A dissertation submitted to the Fafulty of Arts in the fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History at the University of Zululand, [1996]. / Every nation has its own heroes that form part of its history- The history of the blacks, the Zulus in particular, is characterized by heroism, but very little is nowadays known about our heroes. The photo and the name of Prince TTiimuni appears in many books, but merely as an example of the traditional attire used by the hero warrior of AmaZuiu. No researcher has taken pains to trace the history of such a remarkable figure in the Zulu history. Thimuni belonged to Zimpohlo regiment of inkosi Shaka Zulu. He helped Shaka in building a strong Zulu nation by defeating different izizwe. Before the end of the Battle of Ndondakusuka, he crossed Thukela river into the British colony of Natal. Thimuni and his brother Sigwefoana supported Mbuyazi instead of Cetshwayo. Sigwebana died in the battle and Thimuni took over his wives, resulting in the birth of Chakijana and Lokoza. Ndlovu became the son of Thimuni's own first wife, Mkhomoto. The defeat of Mbuyazi resulted in strained relationship between Thimuni and the Zulu royal house. When Thimuni reached Maphumuio, inkosi Mkhonto Ntult gave him part of his area where he became inkosi. Thimuni's sons, Ndlovu and Chakijana disputed the heirship and Thimuni separated them. Chakijana was told to go and occupy Mvoti area as inkosi. Both Thimuni's sons used the name Nodunga for their districts and that was in honour of their grandfather, Mudli, whose umuzi was Nodunga. When the Bhambatha uprising broke out, Ndlovu and Chakijana sided with AmaZulu against the British government. That brought about reconciliation between them and the Zulu Royal House so that their sons Mbango and Piti communicated freely with the Zulu Royal House. Mbango's son, Manukanuka, was evicted in 1972 from his land by the South African government, the reason being that he communicated secreteiy with the British government against the loss of his land to Whites and Indians. The South African government sold Manukanuka's land for the part played by Chakijana in the Bhambatha uprising. Ubukhosi of Ndlovu's Nodunga No. 7 was only disturbed for a short period when Ndlovu was imprisoned. It was put under the Ngubane people under the chieftainship of Sibindi Ngubane of Mabomvini isizwe who made his brother, Mmeleli to be chief of Nodunga isizwe. However, when Ndiovu came back from exile ubukhosi was restored to him and his descendants.

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for B.A. Honours degree in the Department of History at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 1995. / AbaKwaMthethwa form a very important component of the Zulu nation as we know it today. They were in fact the vanguards in the implementation of the idea of a confederation of smaller states (clans) under one supreme ruler or a king who become their overlord. The history of abaKwaMthethwa is so wide that one would need volumes to do justice to it. This project is only going to deal with their movement from around uBombo mountains round about AD 1500 to 1818 when king Dingiswyo was assassinated by Zwide, inkosi of the Ndwandwe people. This project will furthermore concentrate on the life of Dingiswayo from the time he escaped death from his father. The project also seeks to examine the controversy surrounding Dingiswayo's formative journey. It is intended that Dingiswayo's influence and his contribution socially, politically, military and economically to the upliftment of the Mthethwa confederacy will be examined. Finally mention will be made of the royal imizi, some principal imizi not necessarily royal ones, as well as religious imizi that are to be found at KwaMthethwa.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2004. / This thesis focuses on the reasons why King Dingane of the Zulu nation has been portrayed predominantly as a treacherous tyrant in South Africa's Eurocentric historical databases and poses the question whether he should, instead, not be regarded as the forerunner of African nationalism. It also examines the roots of European imperialism in South Africa, as recorded in governmental, geographical, trade and missionary records, and points out that, as with the first colonial invasion by Islam that resulted in the Tarikh chronicles, European imperialism was also inherently based on foreign and nationalistic biases. The study concludes that these preconceived notions have adulterated and overwhelmed the purer African voice that is uniquely represented by the oral tradition. Because the subdued African voice is regarded as more reliable than the written Eurocentric records, this study attempts to augment the Africa- centered work of Africanist historians who have, for several decades, revisited the oral history of Africa in order to recover, rehabilitate and represent a point of view and perspective intrinsic and special to Africa. The history of King Dingane of the Zulus encapsulates the problem of African historiography best because most of the sources from which accounts of his reign are reconstructed are European, and for this reason, propagate a Eurocentric bias. For example, while Eurocentric White historians are able to present, in print, three eyewitness accounts of the death of Piet Retief, the African point of view based on oral history is largely disregarded. This study seeks to redress this imbalance by championing the African point of view, which is considered to be not only sensible but also plausible and justifiable. Likewise, much attention has been given to the many studies that demonise King Dingane for the single act of viciously killing the purportedly innocent and innocuous Voortrekkers, while the broad contours of context against which his actions should be judged are disregarded. The purpose of this thesis is to debunk the myth of King Dingane's unfairness and criminality. It can therefore be interpreted as an effort at decriminalizing King Dingane's actions - a dimension that earlier as well as contemporary scholars of African history have hitherto ignored. It is hoped that in time similar studies on other issues will broaden this perspective and help to create the balance so sorely missing in Zulu history. A theoretical framework for historical representation is provided in chapter one of the study, while chapter two examines the mindset of the White explorers that arrived in Africa, and their imperial agenda that sought to control, drastically change and re-order everything. Chapter three attempts to portray the greatness of King Dingane in dealing with matters of governance as well as other issues that were to have a profound impact on the way in which he came to be portrayed in history books. Chapter four discusses the relationship between King Dingane and the British Settlers at Port Natal, while chapter five deals with the relationships between King Dingane and the Voortrekkers, who sought the very freedom from the British in the Cape Colony that they were prepared to destroy among Africans in the Zulu Kingdom. The final chapter deals with public history and perceptions about King Dingane in the 21^' century. The two museums that commemorate Impi yase Ncome/the Battle of 'Blood River' on 16 December are contrasted with each other and their potential for nation building is examined in a critical light. The central thesis of this study is that the historiography of the early years of the 19'^ century inevitably, and perhaps even deliberately, represented King Dingane as a tyrant with neither nationalistic proclivities nor stately qualities. The popularity of this historiographic perspective is arguably symptomatic of a hegemonic disciplinary praxis that seeks to privilege the principles of selection, preference and bias in the use of the vast archive of sources available to the historian, from the written to the oral source. To all intents and purposes, this principle, which interpolates the discourse of history as well as the producers and consumers of historical scholarship, has led to a limited, over-determined and totalizing view of King Dingane. It is this biased discourse that articulates with the dominant ideology that not only informed scholarship, but also reflected the ideology of the institutions responsible for shaping historiography. A full analysis of the circumstances surrounding King Dingane at the time, including the history, the culture, the political dynamics and the personalities of the actors, leads one to the inexorable conclusion that this thesis arrives at - namely that the king did what 'a king had to do.' It is furthermore concluded that the evidence leads one to believe that King Dingane should be seen as a forerunner of Black Nationalism, instead of being branded as a treacherous, bloodthirsty tyrant.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation sets out to trace the political history of part of what is now Natal in the period from the third quarter of the 18th century to the late 1820s. After briefly describing the nature of political organization in the region at the beginning of the period, it explains how, in the later 18th century, several large paramountcies emerged among the small-scale chiefdoms which had previously been in exclusive occupation of the area. It traces continuities between the conflicts which brought about the formation of these larger polities and the upheavals which, in the later 1810s and early 1820s, totally transformed the region's political landscape. It argues that the concept of the mfecane, which portrays these upheavals as a product of the violent expansion of the Zulu state, is based on colonial-made myths and is devoid of analytical usefulness. It shows that A.T. Bryant's supposedly authoritative account of the period of the upheavals is very largely plagiarized from two minor publications produced long before by Theophilus Shepstone. It goes on to propose an alternative account which demonstrates that the.Zulu state was simply one among a number of important political actors in the ThukelaMzimkhulu territories in the 1810s and 1820s. Though the Zulu were eventually able to establish domination of the region, they did not 'devastate' it, as conventionally they are supposed to have done, and were unable effectively to occupy more than a small part of it. The Zulu were still in the process of establishing a hold on the region when, in the mid-1820S, its political dynamics began to be transformed by the increasing involvement of British traders from Port Natal in the affairs of the Zulu state. By the end of the 1820s, cape-based commercial and political interests were beginning to contest Zulu hegemony in the region south of the Thukela, and a new era in its history was opening. / AC2017

In this dissertation, I argue that there is a pressing need in post-apartheid KwaZulu-Natal to re-assess the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century histories of the region from the perspectives of people whose ancestry was dispossessed and/or displaced in the wars that took place in that period, particularly those that elevated Shaka to dominance. I suggest that because of their retrospective manipulation by the vested interests of power politics, historical processes over the past two centuries, and in the last century in particular, have invested the figure of King Shaka and 'Zulu' ethnic identities with unitary meanings that have made them close to inescapable for most people who are considered 'Zulu'. I argue that there is, therefore, a need to recuperate the histories of the clans which were defeated by the Zulu and welded into the Zulu 'nation'. Following British-Jamaican novelist Caryl Phillips' strategy, I begin to conduct this recuperation through a process of subverting history by writing back into historical records people and events that have been written and spoken out of them. I argue that literary texts, izibongo ('personal' praises) and izithakazelo (clan praises) in this case, offer a useful starting point in recovering the suppressed or marginalised histories of some of the once-significant clans in the region. In the three chapters of this dissertation, I examine the izibongo of three late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century amakhosi (kings) in the present KwaZulu-Natal region, Shaka kaSenzangakhona of the Zulu clan, Phungashe kaNgwane of the Buthelezi and Zwide kaLanga of the Ndwandwe. In the first chapter, I read Shaka's izibongo as an instance of empire-building discourse in which I trace the belittling representations granted Phungashe and Zwide. In the second and third chapters, I set Phungashe's and Zwide's izibongo, respectively, as well as the histories carried in and alluded to by these texts, and the clans' izithakazelo, alongside Shaka's and examine the extent to which the two amakhosi's izibongo talk back to Shaka's imperialism. I also follow the later histories of the two amakhosi's clans to determine which individuals became prominent in the Zulu kingdom under Shaka and after, as well as point to the revisions of the past that are being conducted in the present by people of the two clans. The versions of the izibongo I study and the hypotheses of history I present are drawn from sources that include the James Stuart Archive, A.T. Bryant, and oral historical accounts from several people I interviewed. Given the present imperatives in South Africa of bringing justice to the various peoples who were dispossessed under colonial and apartheid domination, I argue that recuperating the histories of the clans that were conquered by the Zulu under Shaka's leadership problematises questions of justice in KwaZulu-Natal: if it is legitimate to claim reparation for colonialism and apartheid, then the Zulu kingdom should be viewed under the same spotlight because of the similar suffering it visited on many inhabitants of the region. In that way, we can transcend divisive colonial, apartheid and Zulu nationalist histories that continue to have strong, often negative, effects on the crossing of identity boundaries constructed under those systems of domination. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

The figure of Shaka (c. 1780-1828) looms massively in the historical and symbolic landscapes of Southern Africa. He has been unquestioningly credited, in varying degrees, with creating the Zulu nation, murderous bloodlust, and military genius, so launching waves of violence across the subcontinent (the "mfecane"). The empirical evidence for this is slight and controversial. More importantly, however, Shaka has attained a mythical reputation on which not only Zulu self-conceptions, but to a significant degree white settler self-identifications have been built. This study describes as comprehensively as possible the genealogy of white Shakan literature, including eyewitness accounts, histories, fictions and poetry. The study argues that the vast majority of these works are characterised by a high degree of incestuous borrowing from one another, and by processes of mythologising catering primarily to the social-psychological needs of the writers. So coherent is this genealogy that the formation of an idealised notion of settler identity can be discerned, especially through the common use of particular textual "gestures". At the same time, while conforming largely to unquestioning modes of discourse such as popularised history and romance fiction, individual writers have attempted to adjust to socio-political circumstances; this study includes four close studies of individual texts. Such close stylistic attention serves to underline the textually-constructed nature of both the figure of Shaka and the "selves" of the writers. The study makes no attempt to reduce its explorations to a single Grand Unified Explanation, and takes eclectic theoretical positions, but it does seek throughout to explore the social-psychological meanings of textual productions of Shaka - in short, to explore the question, Why have white writers written about Shaka in these particular ways?

Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Zululand, 2005. / This dissertation seeks to take up the challenge of contributing to such an understanding of chieftainship by looking at the chieftainship succession disputes in the Cele clan of Phungashe and AmaNgwane clan of Bergville in the Province of KwaZulu -Natal, South Africa. The incorporation of indigenous political structures within the wider South African state has a long history, starting from the movements of people from one area to the other, the formation of smaller chiefdoms and bigger chiefdoms and to the rise of the Zulu kingdom. The entire process of Zulu state formation has been through a series of succession disputes which exist among many clans even nowadays. Also, the role of successions runs from the arrangements of indirect rule at the latter part of the nineteen-century to the pivotal role played by traditional leaders in the homeland administration and after 1994, the recognition of the institution, status and role of traditional leadership in the country's first democratic constitution and the enactment of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act. No. 41 of 2003 which makes provision for the establishment of the Chieftainship Dispute Resolution Commission.

Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree B.A. Honours in the Department of History at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 1993. / The History of the Mkhwanazi tribe between the UMhIathuze and the UMlalazi rivers in the east and west respectively and the Indian Ocean and the Ongoye moun tains in the South and North is an off shoot of the Mkhwanazi tribe of the chief Somkhele in the Hlabisa district • Its history can be clearly' understood by first looking at the history of the Mkhwanazi tribe in the Hlabisa district.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: History is often manipulated to achieve contemporary goals. Writing or narrating history is not merely a recoding or a narration of objective facts, but a value-laden process often conforming to the goals of the writer or narrator. This study examines the ways in which the history of the Mabudu chiefdom has been manipulated to achieve political goals. Through an analysis of the history of the Mabudu chiefdom and the manner in which that history has been represented, this study illustrates that history is not merely a collection of verifiable facts, but rather a collection of stories open to interpretation and manipulation. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Mabudu or Mabudu-Tembe was the strongest political and economic unit in south-east Africa. Their authority only declined with state formation amongst the Swazi and Zulu in the early nineteenth century. Although the Zulu never defeated the Mabudu, the Mabudu were forced to pay tribute to the Zulu. In the 1980s the Prime Minister of KwaZulu, Mangusotho Buthelezi, used this fact as proof that the people of Maputaland (Mabudu-land) should be part of the Zulu nation-state. By the latter part of the nineteenth century Britain, Portugal and the South African Republic laid claim to Maputaland. In 1875 the French President arbitrated in the matter and drew a line along the current South Africa/ Mozambique border that would divide the British and French spheres of influence in south-east Africa. The line cut straight through the Mabudu chiefdom. In 1897 Britain formally annexed what was then called AmaThongaland as an area independent of Zululand, which was administered as ‘trust land’ for the Mabudu people. When deciding on a place for the Mabudu in its Grand Apartheid scheme, the South African Government ignored the fact that the Mabudu were never defeated by the Zulu or incorporated into the Zulu Empire. Until the late 1960s the government recognised the people of Maputaland as ethnically Tsonga, but in 1976 Maputaland was incorporated into the KwaZulu Homeland and the people classified as Zulu. In 1982 the issue was raised again when the South African Government planned to cede Maputaland to Swaziland. The government and some independent institutions launched research into the historic and ethnic ties of the people of Maputaland. Based on the same historical facts, contrasting claims were made about the historical and ethnic ties of the people of Maputaland. Maputaland remained part of KwaZulu and is still claimed by the Zulu king as part of his kingdom. The Zulu use the fact that the Mabudu paid tribute in the 1800s as evidence of their dominance. The Mabudu, on the other hand, use the same argument to prove their independence, only stating that tribute never meant subordination, but only the installation of friendly relations. This is a perfect example of how the same facts can be interpreted differently to achieve different goals and illustrates that history cannot be equated with objective fact.

In southern Zululand in the province of KwaZulu-Natal within the iNkandla Magisterial District, a rural area, lies the indigenous iNkandla forest. This is the last remaining rare relict type of indigenous high wet rain forest in Southern Africa. This forest is of great importance not only for its unique biodiversity, its perennial source of water, but also as a resource base for the Cube people. This remote community lives mostly a traditional Zulu lifestyle in an area devoid of basic infrastructure, municipal services or economic activity. The Cube people are reliant on the forest resources for some of their daily basic material needs. This dissertation is an examination of the relationship between the Cube people and the iNkandla forest over time. The study investigates the ecology and biodiversity of the iNkandla forest. It also describes the Cube people's lifestyle, history and the continuous utilisation of the forest resources. The core focus of the study is that the iNkandla forest is not only an integral part of the Cube people's lives, but also has a rich cultural history. The research findings show that the daily activities of the Cube are impacting heavily on the forest resources. In order to minimise negative environmental impacts, sustainable utilisation of these resources needs to be established. This can enhance the relationship between the Cube people and the forest. The people's view of the forest and its change with time is investigated. The goods and services this forest provides to meet people's basic material needs portrays the relationship between the people and the forest. To sustain this relationship a model that illustrates a process that can be established and implemented effectively is recommended. This process will empower the Cube people to make constructive and effective choices and decisions. It will also inform the people of the sustainable ways of utilising the forest resources and enhance their relationship with the natural resources. The aim is to promote future developments that the Cube people are likely to see in future. This will inform their understanding of sustainable utilisation of the forest resources for future generations. Empowered people will recognise social principles for appropriate interactions with nature. The final part in this study revisits the theory of environmental history. It outlines briefly the manner in which the environmental history theory has been applied. It also explains the reason why the principles of environmental history have been adopted for this study. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002