ABSTRACT
As in West Africa, the first decades of the nineteenth century were extremely violent in southern Africa. Was this, as has been argued until recently, 1 a consequence of the explosion of the Zulu population on the coast of the Indian Ocean? Given Shaka’s expansion and brutality, was the violence caused by destructive expeditions as Shaka’s leading generals advanced toward the high plateaus of the interior (the Highveld), into the backcountry, and to the north (in a movement known as mfecane)? Or was it more a corollary of European activities, particularly slave-trading operations that diffused far into the interior from the Cape and from Delagoa Bay on the Indian Ocean? The classical view of Zulu history has been challenged by three arguments: 2
The troubled times in southern Africa were not a result of the rise of the Zulu Kingdom; the emergence of the Zulu Kingdom was more a corollary than a cause.
The classical interpretation is of White settler origin, cobbled together out of a form of South African historiography interested in portraying Shaka as an atrocious enemy. The English liberal (anticolonial) school was eager to adopt the cliché to prove the indigenous independence of African history. Today, the conservative regionalists of Inkatha would be only too happy to strengthen Shaka’s myth in Kwazulu-Natal.
In reality, the major reason for the troubles was the increase in slave raids on the borders of the Cape Colony and by the Portuguese of Mozambique, and the spread of such raids into the interior by culturally mixed raiding peoples (the Griqua).
