Amazulu by Walton Golightly. The novel is an historical work which tells the story of military genius Shaka Zulu, and his rise to power to become the undisputed king of a transformed Zulu nation.
No matter how sophisticated the weaponry, the basics of warfare the world over are the same: Intelligence work; strategising; marshalling of troops; attack and occupation or retreat.
The finest war generals of our time have followed this routine, from Napoleon to Caesar. Closer home, long before guns came to the continent, it was well-mastered by a 17th century African leader who would rightfully claim his place in the military Hall of Fame.
The legend of Shaka Zulu, of whom a lot has been written, is reenacted in Walton Golightly’s Amazulu. The year is 1818. It is the cusp of the famous Mfecane wars that left charred earth and utter destruction in their wake.
The continent is gripped in the labour pains of conflict and regional realignments, the vast plains and jungles teeming with game.
The Arab traders have come and gone. And on the distant shores the European slave and merchant ships are preparing to set sail for this continent teeming with natural bounty.
A sly military organiser, Shaka employed sophisticated techniques to forge a formidable war-machine. He compartmentalised his army into age-group-based regiments and chose commoners and sometimes foreigners to head them.
This was to prevent clan and vassal chieftains from breaking away with their own ‘armies.’
Shaka was a master of psychology. “….from his own experience in the frontline, he’s learnt the loyalty comrades-in-arms feel towards one another will outweigh their loyalty to their masters.
And such is the competitive spirit that exists among his regiments, they have to be kept separated when not on campaign, because fights erupt when the warriors encounter each other.”
Faced with enemy armies several times bigger, the lesser Zulu had to be innovative. The epic battle of Gqokli hill best captured Shaka’s genius as a military tactician.
Ranged against a Ndwandwe army three times his own, Shaka encouraged the enemy to surround the Zulu army camped on the hill, not knowing they were walking into a carefully laid trap.
As they charged uphill, the swollen Ndwandwe ranks become entangled, making it easy for the disciplined Zulu side attacking downhill to have a field day.
Another incident where the superior Zulu intellect came into play was when they captured the lair of the Baboon God. The Zulu induna handed a Trojan horse in the form of gift bull carcasses up a ship’s winch up to the highly fortified impregnable hill, which the Baboon God duly accepts, not knowing he has just opened his door wide to the enemy.
Intellectual being
Shaka’s intellect can be compared to a civil engineer calculating how best to circumvent impeding terrain.
His shongololo strategy, borrowed from the millipede, which he applied with dexterity when storming the sheer rock faces of the Baboon God’s hill was in the same class with Italian railway engineers snaking and boring the tracks over Eritrea’s impossible terrain.
Fear proved a crucial weapon in Shaka’s campaign, right from the moment when he seized the throne from his assassinated half-brother Sigujana.
Death almost always awaited those who disobeyed orders or affronted the king. You could die simply because of meeting the king’s eye. And so when the crowds shouted “Bayede, Nkosi, bayede!” (Hail, the King!) it was not necessarily out of love. Historians tend to romanticise Shaka’s greatness.
He has been venerated specifically by Black Liberation writers of the Marcus Garvey school. But there is a barbaric streak that this history glosses over.
When he emerged from seclusion mourning his mother and encounters a herd boy trying to steal one of his cows so that he can milk it.
Shaka ordered the boy over and ran him through with his spear, further ordering that all his blood relations be found and killed. Reason? The boy should have been mourning and not tending to his cattle. When professional soldiers take the life of an unarmed civilian — and a child to boot — in such an unprovoked manner they cease being soldiers and become common bandits.
A lot has been said about the powerful women behind famous men, silently tugging the strings from the shadows.
Shaka had his mother Nandi, while Zwide of the neighbouring Ndwandwe tribe had his scalp-collecting mother Ntombazi.
Closer to our time we had Hillary Clinton during her husband Bill’s presidency, former Ivorian First Lady Simone Gbagbo and Algerian Laila Ben Ali.
Perhaps affirmative action should not surprise us. It is simply that the women have tired of staying in the shadows.
In Amazulu, the author succeeds in invoking powerful images using words. Although writing about real people and events, the writer takes advantage of literary licence to pen a well-paced work of fiction that makes the history lesson enjoyable.
As he notes, writing about Shaka in this way is an invitation to play, placing the characters and events where he wants them in his own timeframe. The result is a brilliant narrative that should adapt very well to the screen.
