HISTORIC FACT
I
t was dusk on Jan. 22, 1879,
when Frederick Augustus
Thesiger, better known as
Lord Chelmsford, returned to
camp at iSandlwana (spelled with
a lowercase “i” in Zulu, as op-
posed to the Anglicized “Isandl-
wana”). As he and his men picked
their way through the corpses
of their colleagues — naked and
mutilated, strewn among broken
bags of tea and sugar — their first
reaction was disbelief. “But I left
a thousand men to guard the
camp,” said Chelmsford, whose
incredulity soon turned to horror.
The final tally showed that the
Zulus had killed 858 white men
and 471 Black soldiers who had
been enlisted to fight for the
British. A mere 350 non-Zulus
emerged from the battle alive,
making iSandlwana one of the
bloodiest defeats of the Victorian
era, and far and away the most
catastrophic defeat by a “prim-
itive” volunteer army. When a
telegram bearing news of the
battle reached Britain, it was said
at first to be a hoax.
“
AS SOON AS THE
ZULUS WERE
ABLE TO ENGAGE
IN HAND-TO-HAND
COMBAT, THEY
WERE UNSTOPPA-
BLE.
IAN KNIGHT ”
Throughout the 1870s, the Brit-
ish controlled the coast of South
Africa; the Boers —
61| Colossium . August 2018
When
The
Zulu
Army
Gave
The
British
A Beat-
ing
This bloody bat-
tle led to a Brit-
ish backlash that
changed the his-
tory of South Af-
rica.
By: Nick Dall
Dutch-speaking settlers, predom-
inantly farmers — held most of
the interior. Scattered in between
were various African tribes who
had managed to survive that
long, the Zulu kingdom being the
strongest. “The British weren’t
bothered with the interior un-
til diamonds were discovered
in Kimberley,” says Ian Knight,
a historian specializing in An-
glo-Zulu wars. “Then they sud-
denly became very bothered with
the interior!”
The idea was that once the Brit-
ish had defeated the Zulus, the
weaker tribal groups would
quickly fall into line. But the Brits
had underestimated King Cet-
shwayo and his impi. “The Zulu
army was a very well-organized
part-time militia,” says Knight.
“Every Zulu man was enrolled in
a regiment at the age of 18 or 19.
Each regiment was divided into
companies, and officers were
appointed from the older, more
experienced men.” Zulu men
spent most of their time farming
with their families, but when the
king needed them, they would be
called up for duty.
On Jan. 6, 1879, Chelmsford and
some 3,500 men left the British
colony of Natal and marched into
Zululand. Apart from a few skir-
mishes, the first two weeks of the
campaign were largely unevent-
ful. Two weeks later, on January
20, Chelmsford made camp at
the lion-shaped outcrop