From the Dawn of History to the Time of Troubles 13 The Tsonga, occupying the coastal area from the Save river in Mozam- bique as far south as St Lucia Bay, spoke a language very different from Zulu. They differed culturally from the Zulu in some respects - by being fish- eaters, for example, whereas the Nguni in general had fish, taboos. Their control of the hinterland of Delagoa Bay gave them a special role in the promotion of trade during the eighteenth century, with iron and copper, ivory and slaves, as the main commodities. Tsonga trading activities ranged inland, along routes which reached the iron-smelting regions of the western trans- Vaal, involving the Pedi as middlemen. North and south along the coast, they sought ivory and introduced European ware - cloth, beads, brassware and, later on, guns. Some of the ivory exported through Delagoa Bay came from Natal, and Natal received substantial imports. Trade goods landed at Delagoa Bay were seen on the Umzimvubu, and Tsonga traders from Delagoa Bay were encountered at Ngqika's kraal in the eastern Cape. At first it was the Tsonga Tembe who dominated the trade from their base on the shores of Delagoa Bay, but in the course of the eighteenth century control passed from them to an offshoot chiefdom, the Mabudu, who established themselves on the Makatini Flats south of the Bay at the latest by 1794. 1.4 THE UPHEAVALS OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY By this time the European settlement had not only taken root in the western Cape (see pp. 19ff), but the vanguard of its frontiersmen had already made contact with the Bantu-speaking communities east of the Gamtoos river and north along the valley of the Gariep (Orange). In the early years of the nineteenth century, not long after this initial contact, a major dislocation took place among the Bantu-speaking chiefdoms, the causes of which, like the problem of Bantu origins, have become a matter of contention. The troubles have been referred to as the Mfecane, a Xhosa term perhaps derived from ukufaca ('to be weak, emaciated from hunger'). The Sotho equivalent, Lifaqane (pronounced Difaqane) conveys the notion of forced removal. It seems likely that these terms each throw significant light on the crisis. The broad picture of a massive human tragedy stands out; but as soon as one begins to ask why the events were significant, differences of perspective, which have tainted the historical awareness of later generations, begin to emerge. One such, by ascribing the responsibility for the troubles to the evil genius of Shaka Zulu, or Mzilikazi of the Ndebele, or the Tlokwa queen ~-. \ \ \ \ L. T.~nytk .• \ L. .'1"._ \ N I " ~ ",tr (; o ~ ,~ <:) ,~ MaLn concentrations of etee•. power after o the tirll!! ot troubte shO',oI(fl thu.: SOTHO ("") '" 200 100 6UD aDD 1000 ~z. I L-.......-.I L--...J KllOMHMfS ~, war The Problem of the Mfecane Map 2A: Based on J. D. Omer-Cooper's Zulu Aftermath, this shows a reconstruc- tion of the unrest of the 1820s as a violent outward movement of peoples from the northern Nguni-speaking heartland. For this a political explosion resulting from endemic drought, and/or external trade links, have been proposed, with a focus on Zulu power. 15 N 101 200 lOO [ I I KIlOM£lR!S P 2B: This seeks to show CA)the northward advance of trekboers in search of grazing, game and labour following the opening of the Cape northern frontier from the 1770s; CB)the European/Xhosa conflict from 1778 which opened the eastern Cape frontier to settler expansion and led to the battle of Mbholompo in 1828; Cc) Griqua and Kora raids in trans- Orangia, linked to the battle of Dithakong, 1823; CD)Delagoa Bay as a focus of trading activity in ivory and/or slaves, surrounded by an inner ring of competitive trading chiefdoms, with the Zulu CE) cast in a reactive as much as a conquering role along with the Sotho, Swazi, Ndebele and Pedi; CF)the famine area proposed by Newitt. 16 The Setting of the Human Problem MmaNthatisi, has diverted attention away from the structural aspect of the troubles and helped to foster a damaging caricature of some black commu- nities, with possible long-term implications (Cobbing, Hamilton). Another assumption, promoted by Theal and contradicted in later studies but revived in the apartheid mythology from the 1950s, was that the highveld had been cleared, before the European arrival, by the action of blacks alone, thus leaving the land empty for Voortrekkers to occupy (see maps in Wilson in OHSA 1. 138 and Davenport and Hunt pp. 16-18). The crucial question on which clarity is needed, and which has not yet been adequately resolved, is the extent to which the widespread violence, which undoubtedly took place, was a product of developments internal to African society, and the extent to which it was precipitated by pressures on that society from outside, and if so, of what kind and by whom. Gluckman proposed internal causation of the unrest by arguing that 'by the end of the eighteenth century Zululand was becoming overcrowded in terms of current methods of land use'. Guy later took this to mean that population had outstripped its resources. Although the northern Nguni . segmentary lineage system could expand production in prosperous times when household heads could afford more wives, and each wife's homestead became a unit of crop production and human reproduction, there was inevitably hunger in times of drought. Hence, Guy argued, the control imposed on age of matrimony, though according to Eldredge the marriage of females was not controlled. An argument based on evidence from den- droclimatology first advanced but later rejected by Hall, that drought was a destabilising factor, cannot be shrugged off in the light of Newitt's fresh evidence that severe droughts affected the whole region between 'Natal' and 'Malawi' in 1794-1802 and 1817-31. Wilson and Smith advanced the argument that the rise of powerful chiefdoms in south-east Africa, which preceded the Mfecane, was itself a consequence of new forms of external trade. Hedges developed this approach with his argument that the ivory trade from Delagoa Bay had reached a peak in the late eighteenth century, with resultant competition for access to the bay, which led to stronger state formation and military systems. Positive proof of a slave trade out of Delagoa Bay before 1820, though hinted at by Macmillan (Saunders), has not yet resulted from scholarly research. Liesegang noted an annual increase in slave exports rising from 47,000 in 1800-9 to 129,000 in 1820-29, from northern Mozambique but not from the south. Harries noted the ease with which slaves could be exported from Inhambane and Lourenco Marques once the slave traders had begun to From the Dawn of History to the Time of Troubles 17 nverge on these ports 'when the first ripples of the Mfecane were being felt ~ outhern Mozambique' - but as its effect rather than its cause. He also - ted the very low price a slave commanded at first purchase on shore -!!ring the mid-1820s, when compared to the prices paid by the shipper on _nrchase and received on delivery at Rio de Janeiro. Low prices suggest an .er-supply at source, perhaps a result of famine. But Eldredge and others ye failed to find significant evidence of slaving from Delagoa Bay in the =ear just prior to 1823, which justifies rejection of the slavery hypothesis as known fact. It is not impossible, however, that Cobbing's unpublished _ ggestions could still be strengthened to render his attribution of Mfecane igins partly to slave raiding credible. He argued for a gradual growth of - ving from Delagoa Bay between 1805 and 1820, rather than its sudden ergence after 1820 as proposed by Eldredge, and he suggested the syn- - onic emergence of a group of probable slaving chiefdoms in the Delagoa zsa region, abutting on a 'swath' of territory around the bay from which _-gitives fled. This abutted in turn on four strongly-defended cluster chief- corns among the Pedi, Swazi, Zulu and Sotho, which emerged from the I "_Os (emphasis on which had been Omer-Cooper's main initial thrust). Cobbing also proposed a likely correlation of slave porterage with the known exi tence of trade in ivory. Enough is known about the convulsions in south-east Africa to enable - to locate disturbances starting in about 1817, two years after Britain recognised the right of the Portuguese to take captives between Cape Del- ~ do and Delagoa Bay (Jackson-Haight). During the late eighteenth century, - e Tsonga Tembe chiefdom, whose power was increasingly eroded by the _ Iabudu living east of the Pongola river, controlled access to the southern - ores of the Bay, while the Matolla and Mpafumo, who were in conflict , ith each other during the 1790s, controlled the northern and western. At about the same time the Mabudu concluded an alliance with Dingiswayo's _ Ithethwa, lying to their south, thus fulfilling Dingiswayo's wish to gain cess to trading in the Bay. The alliance effectively excluded the Ndwandwe, vho lived inland, from access to the coast, and may have inspired the attack of their ruler, Zwide, on both chiefdoms in 1817. He won the fight, killed Dingiswayo, and in so doing, in Harries's words, 'initiated the Mfecane'. On Dingiswayo's death Shaka, illegitimate son of the Zulu chief Senzan- gakhona, who had been a client of Dingiswayo, seized power over the _Ithethwa, whose armies he commanded. He continued the war against the dwandwe, and by exploiting the art of close in-fighting by his well- ill ciplined soldiers, he beat Zwide's armies in 1819 at Gqokoli Hill and on the Mhlatuze river.