Shaka 1: From Outcast to iNkosi

Description Shaka 1: From Outcast to iNkosi In the first of five books, we find out how the young Shaka accompanied his mother, Nandi, in search of a place they could call home. As people with little status, Shaka was ridiculed and teased by other boys. Nandi was a volatile woman and made herself so unpopular that she was banished from the home of Shaka’s father, Senzangakhona, and found refuge with the Mthethwa clan under Dingiswayo. A problem child Almost all of what we know about Shaka comes from the stories of a man called Sigananda Cube. Chief Cube was born in 1810, 23 years after Shaka. While only a boy, he served as on of the King’s ‘udibi’ (mat-carrier and body servant). This made him a witness to the deeds and stories of Shaka’s amazing career. From his own father he heard about Shaka’s childhood. In his turn, Sigananda recited stories of Shaka to Njengabantu Ema-Bomvini, who was about 20 years his junior. Njengebantu had already heard many of the same tales from his own father, Mahola, who was one of Shaka’s fellow-soldiers in Dingiswayo’s isiChwe regiment. Njengabantu went on to serve as a court orderly under Captain CLA Ritter, the Native Commissioner who, at the end of the first Boer War in 1881, became the first Magistrate of Natal. Ritter’s son, Ernest, grew up listening to Njengabantu’s stories, and in his turn wrote a book called Shaka Zulu, which can still be found in many libraries. This is how a chain of evidence makes up the history we know! Sigananda Chube died in 1906, shortly after the Bhambatha Rebellion, in which he was one of the leaders. At that time, Phika Zulu, Shaka’s grand-nephew, was custodian of the Royal Family’s unwritten stories. He accepted Sigananda as the leading teller of his ancestor’s extraordinary story. So it is that we take a deep breath to tell the story of one of Africa’s most famous sons as it was once told by Sigananda himself. At the time of Shaka’s birth in 1787, the amaZulu clan was small and unimportant. About 50 clans spoke isiZulu. From 1781 these people, about 4 000 of them, were ruled by Senzangakhona, son of Jama. He was a direct descendant of Zulu, the founder of the clan. Senzangakhona was not a married man, even though he had been the inkosi of his clan for six years. This had a complicated and interesting reason. The life of the clan was centred around the ceremonies of growth and maturity, culminating in circumcision, after which a man was allowed to spend at least some of his time raising a family rather than serving the inkosi. Circumcision was a custom practised among most abaNguni-speaking people, such as amaXhosa, amaSwazi, and amaNdebele. But among the amaZulu, it began dying out sometime during the reign of Jama, Senzangakhona’s father. Hence, Senzangakhona was not circumcised. Many amakhosi were reluctant to be circumcised before they were 30 or 40 years old, believing they would be deemed to be younger than they really were. While an inkosi was allowed to establish a harem, he could not have sexual intercourse with any of his women for the purpose of procreation, until a circumcision rite had taken place.