News from the Front:

Living History

A Zulu Account of the Siege of Eshowe

by Ian Knight


In September last year, I was leading a party of Zulu War enthusiasts on a tour around the battlefields. Although it is true that time has had surprisingly little effect of the battlefields themselves, the story of the war is fading fast, and it is unusual these days to come across a spontaneous account of the fighting from the Zulus themselves. Fifty years of the industrialised apartheid economy - which took black workers out of their home environment for months at a time to work in heavy industry, away from their families - has eroded the thread of oral tradition, and the process has been hastened by the spread of western education and media. Why sit around the fire telling stories of the old days, when you can watch a Zulu version of The Price Is Right on the TV instead? Where traditional stories do survive, it tends to be in rural areas, away from casual contact with all but the most dedicated traveller.

On this occasion, we were in for a pleasant surprise, however. We were scheduled to visit the site of Colonel Pearson's earthwork at Eshowe, where, for the best part of three months, a British column was holed up in the cramped confines of a fortified mission, cut off from the outside world by the Zulus (for an account of the siege, see Fearful Hard Times by Ian Castle and Ian Knight, published by Greenhill Books). Eventually, the senior British commander in Zululand, General Lord Chelmsford, was forced to assemble a column to march to Pearson's relief, defeating the Zulus at Gingindlovu along the way.

Today, the site of Pearson's fort still survives on the outskirts of the modern town at Eshowe. The trenches and foundations can still be seen, overgrown now with grass and brambles, and nearby lies the poignant cemetery where more than thirty men who died in the siege lie buried. The site is located close to a township, and it had been suggested that a visit on a Sunday afternoon - our original plan - was perhaps not ideal, in that we might attract rather too much attention from exuberant locals who would, by that time, have been celebrating two days away from work. Instead, we re-scheduled our visit for the next morning, and, indeed, had no trouble from anyone.

A Friend Indeed

After about half an hour of exploring the site, I became aware that an elderly Zulu man had appeared, and was standing nearby. As we went to move away from the fort towards the graveyard, he greeted us enthusiastically. To our subsequent shame, we all assumed, in the light of comments made to us, that he was more than a little merry, and that he was greeting tlS with that world-wide war-cry of the underprivileged, "Spare me some change, guv'nor". Out of duty, rather than politeness, I stopped to exchange pleasantries with him whilst most of the others discreetly moved off towards the graveyard.

It soon became clear, however, that we had misjudged our friend, whose name, I'm embarrassed to say, I never thought to ask. His halting manner had nothing to do with alcohol, but was simply the result of a hesitant grasp of English. He was passing, he explained - his bicycle was parked nearby - and he had been wondering what we doing there. He had stopped to see if he could help. When I told him we were interested in the history of the site, he grew animated; he was, he explained, a member of a local mission, and he knew all about the area. He then proceeded to give us a quick history of the spot from a uniquely Zulu perspective, delivered with that mixture of verve and drama which characterised the old Zulu art of story telltng but which has now all but died out.

Firstly he told us about the early history of the mission, of how it had been established during King Cetshwayo's day in the face of strong anti-Christian prejudice. Indeed, in the months running up to the war, when popular resentment against British demands was running high, Christian converts at the mission had been the subject of considerable harassment hy local Zulus, and one man had actually been murdered. This man, Maqumusela Kanyile, is regarded as the first Zulu martyr for Christianity, and is commemorated by a monument situated a mile or so from the site of Pearson's fort.

"Maqumusela was very unpopular" our friend explained, "his brothers said to him, 'you have chosen someone as a greater king than Cetshwayo. You have shamed us and hrought the anger of the ancestral spirits upon us. We are warriors and you have betrayed us'. They stabbed him and he was killed. His body was left out over night, but, when the morning came the body had vanished! God had taken it." He knew, too, all ahout the siege of Eshowe.

The Zulu Version of the Siege

"The Red Soldiers came to this place to fight Cetshwayo. They built all these walls and holes in the ground. Cetshwayo filled the Red Soldiers up at Isandlwana, and they were very frightened at this place. They spent their time pointing their rifles over these walls. They went out sometimes to look for the Zulus, but while they looked in one direction the Zulus crept up behind, and stabbed them." Here our friend mimed first the soldiers, leaning over the barricades on the alert and then a soldier walking carefully through the bush whilst a Zulu crept up behind him, and stabbed him in the back writhing and mimicking the expression of a man impaled through the neck. He was quite right; the British regularly sent out vedettes to try to keep the Zulus away from the fort, and these were frequently attacked. One was ambushed and killed by Zulus who had crept up to within a few feet of him in the long grass without being spotted; another was hit by a volley fired at close range, and managed to escape despite five bullet wounds.

"There was a swimming pool, over there", explained our friend. Indeed, there was, for a shallow stream flowed least the old fort, and the troops had used two pools to bathe in - officers upstream, naturally, and other ranks down. "One day an old Zulu kehla (an elderly married man) approached the fools swimming in the pool. They saw him they said 'We see you old kehla. Clear off old, old man, we don't want you! Go away!'

The Zulu replied 'Oh yes I see you, soldiers, I'm going, I'm going'. He was wearing an old greatcoat and under it he had a gourd, which the soldiers didn't see. As he went away still smiling and waving to the soldiers he took out the gourd. When he got upstream he emptied it into the river. He had muthi (medicines, in this case meaning poison) in it! Oh those soldiers didn't laugh then! They were very sick those fellows!"

That was all he knew ahout the Zulu War he explained though he went on regretfully about the state of the mission in recent years, which remained unpopular with local chiefs and had received little support from the Church or the Government. Having told us everything he knew, our friend went on his way clearly pleased that someone had heen interested, and leaving us feeling decidedly guilty that we had doubted his intentions.

As to the truth of his story ahout poisoning the water? Well it certainly seemed convincing enough; the way he mimicked the derision of the troops towards the old Zulu certainly had the ring of truth about it!

Although there are no references in contemporary accounts that the Zulus poisoned the water around the fort, it was certainly part of the Zulu way of warfare to wage a supernatural assault on the enemy. Under such circumstances, muthi is used to harness the power of the ancient spirits to bring misfortune on the enemy, so that in Zulu eyes the physical effect of the medicines is not so important as the supernatural havoc it causes. Whether the incident should be taken literally is, therefore, largely irrelevant; perhaps it happened just that way, perhaps it didn't, but whether the gourd contained poison (unlikely) or muthi is not really the point. The fact is that the greatest killer among the British during the siege was dysentery, brought on by poor hygiene and bad water.

Our friend's story was in any case a genuine folk-memory which accounted for the havoc that this wrought among the enemy, and which presented this in the context of the hostilities and in a form which the Zulus could both explain and take some credit for. It was all the more interesting, because the siege of Eshowe has otherwise been almost totally forgotten among the Zulus, who remember instead the more dramatic battles, like Isandlwana and Ulundi (oNdini).

To be on the receiving end of it was, therefore, even more of a delight, and all the more so because it came quite out of the blue. How I regret not asking our friend his name and where he could be contacted; how many other stories of the old days did he know, and will they ever now be told?

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© Copyright 1996 by Partizan Press.

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