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Shaka (sometimes spelled Chaka) (ca. 1781 - ca.
22nd September 1828) is widely credited with
transforming the Zulu tribe from a small clan into
the beginnings of a nation that held sway over
that portion of Southern Africa between the
Phongolo and Mzimkhulu rivers. His military
prowess and destructiveness have been wildly
exaggerated, as has the cohesion of the 'state' he
created. Nevertheless, his statesmanship and
vigour in assimilating some neighbours and ruling
by proxy through others marks him as one of the
greatest Zulu chieftains.´

==Sources==

Scholarship over the last twenty years has
radically revised our views of the sources on
Shaka's reign.  The earliest are two eyewitness
accounts written by white adventurer-traders who
met Shaka during the last four years of his reign.
Nathaniel Isaacs published his Travels and
Adventures in Eastern Africa in 1836, creating a
picture of Shaka as a degenerate and pathological
monster which survives in modified forms to this
day.  Isaacs was abetted in this by Henry Francis
Fynn, whose so-called Diary (actually a rewritten
collage of various papers)was edited up by James
Stuart only in 1950.  Both men were disreputable
charlatans who ran guns, fought as mercenaries,
murdered in cold blood, and tried to trade in
slaves.  This is clear from contemporary archival
documents.  Their now discredited accounts may be
balanced by the rich resource of oral histories
collected around 1900 by (ironically) the same
James Stuart, now published in 6 volumes as The
James Stuart Archive.  This resource gives us a
very different, Zulu-centred picture.  Most
popular accounts are based on E A Ritter's novel
Shaka Zulu (1955), a potboiling romance which was
re-edited by a Longmans ghostwriter into something
more closely resembling a history, and thereafter
swallowed whole by historians.  Both its monstrous
aspects and its heroic ones are largely
inventions, and it must be discarded as a valid
source.  The work of John Wright (history
professor at University of KwaZulu-Natal,
Pietermaritzburg), Julian Cobbing and Dan Wylie
(Rhodes University, Grahamstown) have now
definitively discredited or modified these
stories.

==Early years==
Shaka was probably the first son of the chieftain
Senzangakhona and Nandi (mother of Shaka)|Nandi, a
daughter of a past chief of the Langeni tribe,
born near present-day Melmoth, KwaZulu-Natal
Province. The Zulus had a practice of uku-hlobonga
— a heavy-petting, safe-sex practice, that
got out of hand in this case. Though conceived out
of wedlock around 1781 (not 1787 as most accounts
speculate, though there is little secure
evidence), he was not, as the legend has it,
disowned by his father or chased into exile. His
parents married normally, and he was certainly not
named after an intestinal beetle, though the
insult became common later; he was probably named
Mandhlesilo at this point. He almost certainly
spent his childhood in his father's settlements,
is recorded as having been initiated there and
inducted into an ibutho or 'age-group regiment'. 
The tale of bullying by his Langeni cousin
Makhadama is almost certainly a metaphor for later
troubled politics between them.  In fact, he did
not exact revenge on the Langeni later, but
largely peacefully allied with them. Most sources
attest that only as a young man, when succession
disputes surfaced, did Shaka conflict with his
father and defect to Dingiswayo and the Mthethwa,
to whom the Zulu were then paying tribute

It was probably Dingiswayo who named Shaka thus,
with reference to the striking of an axe.
Dingiswayo called up the emDlatsheni iNtanga
(age-group), of which he was part, and
incorporated it in the iziCwe regiment. He served
as a Mthethwa warrior for perhaps as long as ten
years, and distinguished himself with his courage,
though he did not, as legend has it, rise to great
position. Dingiswayo, having himself been exiled
after a failed attempt to oust his father, had,
along with a number of other groups in the region
(including Mabhudu, Dlamini, Mkhize, Qwabe, and
Ndwandwe, many probably responding to slaving
pressures from southern Mozambique) helped develop
new ideas of military and social organisation, in
particular the ibutho, inaccurately translated as
'regiment'; it was rather an age-based labour gang
which included some better-refined military
activities, but by no means exclusively. Most
battles before this time were to settle disputes,
and while the appearance of the 'impi' (fighting
unit) dramatically changed warfare at times, it
largely remained a matter of seasonal raiding,
political pressures rather than outright
slaughter, the extent of which has been hugely
exaggerated. The idea that more powerful armies
caused the Mfecane migrations - conquest,
disrupted societies fleeing, and in turn using the
same military techniques to destroy other
societies, that caused other wars and more
displacement - must now be thoroughly questioned
and modified; violence climbed over a period of
half a century before Shaka, through multiple
causes, and really exploded only after the white
invasions of the late 1830s and after.  The
'Mfecane' is now being discarded as a concept, and
relatively few of the migrations can be directly
or solely attributed to the Zulu. 

==Shaka's Social Revolution==

On the death of Senzangakona, Dingiswayo aided
Shaka to defeat his brother and assume leadership
in around 1812.  Shaka began further to refine the
ibutho system followed by Dingiswayo and others,
and with Mthethwa support over the next several
years forged alliances with his smaller
neighbours, mostly to counter the growing threat
from Ndwandwe raiding from the north.  The initial
Zulu manoeuvres were strictly defensive, and
mostly Shaka preferred to intervene or pressure
diplomatically, aided by just a few judicial
assassinations. His changes to local society built
on existing structures, and were as much social
and propagandistic as they were military; there
were very few open fights, as the Zulu sources
make clear. Shaka is often said to have been
dissatisfied with the long throwing assegai, and
credited with introducing a new weapon - the
Iklwa, a short stabbing spear, with a long,
swordlike spearhead. It was named, allegedly, for
the sound made as it went in, then out, of the
body. Shaka is also supposed to have introduced a
larger, heavier shield made of cowhide and to have
taught each warrior how to use the shield's left
side to hook the enemy's shield to the right,
exposing his ribs for a fatal spear stab.  In
fact, such tactics had been long in use, and the
Zulu continued to use throwing spears, too.

Much has been made of the story that to toughen
his men, Shaka required them to discard their
leather sandals, forcing them to train and fight
in bare feet. This was not the case.  However, it
is probably true that Shaka's troops practiced by
covering more than fifty miles in a fast trot over
hot, rocky terrain in a single day so that they
could surprise the enemy. Young boys from the age
of six up joined Shaka's force as apprentice
warriors (udibi) and served as carriers of rations
and extra weapons until they joined the main
ranks.  This was used more for very light forces
designed to extract tribute in cattle, women or
young men from neighbouring groups; they preferred
this surprise tactic to open battle, in which they
were, contrary to popular impressions, as often
unsuccessful as they were victorious.  There is
virtually no evidence that Shaka actually invented
new tactics, or participated in battles after he
became 'inkosi' or chieftain.  There is only one
instance in the evidence that the so-called 'horns
and chest', or 'bull's head' formation was used
(in 1826 against the Ndwandwe), in which event the
two 'horns' accidentally ended up stabbing each
other!

In the initial years, Shaka had neither the clout
nor the kudos to compel any but the smallest of
groups to join him, and he operated under
Dingiswayo's aegis until the latter's death at the
hands of Zwide's Ndwandwe.  At this point Shaka
was so under-resourced that he was forced to flee
southwards across the Thukela river, establishing
his capital Bulawayo in Qwabe territory, with
Qwabe help.  He never did personally move back
into the traditional Zulu heartland. In Qwabe,
Shaka was able to intervene in an existing
succession dispute, and help his own choice,
Nqetho, into power; Nqetho then ruled as a proxy
chieftain for Shaka.  This was the pattern, so
that the bulk of the so-called Zulu kingdom at
this time was ruled by almost entirely independent
but friendly chieftains, including Zihlandlo of
the Mkhize, Jobe of the Sithole, and Mathubane of
the Thuli.  These peoples were never defeated in
battle by the Zulu; they did not have to be. 
Shaka won them over by subtler tactics of
patronage and reward.  The ruling Qwabe, for
example, began re-inventing their genealogies to
give the impression that Qwabe and Zulu were
closely related in the past - a handy fiction.  In
this way a greater sense of cohesion was created,
though it never became complete, as subsequent
civil wars attest.

Hence the idea that Shaka 'changed the nature of
warfare in Africa' (or even in his corner of
southern Africa) from 'a ritualised exchange of
taunts with minimal loss of life into a true
method of subjugation by wholesale slaughter', is
a wild exaggeration. There is virtually no
evidence in the Zulu sources that any such
slaughter occurred - with the solitary exception
of a renegade unit, the iziYendane, who went on a
horrific but geographically limited rampage south
of the Thukela, against Shaka's orders; when he
learned the truth, he killed off the leaders and
disbanded the unit.  Some of them consequently
conspired with his half-brother Dingane to
assassinate Shaka.

==The major conflicts==
In 1816, after the death of his father, Shaka had
seized power over the then-insignificant Zulu
clan. Though he was boosted in by the Mthethwa,
and his brother Sigujana was killed, the coup was
relatively bloodless and accepted by the Zulu. 
Shaka still recognised Dingiswayo and his larger
Mthethwa clan as overlord after he returned to the
Zulu, but some years later Dingiswayo was ambushed
by Zwide's amaNdwandwe and killed.  There is
absolutely no evidence to suggest that Shaka
betrayed Dingiswayo.  Indeed, the core Zulu had to
retreat before several Ndwandwe incursions; the
Ndwandwe were clearly the most aggressive grouping
in the sub-region.

Shaka was able to form an alliance with the
leaderless Mthethwa clan, and was able to
establish himself amongst the Qwabe, after
Phakathwayo was overthrown without much of a
fight, if any.  With Qwabe, Hlubi and Mkhize
support, Shaka was finally able to summons a force
capable of resisting the Ndwandwe (of the Nxumalo
clan).  It is asserted everywhere that his first
major battle against Zwide of the Ndwandwe was the
Battle of Gqokli Hill, on the Mfolozi river.  In
fact this battle is a pure invention of E A
Ritter's: there is not a single scrap of evidence
in preceding literature and records that it ever
happened.  One minor scrap is attested to, known
as the 'kisi' fight, in which a night fight
occurred; Shaka is said to have told his troops to
use the password 'kisi' to avoid stabbing each
other; the outcome is unclear in the sources. 
This is the sole example of a tactic being
suggested by Shaka.

The decisive fight eventually took place on the
Mhlatuze river, at the confluence with the Mvuzane
stream.  This is very well attested in Zulu
accounts, with only minor variations in detail. 
Shaka feinted a retreat,then caught the
lightly-equipped Ndwandwe on the river bank and
inflicted a resounding defeat.  The Zulu force
pursued the invaders to Zwide's capital, but
failed to capture the chief.  In fact, the
Ndwandwe remained formidable; Zwide and his
general Soshangane (of the Shangaan) moved off
north, to inflict further damage on less resistant
foes and avail himself of slaving opportunities,
and Shaka later had to contend again with Zwide's
son, Sikhunyane, in 1826.

== Mfecane - The Scattering==
:See main article: Mfecane
The increased military efficiency led to more and
more clans being incorporated into Shaka's Zulu
empire, while other tribes moved away to be out of
range of Shaka's impis. The ripple effect caused
by these mass migrations would become known
(though only in the twentieth century) as the
Mfecane.  Some groups which moved off were (like
the Hlubi and Ngwane to the north of the Zulus)
impelled by the Ndwandwe, not the Zulu.  Some
moved south (like the Chunu and the Thembe), but
never suffered much in the way of attack; it was
precautionary, and they left many people behind in
their traditional homelands.  It is often asserted
that Mzilikaziof the Khumalo was a 'general' of
Shaka's, who fled; but there is no evidence for
this, or that there was a major fight.  Mzilikazi
moved away with a small group, and his path into
Zimbabwe over twenty years was impelled by forces
which had nothing to do with Shaka at all.  The
Jere and Msana groups under Shoshangane and
Zwangendaba, who were allied to Zwide and moved
north after the Mhlatuze fight, were never
attacked by Shaka, and probably moved more to take
advantage of slaving opportunities in Mozambique
than out of fear of the Zulu. Hence the term
'Mfecane' is falling into disfavour with scholars.

This is not to say that the Zulu did not
themselves show aggression or competence.  Shaka
was clearly a tough, able leader, the most able of
his time, and during the last four years of his
reign indulged in several long-distance raids. 
Two were against the Mpondo to the south, an
increasing vector of his attention (Shaka moved
his capital southwards even further in 1827, to
Dukuza); the first, in 1824, was a failure; the
second in 1828, only partly successful.  A raid
against Macingwane of the Chunu, possibly in 1825,
is virtually the only one which conforms to the
stereotype of the large Zulu army inflicting a
serious defeat on another large force.  A totally
unauthorised raid, led by Dingane against Matiwane
of the Ngwane in 1826, was a disaster; and so was
an ill-explained foray towards Delagoa Bay in
1828, the so-called 'Balule' campaign.  Only in
1826, against Sikhunyane, was there an unqualified
victory which allowed Zulu sovereignty to be
extended (though again under a proxy ruler,
Maphitha).  In no case does there appear to have
been widespread slaughter, and the record is at
best mixed.  The 'nation' was cobbled together
under difficult circumstances and with patchy
success - and there was always internal dissention
to deal with.

==Death and Succession==
When the Darmok|walls fell, Dingane and Mhlangana,
Shaka's half-brothers, appear to have made at
least two attempts to assassinate Shaka before
they succeeded, with support from Mpondo elements,
some disaffected iziYendane people, and the white
traders at Port Natal (now Durban). The details
must remain controversial, including the exact
date (late September 1828). What is clear is that
Dingane was obliged to embark on an extensive
purge of pro-Shaka elements and chieftains,
running over several years, in order to secure his
position. A virtual civil war broke out. Dingane
ruled for some twelve years, during which time he
was obliged to fight, disastrously, against the
Voortrekkers, and against another half-brother
Mpande, who with Boer and British support, took
over the Zulu leadership in 1840, and ruled for
some 30 years. Later in the 19th century the Zulus
would be one of the few African peoples who
managed to defeat the British Army at the Battle
of Isandlwana.

==See also==
* List of Zulu kings
* King Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa
* King Moshoeshoe I of Lesotho
* King Zwide of the Ndwandwe
* King Mzilikazi of the Ndebele
* Father Senzangakona, mother Nandi (mother of
Shaka)|Nandi
* Brother, assassinator, successor Dingane
* Brother, assassinator, Umthlangana
* Brother, later successor Mpande
*Shaka Zulu (TV Series)|Shaka Zulu, an SABC TV
series about Shaka
* List of South Africans - Voted 14th in the TV
Show 100 Greatest South Africans

* Hand Gestures

==External links==
* http://www.rapidttp.com/milhist/vol044sb.html
The South African Military History Society - The
Zulu Military Organization and the Challenge of
1879