#Cairns dot the ground below isandlwana hill and rorke’s
drift are a seven-hour drive from Kruger National Park
WITH its
traditional crofters’ homesteads and misty settlements with names such as
Dundee and Glencoe, parts of Natal would have seemed almost cosily familiar to
the 7,000 Bristish redcoast who mustered at Rorke’s Drift in January 1879.
A lonelier and far more alien landscape opened up as soon as
they crossed the Buffalo River to commence their invasion of Zululand – and that
bleak otherworldliness peaked eight miles away at Isandlwana. Viewed through the
gaudy mauve jacaranda trees that girdle the village, the site of the British
Army’s most murderous colonial humiliation looks grimly fit for purpose. A vast
stack of rock leaps threateningly from the windswept plain, like a gigantic
shark’s fin or the conning tower of some terrible granite submarine. Strewn across
its long shadow lie white-painted cairns that mark the mass graves of the 1,300
British soldiers who died here, on 22 January 1879.
‘Zulus don’t celebrate this battle,’ says Inkosi Mazibuko, a
tribal chief who sits as a magistrate in Isandlwana’s traditional court. ‘We
lost a thousand men here ourselves. But of course thre is great pride in how
our warriors defended their homeland.’
The hills and valleys around Inkosi’s village have witnessed
many ferocious encounters between the Zulu people and Europeans, but almost all
saw the opposite outcome – from the 1838 massacre at the hand of Boer
voortrekkers at Blood River to the extraordinary defence of Rorke’s Drift by a
handful of British soldiers immediately following the defeat at Isandlwana.
‘Victory here was a tribute to King Shaka, our Napoleon,’
says Inkosi, sitting behind his desk in a courtroom office decorated with the
leopard skin he dons on ceremonial occasions. Shaka died 50 years before the
battle, but it was he who developed and honed the ‘buffalo horn’ pincer assault,
a tactic that allowed 20,000 men armed only with spears to averrun two
battalions equipped with artillery and rifles. It was a strategy that demanded
almost unimaginable fearlessness.
‘The desperate bravery of the Zulu has been the subject of
much astonishment,’ wrote the British commanding officer Lord Chelmsford the day
after the battle, glossing over his own manifold tactical failures.
Inkosi walks out, acknowledging a group of farmers awaiting
a verdict on a dispute over grazing rights. ‘Zulu culture and identity is not
as strong as it was,’ he says. ‘In the modern world it’s difficult.’ Across the
muddy road stand a trio of careworn rondavels-the thatched, oval, adobe huts
that are still the default home of choice outside South Africa’s cities. One sports
a satellite dish: a pick-up truck is parked by another. ‘My court is one way to
connect us with our traditions. ‘He turns to nod at the silhouetted outcrop
asserting itself through the damp mist.’ And that is another.
Further information : battlefieldsroute.co.za; zulu.org.za
A three-mile drive on a rough road from the battlefield
site, the lodge is a traditional colonial homestead set in expansive grounds
with views of the veld and surrounding mountains. Each unit has an outdoor
braai (barbecue area), though most guests have meals prepared and delivered by
the lodge’s catering staff (rorkedriftlodge.com).
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