Episode 80 – Sambela the Mkhize psychopath and the Zulu cadet system evolves
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Show notes
Last episode we heard how the Xhosa wardoctor had failed in his attempt at chasing the colonials out of his territory – the Albany region, and now return to significant events in the north east – Zululand.
By 1819 Shaka and Dingiswayo were holding sway in an area from the Thukela to the Black Mfolozi in Zululand, but Zwide of the Ndwandwe still controlled the land between the Mfolozi and the Phongola Rivers.
The landscape had changed radically over the past three hundred years as farmers cut and burned their way across the rolling hills and mountains. Vast tracts of forest and thornveld had been converted to grassland, altering the land to what it looks like today, although there was more bush around, particularly along the river valleys.
But the point is human activity on the landscape had already mutated the veld, and yet there were still elephants around and other wild animals.
The region from Phongola to the Thukela was criss-crossed and patched with human influences, scarred and thinned out from the axe-blade, the hoof, and the farm yard. This was a century before colonials arrived to farm the area. But the people of this land lived with and through nature in a manner that changed with the coming of commercial farming and the heavy use of firearms.
Everything depended on the leaders’ capacity to feed and feed off cattle, wildlife and crops. The vegetation and terrain were paramount to everyone’s lives, the ideology and military system and marriage rituals were all shackled to the most important thing – the ability to generate enough food.
We also hear about Sambela of the Mkhize who is described as an albino, and was quite small but made up for what were seen as deficiencies by his compatriots by being particularly wild and was feared as a fighter.
There seems to have been something unhinged about Sambela, when he had his first teenage emission which indicates a boy has turned into a man, we would call this a wet dream I guess, he headed off with a gang of Mkhize youths and killed and ate 20 goats. Stories abound of this man breaking things, throwing around the pottery, and was called Uhlanya – ungovernable.
