrigued, even if many critics attacked Shaka Zulu for historical inaccuracy and inherent racism. Several popular authors, notably EA Ritter and Donald Morris, have also employed considerable licence to sensationalise and romanticise Shakas career. More recently, academic critics such as Carolyn Hamilton and Dan Wylie have leapt into the fray and, employing the intricate tools of literary deconstruction, have exposed the historical invention and literary mythology that have created the Shaka of popular imagination.

Despite such critiques, which cut vigorously away at the legends that shroud the historical figure, we should not ascribe the strong survival of the Shaka warrior stereotype only to Western sources. The Zulu people have always celebrated him as a great conqueror. As his praises, or izibongo , expressed it:

The nations he hath all destroyed

Whither shall he now attack?

He! Whither shall he now attack?

He defeats kings

Whither shall he now attack?

The nations he hath all destroyed

Whither shall he now attack?

He! He! He! Whither shall he now attack?

Chaka King of the Zoolus by J Saunders King

Indeed, outside the Legislative Assembly Building in Ulundi opened in 1984 when the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party ruled the self-governing KwaZulu homeland between 1977 and 1994 is a highly idealised bronze statue of Shaka holding his great war-shield and brandishing his spear. Yet, when in 2010 a statue of the king accompanied by Nguni cattle was erected at the new King Shaka International Airport, it caused an immediate outcry because Shaka was not depicted carrying weapons. With accusations by the Zulu royal house that this rendering of Shaka made him look more like a herd boy than a warrior, the statue was removed for reconsideration. It has not yet been replaced because no one can agree exactly how to depict Shakas features, the problem being that nobody knows for sure what the king looked like.

And this points to another significant problem in approaching the subject of Shaka. The decidedly problematic sources are limited, complex and contradictory. They consist of the dubious, highly coloured and self-serving accounts of white trader-hunters who actually encountered Shaka, mostly penned or reworked later after a long lapse of time; of remembered and recurrently embellished izibongo handed down over generations; of popular and oft-repeated Zulu traditions; and of the oral testimony of witnesses. This testimony was not systematically recorded until the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the interviewees had distant childhood memories of the Shakan period, or could only relate what the previous generation had to say of Shaka, in itself a subjective response. The archives hold an assortment of official British documents the staple of conventional historians which convey little but a gullible and misinformed grasp of Shaka and his kingdom. And, finally, there is the archaeological evidence, patchy at best and useful only in helping us envisage Shakas material environment. It is no wonder, perhaps, that Dan Wylie has concluded that we know almost nothing for certain about Shaka, and that what has come down to us is an extraordinary palimpsest of half-understood rumours, speculations and plain old lies.