what is essay in zulu

Ukubhala i-eseyi / Indaba: IsiZulu Grade 10 – 12 Essay Guide

Ukubhala i-eseyi / Indaba: IsiZulu Grade 10 – 12 Essay Guide.

Table of Contents

Iyini Indaba

Indaba ubhalo oluhlelekile olugxile isihlokweni esisodwa. Lo mbhalo wakhiwa ngezigaba, zonke ezigxile esihlokweni esikhulu.

UKUBHALWA KWENDABA/-ESEYI

Isingeniso:.

Bhala isingeniso esizokwethula ingqikithi yendaba.

Isingeniso sakho kumele sibe sifushane kepha sidle ngokujiya. Lesi sigaba yisona esibeka ngamafuphi ulwazi oluhambisana nesihloko obhala ngaso. Lapha ubeka umfundi wendaba yakho esithombeni ngozokhuluma ngakho ngokwesihloko.

Yethula umbono wakho kabanzi.

Kulesi sigatshana kumele indaba ihleleke ngokwezigaba ezilandelanayo. Yileso naleso sigaba kuba kuhle ukuba sibe nomusho osasihloko ukwehlukanisa umqondo wezigaba. Zama ukuchaza kabanzi umqondongqangi waleso naleso sigaba. Zama ukufaka nezibonelo uma zidingeka ukweseka umqondo wesigaba.

Sebenzisa imisho elekelela ukunikezelana kwezigaba

I-eseyi iyaye igeleze kamnandi uma kuwukuthi kusetshenziswa imisho elekelela ukunikezelana kwezigaba. Kuba umkhuba omuhle uma uxhumanisa izigaba zakho ngobuciko ukuze i-eseyi yakho izohleleka kahle. Kungasetshenziswa amagama afana nalawa alandelayo: Ngakho-ke; kwagcina, kufana, ngaphezu kwalokho…

Phetha ngesigaba esisongayo

Phetha ngokugcizelela umbono wakho ngokwesihloko obhala ngaso. Songa ngokuthi ubeke ukuthi kungani ubona ngale ndlela wena obona ngayo noma uphethe ngokugoqa umqondongqangi wendaba yakho.

Inqubo Yokubhala

Bheka umdwebo owethula inqubo yokubhala imibhalo bese ufunda amanothi angezansi achaza inqubo ngokugcwele:

Zilungiselele ngaphambi kokubhala.

•a ngenhloso yombhalo nezethameli zawo.

Veza izinhlaka zesakhiwo, isitayela nombono ngesihloko.

Thola amaphuzu ahambisana nesihloko, wahlele ngokuwabhala phansi. Yenza amalungiselelo angaba amaphuzu noma umdwebo osalulwembu.

Yakha izinhlaka zokuqala

Sebenzisa ngempumelelo imibono esemqoka nesekelayo etholakale lapho kulungiselwa ukubhala. Bhala indaba noma umbhalo ophelele ulandela amaphuzu owabhale kumalungiselelo. Nquma ngokukhethwa kwamagama anembayo, achazayo nemishwana ezokwenza ukuthi okubhalwayo kucace.

Qikelela ukuthi ithoni nerejista kuhambisana nezethameli kanye nenhloso yombhalo wakho.

Buyekeza, ufundisise ukuze ucacise

Fundisisa lokhu okubhalile ukuthola ukuthi kuyawakha yini umqondo

Lungisa Amaphutha

Hlolisisa umsebenzi wakho ukuze ulungise amaphutha okungaba ukukhethwa kwamagama, izimpawu zokuloba, isipelingi njl.

Yethula umkhiqizo wokugcina

Yiba nomkhiqizo osesigabeni esesikulungele ukufundwa bese uthola imiklomelo/amamaki

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Related links, tydskrif vir letterkunde, on-line version  issn 2309-9070 print version  issn 0041-476x, tydskr. letterkd. vol.54 n.2 pretoria  2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/tvl.v.54i2.2981 .

BOOK REVIEWS

Learning Zulu: A secret history of language in South Africa

Mark Sanders. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016. 191pp. EAN: 978-1-86814-870-7.

Taking a leaf from the book under review, I'll start by injecting an autobiographical element. Much of what Sanders examines here echoes my own experience, after Zimbabwe's independence, of heading to a remote mission school to teach for two years. Part of my purpose was to learn better Shona, the majority language from which I had been systematically discouraged by my colonial education. It was, in a way, a gesture of reparation, or addressing a nagging "white guilt", or at least of assuaging a sense of fruitless loss and exclusion. I was nowhere near as successful in attaining fluency as Sanders seems have been in learning Zulu; and now that I live in the Eastern Cape, my efforts to learn Xhosa have been similarly patchy and faltering. One thing is evident throughout Sanders's dense discussions: long-term, assiduous application and periods of total immersion are vital-and as he points out, few whites in South Africa have carved out the time and energy to do so, while willy-nilly expecting the black majority to learn their language. (An endnote does aver that, according to census figures, a surprising 16,000-plus whites, and a similar number of Indians, in KwaZulu-Natal, list Zulu as their first language.)

Hence, as Sanders outlines it, a white person learning an African tongue in South Africa is inevitably shackled to the unequal past distribution of linguistic power; that learning has to be a gesture of reparation at a deeply psychological level, and failures or shortfalls can be generative of feelings as powerful as a "paranoia". Those failures (mine included) are routinely explained away in what Sanders calls a "sanctioned ignorance" (18): the oft-professed wish to learn is "disavowed, a wall of 'buts' erected against it [so that] one begins to suspect the operation of a deeply rooted prohibition" (23), a "shabby concentrate of inhibition" that emerges not just from apartheid education but a longer-lasting "anal-sadistic arrogation of violent sovereign decision" (racism, in short, he doesn't quite say) (30).

To the extent that various whites have learned or tried to learn Zulu, the results constitute, in Sanders's subtitle, a "secret history" of language in South Africa-by which he really means that "it has not been recorded before, save in fragmentary form. Whereas the moreand less-alienating effects on Africans of colonial language teaching have been well attested, accounts of which are justly canonical, the meaning of learning an African language, for colonial of European descent [...] has scarcely been explored" (9).

Using as a narrative thread his own long-term experiences of learning Zulu both in South Africa and the United States (he is now a professor of comparative literature at New York University), Sanders explores in intricate and fascinating detail a number of case studies of whites learning Zulu. He shows convincingly how such efforts are laden with, and compromised by, complexly involuted and ironic psychopolitical dynamics inseparable from the wider politics of the times.

The cases range widely, each supported by impressively compact historical and political background: the role of Bishop Colenso and the first standardised dictionaries; the formation and history of "Fanakolo" (my childhood's Chilapalapa); "the awful but popular bowdlerisations of Zulu represented by the stageshow Ipi Tombi (in a school production of which Sanders once acted the "100% Zulu boy"); the career of Johnny Clegg, the honorary "White Zulu"; the role of Zulu normativity in 2008's xenophobic outrages; through to the case of another "100% Zulu Boy", Jacob Zuma, with particular reference to the avowedly "Zulu" masculinity that underpinned the then presidential candidate's rape charge and acquittal.

In an especially subtle exploration, Sanders unpacks implications and aporias in Sibusiso Nyembezi's Zulu primers, Learn Zulu and Learn More Zulu, key learning texts in Sanders's trajectory:

an understated-significant because so understated-critique of apartheid showing through its apparently inoffensive surface. Nyembezi (d.2000) was also a substantial novelist in Zulu; but apart from discussion of those novels, Sanders offers an exegesis of Nyembezi's translation into Zulu of Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country (Lafa elihle kakhulu). The handling and presentation of the Zulu language in the English original is problematic enough; but what happens when Nyembezi is faced with the problem of (re)translating the Reverend Kumalo's gentle "correction" to the white Jarvis boy's "mistake" in Zulu, when the correction itself is erroneous according to the standard or "correct" Zulu in which Nyembezi is writing, and which he advocates in his primers? A fascinating problem, indeed.

The emergence of a standard or "high" Zulu, often attached to the norms of the royal family, lies behind this example. Sanders, drawing on a swathe of recent scholarship on the emergence of the Zulu state and on what might constitute "Zulu identity", shows that that identity was always fraught, malleable, periodically fragmented to the point of civil war, and is still under contestation. (Two years ago I was privileged to attend a mass meeting, called by King Zwelithini at one of his rural palaces, engineered to reconcile "core Zulu" and "Mkhize" segments of what has sometimes, and sometimes not, functioned as a unitary Zulu identity.) In the 2008 xenophobia, knowledge of abstruse, even archaic Zulu concepts, also sometimes associated with the royal core, would be used as a test for foreigners; failure could provoke violent expulsion.

As with "standard Shona" in Zimbabwe, which only emerged, through the efforts of missionary lexicographers comingling and choosing between the various related-but-different dialects, in around 1910, the status and solidification of a standard or "pure" Zulu, evolving through the efforts of Colenso, Grout, Bleek and other literate dictionary-makers, was a fraught and politically contingent business. So too then is the business of translation, not centrally theorised but a necessarily constant presence in this study.

Sanders makes mileage of two particular Zulu phrases. The first is the sentence ngicele uxolo (I beg forgiveness), which becomes a sign of Sanders's "making good", a reparation. The shadow of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is unavoidable here, and the author's grappling with this impulse governs the study.

The second phrase is ulimi lwebele, language-of-the-breast, Zulu as the "mother-tongue", literally that which one imbibes with one's mother's milk. Sanders meshes this with an underpinning of psychoanalytic theory, invoking Freud and Melanie Klein. I'm personally not convinced by it all, perhaps because it is rather patchily explicated: "To continue the endeavour to make good would be to summon the courage to bring the words of the language themselves into one's mouth [...] and so to master the phallic meaning of the name of the language, in other words the threat of castration that led to the name being used as a fetish." (98)

Really? Sanders anticipates precisely such a bemused reaction early on, asserting that if his "use of psychoanalysis might from time to time sound hyperbolic, that is deliberate". He is using it, he says, as a "brake" on his own confessional mode; even as he searches for a generalizing theory, he evidently worries about a propensity to feel a troubling "superiority" (63) to other whites who haven't studied Zulu as he has. While this may be true enough, there recur traces of something slightly defensive, as if allaying persistent anxieties-and incidentally drawing us (other South African whites, that is) into them.

The case of Zuma's rape case seems tailor-made for Freudian-Kleinian phallic theories. Sanders's discussion hinges on subtle yet crucial (mis)translations of a key line Zuma uttered in his defence, to the effect that "in Zulu culture" a woman's arousal needed to be satisfied or the man risked being accused of rape. Again somewhat melodramatically, Sanders now-because he has been trying so hard to suckle at the breast of Zulu-feels himself obscurely implicated in a distasteful quasi-nationalist form of masculinism. This intersects with doubts about Zuma's own "Zuluness", since he is ancestrally Nxamalala, a group incorporated by Shaka but that "remained peripheral and also subaltern". Such marginalities have to be suppressed in the project of learning a generalizable "isiZulu". He ends this section with what works as a summation of the book, as well as on a self-mocking re-simplification:

If realizing this generalization of learning is not ready to be admitted to consciousness, it nevertheless remains for the learner of Zulu, as historically determined-the Jarvis boy, the white reader of Fanakolo handbooks and Nyembezi's Learn More Zulu, the non-Zulu African migrant, me-to join the critical Zulu scholar or intellectual in order to effect this generalization by loosening the identification with the name-which in the story I am telling myself about myself-is also the masculinist and heteronormative phantasy-identification with the agent of sexual violence. Whatever the size of the phalli outside the court, and of the carnivalesque wooden imishini [machine guns], the Presidential penis is just a penis. And Zulu is, after all is said and done, just another language. (114)

Coming from a scholar whose previous books are entitled Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid (2002) and Ambiguities of Witnessing (2014), one might expect an attunement to deep complexities-even when Sanders injects some critical jibes about academics' propensity to overcomplicate things. Yet there were places I wanted to wield my Occam's Razor in the midst of some rather abstruse and entangled passages: at one point he employs, almost self-parodically, that common academic impulse to cite several fashionable sources in rapid succession: "what N P Van Wyk Louw called a bestaanreg [...] what Freud calls Nachträglichkeit [...] what Jacques Lacan called the Symbolic [...] what Lacan called the Imaginary" (78), these all within twelve lines. He admits theory has limits: "the sheer contingency of some of the events narrated in turn challenges the final say of psychoanalysis as a theoretical framework" (10). He has covered his back, all right.

This may also be responsible for his ending the book somewhat inconclusively, rather like the classic meandering "familiar essay" (10), with "everything [rendered] unknowable and unverifiable" (144). This is probably wise-and his frustrations will echo others'. That said, this review has scarcely begun to reflect the book's attentiveness to nuance, the density of erudition, and the courage with which Sanders faces South Africans with both the necessities for, and the problematics of, cross-cultural language-learning. Learning Zulu is a very important, unquestionably groundbreaking study.

Dan Wylie Rhodes University. Grahamstown [email protected]

The Rise of Zulu Kingdom

• The African History
• November 15, 2020
• Empire , Tribe

The Zulu Kingdom, also called the Zulu Empire, was a Southern African state in what is now South Africa. During and after the Anglo-Zulu War, the small kingdom gained world renown, not least for initially defeating the British in 1879 at the Battle of Isandlwana.

This led in 1887 to the British annexation of Zululand, while the king’s office continued to be honoured (with the colonial title of Paramount Chief). However, even among the British, who appeared to look down on Africans as inferior, the Zulu gained a reputation for their bravery and ability as warriors.

“While the British discounted their defeat, in the anti-Apartheid struggle in white-dominated South Africa, where the Zulu nation became a “bantustan,” or homeland, the spirit and example of the Zulu warriors lived on to inspire many.

As part of a much larger Bantu expansion, the Zulus had initially trekked or migrated to Southern Africa and their Kingdom can be counted as one of several Bantu Empires, kingdoms and state systems that included Great Zimbabwe’s civilization.

The legacy of the Zulus is one of prestige in a highly organized African communities, which could resist the scramble for Africa, at least initially. When Africa was divided between European powers, they took over any territory they wanted without consulting Africans who own & occupied the land. Europeans enforced treaties backed up by military force.

They were soon defeated by those who refused to sign these treaties, such as the Sultan of Sokoto and the Obo of Benin. In the nineteenth century, Ethiopia alone resisted colonial occupation effectively, though in the twentieth century Fascist Italy exercised it briefly.

The Zulus are the largest ethnic group in South Africa, where they maintain pride in their heritage, history and culture despite the injustice of the Apartheid years.

The rise of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka

Shaka Zulu was the legitimate son of the Ruler of the Zulus, Senzangakona. He was born in around 1787. He had been exiled by Senzangakona with his mother, Nandi, and found refuge with Mthethwa. Shaka fought under Dingiswayo, the chief of the Mtetwa Paramountcy, as a warrior. Dingiswayo helped Shaka establish his place as the Zulu Kingdom’s leader when Senzangakona died.

Dingane’s bloody ascension Shaka was succeeded by his half-brother, Dingane, who collaborated with another half-brother, Mhlangana, to kill him. Dingane assassinated Mhlangana after this assassination and took over the throne. The execution of all his royal kin was one of his first royal acts. He also executed several past supporters of Shaka in the years that followed in order to protect his position. Mpande, another half-brother, was one exception to these purges, and was thought too frail to be a threat at the time.

Conflicts with the Voortrekkers and Mpande’s rise

The Voortrekker chairman Piet Retief visited Dingane at his Royal Kraal in October 1837 to discuss a land settlement for the Voortrekkers. In November, about 1,000 Voortrekker wagons descended the Drakensberg Mountains from the Orange Free State into what is now KwaZulu-Natal.

Retief and his members were requested by Dingane to return some cattle stolen from him by a local chief. Retief did so with his men, returning on February 3, 1838. A treaty was signed the next day in which Dingane ceded to the Voortrekkers all the land south of the Tugela River to the Mzimvubu River. Celebrations surfaced. Retief’s group were invited to a dance on February 6, at the end of the festivities, and ordered to leave their weapons behind. Dingane jumped to his feet at the height of the dance and shouted “Bambani abathakathi!” (isiZulu for “Seize the wizards”). Retief and his men were overpowered, taken to KwaMatiwane, a nearby hill, and hanged.

Some suggest that they were executed for hiding some of the cattle they had rescued, but it is likely that the agreement was a trap to destroy the Voortrekkers. A party of 500 Voortrekker men, women and children camped nearby were then attacked and massacred by Dingane’s army. Today, the site of the massacre is named Weenen, (Afrikaans “to weep”).

A new chief, Andries Pretorius, was elected by the remaining Voortrekkers and Dingane suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Blood River on December 16, 1838, when he [Dingane] talked a party of 470 Voortrekker colonists led by Pretorius.

Dingane burned his royal household after his defeat and fled north. Mpande, the half-brother spared from Dingane’s purges, defected with 17,000 supporters, and went to battle with Dingane along with Pretorius and the Voortrekkers. Dingane was assassinated near the modern Swaziland frontier. Mpande then seized control of the Zulu kingdom.

Succession of Cetshwayo

The Voortrekkers, under Pretorius, established the Boer Republic of Natalia, south of Thukela, and west of the British settlement of Port Natal (now Durban), in 1839 after the campaign against Dingane. Peaceful relations were preserved between Mpande and Pretorius. However, war broke out between the British and the Boers in 1842, resulting in Natalia’s British annexation. Mpande changed his loyalty to the British, and stayed with them in good terms.

In 1843, Mpande ordered a purge within his kingdom of suspected rebels. This resulted in several deaths, and the fleeing of thousands of refugees into neighboring areas (including the British-controlled Natal). Many of these refugees have left with their animals. Mpande proceeded to raid the surrounding areas, resulting in Swaziland’s invasion of 1852. The British, however, forced him into withdrawing, which he eventually did.

A war for succession broke out at this time between two of the sons of Mpande, Cetshwayo and Mbuyazi. This ended with a battle in 1856 which left Mbuyazi dead. Cetshwayo then set about usurping the authority of his father. Mpande died of old age in 1872, and Cetshwayo took over power. There was then a border dispute in the Transvaal between the Boers and the Zulus, which now under British control, meant that they were now adjudicating between the two groups. The Zulu claim was favored by a commission, but a provision was added by the British governor requiring the Zulus to pay compensation to the Boers who would have to resettle.

Anglo-Zulu War

It was marked by a number of events, all of which gave the British an excuse to express moral indignation and anger about Zulu conduct. For instance, the estranged wife of a Zulu chief fled to British territory for safety, where she was killed. Regarding this as a violation of their own rule, the British sent an ultimatum to Cetshwayo on December 10, 1878, demanding that he disband his army. As he refused, at the end of December 1878, British forces crossed the Thukela river. The war was waged in 1879. Early in the war, at the Battle of Isandlwana on January 22, the Zulus defeated the British, but were badly defeated at Rorke’s Drift later that day. At the Battle of Ulundi on July 4, the war ended in a Zulu defeat. In order to subdue Africa and rule its colonies, Britain relied more on its military reputation, less on real power in the field, as McLynn comments:

The dominance of the colonial powers was founded on legitimacy, the belief that there was a military behemoth behind a small handful of officials, commissioners and missionaries that one called forth at one’s peril. This was why the British were forced to mobilize such force as was required to defeat Cetewayo by a serious military defeat, such as that inflicted by the Zulus at Isandhlwana in 1879, even though the empire did not hold any major interests in that part of Africa at that time.

However, even in defeat, the Zulu warriors gained the admiration of the British. During the long fight for citizenship and justice in white-dominated South Africa, the tale of early Zulu resistance to white colonialism was an inspiration to many Black South Africans.

The division and death of Cetshwayo

A month after his defeat, Cetshwayo was captured, then exiled to Cape Town. The British transferred the law of the Zulu kingdom to 13 “kinglets,” each with a sub-kingdom of their own. Between these sub-kingdoms, war soon erupted, and Cetshwayo was permitted to visit England in 1882. Before being allowed to return to Zululand, he had audiences with Queen Victoria and other famous characters, to be restored as king.

In 1883, Cetshwayo, much reduced from his original empire, was installed as king over a buffer reserve territory. However, Cetshwayo was targeted at Ulundi later that year by Zibhebhu, one of the 13 kinglets, backed by Boer mercenaries. Cetshwayo was wounded and fled. Cetshwayo, possibly poisoned, died peacefully in February 1884. His son, Dinuzulu, then 15, inherited the throne.

Dinuzulu’s Volunteers and final absorption into Cape Colony

In exchange for their aid, Dinuzulu recruited Boer mercenaries of his own, promising them land. These mercenaries called themselves “Volunteers of Dinuzulu,” and Louis Botha led them. In 1884, the Volunteers of Dinuzulu defeated Zibhebhu, and duly demanded their land. They were individually granted about half of Zululand as farms, and established an independent republic. This alarmed the British, who in 1887, then annexed Zululand. In later disputes with rivals, Dinuzulu became involved. Dinuzulu was charged in 1906 with being behind the Bambatha Rebellion. He was arrested for “high treason and public violence” by the British and put on trial. He was sentenced to ten years in prison on St Helena Island in 1909. Louis Botha became the first prime minister when the Union of South Africa was established and he arranged for his old ally, Dinuzulu, to live in exile on a farm in the Transvaal, where Dinuzulu died in 1913.

The son of Dinuzulu, Solomon kaDinuzulu, was never recognised as a Zulu king by the South African authorities, only as a local chief, but he was eventually regarded as a king by chiefs, political intellectuals like John Langalibalele Dube and ordinary Zulu citizens. In 1923, to promote his royal claims, Solomon established the Inkatha YaKwaZulu organisation, which became moribund and was then revived by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu Bantustan, in the 1970s. In December 1951, Cyprian Bhekuzulu kaSolomon, the son of Solomon, was officially recognised as the Zulu people’s Paramount Chief, but real control over ordinary Zulu people lay with white South African officials operating through local chiefs who could be removed from office for failure to cooperate.

In different parts of their empire, the British adopted the word “Paramount Chief” to appoint recognised traditional rulers in a way that left their own monarch as the only King or Queen. Therefore, “kings” have been demoted to “prince” or chief. Under Apartheid, KwaZulu’s homeland (or Bantustan) was established in 1950 and from 1970, all Bantu were considered KwaZulu citizens, not South African citizens, losing their passports. KwaZulu was abolished in 1994 and is now situated under the KwaZulu-Natal province.

During the anti-Apartheid struggle, pride in early Zulu resistance to the white domination and conquest of Africa helped inspire many people. Shaka was known as a national hero and the story of his life was re-enacted by many dramas. In 2004, thousands of Zulus took part in a re-enactment of Isandlwana’s victory to mark its 125th anniversary.

Kings of Zulu Kingdom 

Mnguni Nkosinkulu Mdlani Luzumana Malandela kaLuzumana, son of Luzumana Ntombela kaMalandela, son of Malandela. Zulu kaNtombela, son of Ntombela, founder and chief of the Zulu clan from ca. 1709. Gumede kaZulu, son of Zulu, chief of the Zulu clan. Phunga kaGumede (d. 1727), son of Gumede, chief of the Zulu clan up to 1727. Mageba kaGumede (d. 1745), son of Gumede and brother of Phunga, chief of the Zulu clan from 1727 to 1745. Ndaba kaMageba (d. 1763), son of Mageba, chief of the Zulu clan from 1745 to 1763. Jama kaNdaba (d. 1781), son of Ndaba, chief of the Zulu clan from 1763 to 1781. Senzangakhona kaJama (ca. 1762-1816), son of Jama, chief of the Zulu clan from 1781 to 1816. Shaka kaSenzangakhona (ca. 1787-1828), son of Senzangakona, king from 1816 to 1828. Dingane kaSenzangakhona (ca. 1795-1840), son of Senzangakhona and half-brother of Shaka, king from 1828 to 1840. Mpande kaSenzangakhona (1798-1872), son of Senzangakhona and half-brother of Shaka and Dingane, king from 1840 to 1872. Cetshwayo kaMpande (1826 – February 1884), son of Mpande, king from 1872 to 1884. Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo (1868-1913), son of Cetshwayo kaMpande, king from 1884 to 1913. Solomon kaDinuzulu (1891-1933), son of Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, king from 1913 to 1933. Cyprian Bhekuzulu kaSolomon (4 August 1924-17 September 1968), son of Solomon kaDinuzulu, king from 1948 to 1968. Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu (b. 14 July 1948), son of Cyprian Bhekuzulu kaSolomon, king since 1971.

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The Zulu Nation’s History and Culture Essay

The continent of Africa was home to a significant number of ancient tribes, some of which are still alive in the modern world. An important feature distinguishing African tribes from European peoples is their identity, culture, and exceptional values. The Zulu nation is one of the most significant ethnicity for African history. In addition to the militancy and toughness, this tribe is known for its rich language and specific culture. Parts of the representatives of the people exist today in a modified state. It is necessary to analyze the cultural history of the legendary tribe.

Before examining the uniqueness of the tribe, it is vital to identify it as a society. The Zulu people live on the continent of Africa, in the southern part of it, which is known as KwaZulu-Natal. In Zulu, “Zulu” means “sky,” and the word Zulu translates as “sky people” (BBC News Africa). The Zulu language is similar to the Middle African languages, so there is ample opportunity for explorers to research it (BBC News Africa). Many Zulu now speak English, Portuguese, Sesotho, and other South African languages (BBC News Africa). Although the Zulu tribes are predominantly pagan in their beliefs, Christianity is also widespread among the tribes. Zulu religion, in particular, includes belief in a creator god, and the spirit world can only be accessed through ancestors, who soothsayers contact (Giblin, 2019). One particular area of life among the tribes is the institution of death, which is associated with evil and is associated with people who do terrible things in life. It is important to note that most religious rituals have a unique factors: different utensils and dishes are often used for other foods, and believers perform ablutions up to three times a day (Giblin, 2019). Thus, the general Zulu religion combines certain aspects of European as well as a pagan religion.

The Zulu are the largest people in southern Africa. This is due to the migration of ancient peoples across the continent, whose goal was to get away from deserts and powerful established states, such as Egypt and Ethiopia (BBC News Africa). After finding an area free of people, the tribes decided to come to a settled way of life, settling and developing their own style of architecture, known as the Ikanda (BBC News Africa). Later an entire empire emerged, consisting of numerous tribes, united both by the government of one king and a common wide territory.

It is worth noting that the Zulu people can be characterized as a fast-growing yet extremely powerful state. This was due to the unique Zulu warriors, the Impi, who were more dangerous than other African armies (BBC News Africa). The structure of the state was unusual in that the empire was divided into clans based on kinship (Mahoney, 2019). For the Zulu, a wedding is a costly celebration, as it is customary for every Zulu who decides to marry legally to pay a bride price to her parents (Mahoney, 2019). In this family, the husband stands for the chief, and institution of marriage is hallowed.

Around the end of the seventeenth century, Zulu people left their habitat in the Congo and migrated to Natal, in the land of South Africa. The Zulu lived in small groups, nominally recognizing the authority of the paramount chief. By the beginning of the 18th century, however, the population was growing rapidly and steadily, agricultural production was improving, and trade competition with Europeans was increasing, which led to the need to centralize and expand the power of Zulu chiefs.

BBC News Africa. (2020). Gift of the Nile – history of Africa with Zeinab Badawi [Episode 3] [Video]. YouTube. Web.

Giblin, J. L. (2019). Kinship in African history . John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Mahoney, M. R. (2019). Ethnicity in Southern Africa . John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Zulu Community

The pre-1994 apartheid system of homelands or 'Bantusans' denied Zulu people South African citizenship and attempted to confine them to the nominally self-governing homeland of KwaZulu, now both part of the KwaZulu-Natal Province. Today it is estimated that there are more than 45 million South Africans, and the Zulu people make up about approximately 22% of this number. The large majority of the rural Zulu population remain in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. Many Zulu live in the urban centres of Durban, Pietermaritzburg and in the Gauteng Province. This article will predominantly focus on the Zulu communities in Durban. However, the history of these communities is inextricably linked to the pre-colonial history, colonial history and the history of segregation within the province.

Zulu settlement and early life in Natal

It is thought that the first known inhabitants of the Durban area arrived from the north around 100,000 BC. Little is known of the history of the first residents, as there is no written history of the area before it was first mentioned by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, who came to the KwaZulu-Natal coast while searching for a route from Europe to India. He landed on the KwaZulu-Natal coast on Christmas in 1497, and thus named the area Terra do Natal , or Christmas Country in Portuguese. Much of what we know of the development of the Zulu nation is based on archaeological evidence, and later on European settlers’ diaries and Zulu oral histories.

Long ago, before the Zulu were forged as a nation, they lived as isolated family groups and partly nomadic northern Nguni groups. These groups moved about within their loosely defined territories in search of game and good grazing for their cattle. As they accumulated livestock, family leaders divided and dispersed in different directions, while still retaining family networks.

The Zulu homestead (imizi) consisted of an extended family and others attached to the household through social obligations. This social unit was largely self-sufficient, with responsibilities divided according to gender. Men were generally responsible for defending the homestead, caring for cattle, manufacturing and maintaining weapons and farm implements, and building dwellings. Women had domestic responsibilities and raised crops, usually grains, on land near the household.

The word Zulu means ‘Sky’ and according to oral history, Zulu was the name of the ancestor who founded the Zulu royal line in about 1670. By the late eighteenth century, a process of political consolidation among the Zulu’s was beginning to take place. A number of powerful chiefdoms began to emerge and a transformation from pastoral society to a more organised statehood occurred. This enabled leaders to wield more authority over their own supporters, and to compel allegiance from conquered chiefdoms. Changes took place in the nature of political, social, and economic links between chiefs of these emerging power blocs and their subjects. Zulu chiefs demanded steadily increasing tribute or taxes from their subjects, acquired great wealth, commanded large armies, and, in many cases, subjugated neighbouring chiefdoms.

KwaDukuza - Stanger, a history

Military conquest allowed men to achieve status distinctions that had become increasingly important. This culminated early in the nineteenth century with the warrior-king Shaka conquering all the groups in Zululand and uniting them into a single powerful Zulu nation. Shaka recruited young men from all over the kingdom and trained them in his own novel warrior tactics. His military campaign resulted in widespread violence and displacement. Within twelve years of his reign (1816-1828), he had forged one of the mightiest empires the African continent has ever known.

It was during Shaka’s reign, in the year 1824, that a European settlement began in the area that is now Durban. Initially named ‘Port Natal’, the settlement was founded by merchants from the Cape Colony under the leadership of Henry Francis Fynn. Fynn reached a contractual agreement with King Shaka authorising them to establish a trading station. In 1835 the town was named Durban after the Cape Governor of the time, Sir Benjamin D'Urban.

In the beginning the settlement developed very slowly and many skirmishes between the Zulus and the settlers took place. The Zulu people obviously saw Natal as their tribal homeland and only tolerated the settlers, because the town was of use to them as a trading station.

In 1828, King Shaka was assassinated by his brothers and the Zulu empire weakened after Shaka's death.

Why did Dingane kill Retief? from Dawn, Vol.2 No.11, Dec 1979 by Lionel Forman

In 1837 the Voortrekkers arrived in Natal. A delegation lead by Piet Retief negotiated a contract with Zulu King Dingane granting them the land between Durban and the Tugela river to found a Boer Republic in Natal. Shortly afterwards, Dingane had the entire delegation killed. After several more bloody assaults and attacks, the Voortrekkers defeated the Zulus in the dramatic Battle at the Blood River . Subsequently the Afrikaners founded their Republic ‘Natalia’ and laid claim on Durban, which, however, met with strong resistance from the British. They sent troops to Durban, who were defeated in the Battle of Congella in 1842. But the English secured their dominance in Natal the following year. The Voortrekkers resorted to trekking further north and found a new home in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

The destruction of the Zulu Kingdom

Sir Bartle Frere was appointed British high commissioner to South Africa in 1879 to realise the Policy of Confederation. This policy was set to bring the various British colonies, Boer republics and independent African groups under common control - with a view to implementing a policy of economic development. Sir Bartle Frere saw the self-reliant Zulu kingdom as a threat to this policy, a belief which was supported by Shepstone, the Secretary for Native Affairs.

Shepstone averred that the Zulu people had revived their military power under Cetshwayo , which made them more of a threat to peace and prosperity in South Africa. On 11 December 1878, under the flimsy pretext of a few minor border incursions into Natal by Cetshwayo's followers, the Zulu were given an impossible ultimatum- that they should disarm and Cetshwayo should forsake his sovereignty.

Anglo-Zulu Wars

The inevitable invasion of Zululand began after the ultimatum had expired in January 1879. In a final onslaught known as the Battle of Ulundi, they secured an overwhelming military success. More than 1 000 Zulu were killed and Cetshwayo was forced to flee for safety, until he was captured in the Ngome forest in August and exiled to the Cape.

Natal received ‘Colonial government’ in 1893, and the Zulu people were dissatisfied at being governed by the Colony. A plague of locusts devastated crops in Zululand and Natal in 1894 and 1895, and their cattle were dying of rinderpest, lung sickness and east coast fever. These natural disasters, as well as the war, impoverished them. The men were forced to seek employment as railway construction workers in northern Natal and on the mines in the Witwatersrand.

Also following the destruction of the Zulu Kingdom and the simultaneous movement into the city of Indian workers who had completed their indenture on Natal sugar plantations ( see Indian feature ), the first shack settlements began to be constructed in Durban. These settlements offered Zulu’s, many of whom had been forced off their lands, a well located and affordable means of access to the alternative livelihoods offered by the city.

Colonial authorities soon began to act against the settlements by legally entrenching the segregation of Africans. The key tool of colonial urban planning was the division of the city into different zones which were then allocated to different activities and to different groups of people. By 1900 municipal acts had been adopted to control and monitor access to these different urban zones (also relevant here see ‘Beer Culture’ below).

In 1906 a poll tax of £1 per head, known as the head tax, was implemented. Hut taxes and other taxes like this poll tax had been used by British colonial governments across Africa before to force people out of a rural non”capitalist economy and into wage labour. Resistance to this tax resulted in the Bambatha Rebellion . Some two thousand Zulu workers and domestic servants left the city to return to their homesteads, where many joined the rebellion. This rural revolt produced tremendous anxiety in White Durban about the possibility of an attack on the city. However, the uprising was ruthlessly suppressed.

Zulu Communities in Durban after 1910

The establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 removed the colonies from direct Imperial control, and allowed local Whites to run the new national state. Quick shifts towards greater regulation of the African presence in the cities followed. The 1911 Native Regulation Act put in place a series of pass controls, thus substantially firming up a system in which single male workers were expected to live in hostels for the duration of their labour contracts, and to then return to their rural homes. But various ongoing attempts to install an effective system of pass controls over African women failed. Only a quarter of Durban’s 30 000 African workers were formally housed in male only barracks by 1916. White paranoia about Africans living outside of prison”like compounds remained rampant.

The 1913 Land Act gave legal sanction to the mass enclosures of land for the purpose of setting up a fully commercial White agriculture, and these enclosures pushed a rural crisis into a spiralling descent into mass poverty that is still evident in the deprivation and struggles of today. The Land Act initiated two waves of expulsion from the land. The first took place immediately, as land was expropriated and enclosed.

Therefore the 1920s saw fundamental changes in the Zulu nation. Many were drawn towards the mines and fast-growing cities as wage earners. They were separated from the land and urbanised. Zulu men and women have made up a substantial portion of South Africa's urban work force throughout the 20th century, especially in the gold and copper mines of the Witwatersrand. Zulu workers organized some of the first Black labour unions in the country. For example, the Zulu Washermen's Guild, Amawasha, was active in Natal and the Witwatersrand even before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. The Zululand Planters' Union organized agricultural workers in Natal in the early twentieth century.

The 1920s saw an influx of Zulu people moving to Durban, and they settled in areas like Cato Manor. In Cato Manor the Zulu community was renting land from the Indian market gardeners. The Indian settlers leased small plots to African families who were prohibited by law from buying land of their own. By 1932 when Cato Manor was incorporated into the Borough of Durban, over 500 shacks had been built on the land making it a maze-like shantytown the Zulu called Mkhumbane , named after a stream running through it.

To read more about the period go to ‘In the Forbidden Quarters: Shacks in Durban till the end of apartheid’ (PDF) paper.

The Beer Brewing Culture

Towards the end of the 19th century growing numbers of Black people moved into Durban and did not have the time or space to brew their own beer. Entrepreneurs stepped in to fill the gap and there was soon a thriving industry including some large-scale brewing operations but a lot of the beer was brewed by African women, who earned their living by selling it in town.

The authorities in Durban were keen to have Black people around town for their labour but they were concerned that the relatively small White community would be overwhelmed if uncontrolled Black urbanisation was allowed. They therefore introduced a system to control the influx of Black people by forcing them to have permits to be in town.

This system would have cost ratepayers a lot of money but the authorities worked out a way to make it self-financing. They were the instigators behind the passing of the Native Beer Act of 1908, in terms of which municipalities in Natal were given the sole right to brew and sell beer within their boundaries.

The Durban municipality soon began to brew its own beer and sell it through a network of beerhalls, which it established. The first municipal beerhall opened in 1909 and soon the system was reaping huge profits. Every effort was made to stamp out the illegal brewing and the sale of beer through regular police raids.

Great numbers of people lost their means to earn a living because of this policy and, even if they did not stop brewing beer, there was always the risk of a raid. This and the fact that beer in beerhalls were expensive, led to great bitterness and outbreaks of violence, including one in 1929 in which a number of people were killed.

Durban townships and the KwazuluKwaZulu Homeland

The dawn of apartheid in the 1940s marked more changes for all Black South Africans and the Zulu communities living in Durban were no exception. These changes included the separation of citizens into so-called ‘White’, ‘Bantu/African’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘Asian’ suburbs, as a result of the Group Areas Act (1950).

In terms of this act African Durban residents were to be moved and resettled in townships, particularly in KwaMashu and later Umlazi on the outskirts of Durban. Many Zulu residents knew they would not qualify for residence in a township and would be repatriated to their ‘place of origin’ in Natal. In addition rent in the townships would be double what the residents were paying in areas like Cato Manor. Much resistance and rioting occurred as a result of the forced removals, most notably in Cato Manor ( read more ).

In 1953, the South African Government introduced homelands or Bantustans , and KwaZulu was ‘set aside’ for Xhosa people. Later, these regions were proclaimed independent countries by the apartheid government. Therefore many Zulu were denied South African citizenship, and thousands were forcibly relocated (many from Durban) to KwaZulu. Conditions of extreme poverty in the homelands meant that many Zulu men had no option but to move to urban centres as migrant workers.

The first Territorial Authority for the Zulu people was established in 1970 and the Zulu homeland of KwaZulu was officially defined. On 30 March 1972 the first Legislative Assembly of KwaZulu was constituted by South African Parliamentary Proclamation. Chief Mangosutho (Gatsha) Buthelezi , a cousin of the king, was elected as Chief Executive. The town of Nongoma was temporarily consolidated as the capital, pending completion of buildings at Ulundi. The 1970s also saw the revival of Inkatha, later the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) , the ruling and sole party in the self-governing KwaZulu homeland. Led by Buthelezi, Inkatha worked within the NP governments system, but it opposed homeland independence, standing for non-racial democracy, federalism, and free enterprise.

Military prowess continued to be an important value in Zulu culture, and this emphasis fuelled some of the political violence of the 1990s. Buthelezi's nephew, Goodwill Zwelithini, was the Zulu monarch in the 1990s. Buthelezi and King Goodwill secured an agreement with the ANC just before the April 1994 elections that, with international mediation, the government would establish a special status for the Zulu Kingdom after the elections. Zulu leaders understood this special status to mean some degree of regional autonomy within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Buthelezi was appointed minister of home affairs in the first Government of National Unity in 1994. He led a walkout of Zulu delegates from the National Assembly in early 1995 and clashed repeatedly with newly elected President Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela. Buthelezi threatened to abandon the Government of National Unity entirely unless his Zulu constituency received greater recognition and autonomy from central government control.

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Everything You Need to Know About Zulu Language

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Published: Dec 5, 2018

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In France, the Future Is Arriving on a Barge

The Seine is becoming a test case for a European plan to cut carbon emissions by turning rivers into the new highways.

A barge filled with items for Franprix supermarkets in Paris made its way along the Seine, not far from the Eiffel Tower. Credit...

Supported by

By Liz Alderman

Photographs and Video by James Hill

Reported and photographed along the Seine, between Le Havre and Paris.

• March 26, 2024

As pale morning light flickered across the Seine, Capt. Freddy Badar steered his hulking river barge, Le Bosphore, past picturesque Normandy villages and snow-fringed woodlands, setting a course for Paris.

Onboard were containers packed with furniture, electronics and clothing loaded the night before from a cargo ship that had docked in Le Havre, the seaport in northern France. Had the cargo continued by road, 120 trucks would have clogged the highways. Using Le Bosphore and its crew of four prevented tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.

“The river is part of a wider solution for cleaner transport and the environment,” Captain Badar said, his eyes scanning other vessels carrying wares up and down the Seine. “But there’s much more that we could be doing.”

As the European Union steps up its battle against climate change, it needs to decarbonize freight transport , responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To get there, it is turning back to a centuries-old solution: its rivers. With 23,000 miles of waterways spanning the European Union, officials see a huge potential to help take trucks — the biggest source of freight emissions — off roads. The European Green Deal , the European Union’s decarbonization blueprint, would turn rivers into highways and double barge traffic by 2050.

There’s a lot of room for improvement. Today, rivers carry less than 2 percent of Europe’s freight. By comparison, around 6.5 million trucks crisscross Europe’s roads, accounting for 80 percent of freight transport. Rail accounts for around 5 percent.

If rivers are to handle more traffic, much of Europe’s decades-old waterway infrastructure, including ports and locks, will need upgrading. A warming planet adds to the challenge: Droughts in recent years have grounded some transport on the Rhine, and pose risks to the Seine.

While the Seine isn’t the most heavily trafficked river in Europe — that is the Rhine, which flows through Germany and the Netherlands — the ambition is to turn it into one of the main experimental hubs for the climate transition.

“We are working on a transformation to get businesses to massively shift their logistics routes,” said Stéphane Raison, the president of France’s main port operator, Haropa, which is investing over 1 billion euros (or $1.1 billion) in the Seine effort.

Turning Toward the River

Before leaving Le Havre for Paris, as a heavy snow fell in the dark, Le Bosphore’s crew packed containers tightly into the cargo hold, checking a manifest as a gantry crane swung overhead.

Le Bosphore, part of a 110-barge fleet run by Sogestran, France’s largest river transport company, will head to Gennevilliers, a port five miles outside Paris that is a distribution hub for the capital region’s 12 million consumers. The trip will take around 30 hours.

The Seine could carry many more barges like Le Bosphore, which is longer than a soccer field and saves 18,000 truck trips a year between Le Havre and Paris. The government hopes to draw four times as much freight to the river as the 20 million metric tons it handles now each year.

To achieve that, Haropa has been accelerating an expansion of Le Havre port, which sits at the mouth of the Seine, in a bid to attract ships from the larger ports of Rotterdam in the Netherlands or Antwerp, Belgium. Cargo deposited at those ports is then driven to France on trucks.

At its five other port terminals on the Seine, Haropa is adding electrical stations that allow ships to plug in while docked, rather than running engines.

While much of Europe’s barge fleet is still powered by diesel, a small but growing portion is being adapted for biofuels. Electric boats are coming onto the market. Hydrogen-powered prototype barges are also being developed.

Companies like Ikea and river transport start-ups are helping to propel the movement. They are developing carbon-free last-mile delivery services to appeal to consumers — and to get ahead of strict environmental rules that European cities are imposing to limit heavy, polluting vehicles.

A Chain of ‘Cleaner Transport’

Eight hours after sailing from Le Havre, Le Bosphore pulled into Rouen, a major stop for river cargo to and from Paris. Around 10 a.m. a fresh four-person crew, led by Captain Badar, boarded for a weeklong shift, and the trip toward Paris resumed.

Barge traffic on the Seine has increased just 5 percent from a decade ago. While the government is trying to engineer an acceleration, “rivers have been neglected for too long,” said Captain Badar, the third generation of riverboat captains in his family. He is among a rare breed. Many riverboat captains in Europe are nearing retirement age, and there’s a shortage of qualified personnel, a problem that risks curbing the hoped-for growth in river traffic.

For centuries, Captain Badar noted, rivers were practically the only way to ferry goods through France: The ancient symbol of Paris is a boat. But waterways fell out of favor as trucks and trains dominated transport in the 20th century, especially after World War II, when highways and rail tracks expanded across the continent.

Governments support those industries “because they have powerful lobbies and unions,” Captain Badar said, navigating past a medieval castle built by Richard the Lionheart as the sun brightened the afternoon sky.

“Now we’re starting to talk about the environment, and it would be best to see the river as part of a wider chain of cleaner transport.”

France’s largest supermarket chain, Franprix, is ahead of the game. It has transported goods by barge for a decade to its 300 Parisian stores. Workers unload 42 containers each morning near the Eiffel Tower. That saves 3,600 truck trips a year on highways and has cut Franprix’s carbon emissions 20 percent, the company said.

Kitchen Cabinets and Coffee Beans

Le Bosphore pulled into Gennevilliers port the next morning before dawn, docking alongside other barges laden with wares for Parisian businesses. A crane unloaded three layers of containers from the hold, placing them on the pier, where forklifts stacked them to the side. Despite the voluminous cargo, Le Bosphore had consumed the fuel of only about four trucks on its entire trip.

Across the port, an experiment was underway to make the last mile of delivery more environmentally friendly: a hulking warehouse, set up in a 2022 deal between Haropa and Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant, to create a carbon-neutral way to deliver goods using the Seine.

Pallets packed with Ikea kitchen cabinets and couches, ordered online less than 48 hours earlier, were loaded onto a barge that would take them to central Paris. There, they would be put onto electric trucks and delivered to customers.

The process isn’t completely decarbonized — the barge to central Paris burns fuel, as do the trucks from Ikea’s factories in Poland and Romania — but the arrangement allowed Ikea to take the equivalent of 6,000 trucks off Paris streets last year, said Emilie Carpels, director of Ikea’s river project.

Other ventures are aiming to be more cutting edge.

Europe’s first hydrogen-fueled river barge, the Zulu, is expected to start operating in the spring. Designed by Sogestran, it can carry up to 320 metric tons, or the contents of around 15 trucks. “We are moving toward a future of increasingly clean transport,” said Florian Levarey, the project director.

For Fludis, a French start-up, that future is already at hand. Its president, Gilles Manuelle, founded the company around two boats that run on electric batteries, and a fleet of electric delivery bikes.

Around 7 on a recent morning, a dozen crew members loaded one of the small barges with boxes of coffee beans, copier paper, kitchen towels and other goods to be delivered to French bistros and businesses. As the boat sped silently past the Louvre for its first drop-off, workers onboard loaded their bikes with orders, and sped onto the streets as soon as the captain docked.

“We’re starting off small,” Mr. Manuelle said. “But it’s little solutions like this that can grow much bigger, and help play a role in reversing global warming.”

Back in Gennevilliers, the crew of Le Bosphore filled the now-empty hold with French goods for export: flour, lumber, luxury handbags and Champagne. By 2 p.m. it would begin a cruise back to Le Havre, where the crew would unload and then start all over again.

“I’ve known for a long time that the river was the most ecological means of transport,” Captain Badar said, easing back into the helm. “Now we need for policymakers to really make it happen,” he added. “The potential is huge.”

Liz Alderman is the chief European business correspondent, writing about economic, social and policy developments around Europe. More about Liz Alderman

James Hill is a photographer working on a regular basis for The Times since 1993. He is currently based in Paris. More about James Hill

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