An outcast prince rebuilt the Zulu army and a regional power
Shaka was the eldest son of a Zulu king, yet he was dismissed as illegitimate and sent away with his mother. He grew up a soldier in a more powerful neighbouring clan. By 1816 he was king himself, and his military reforms turned a small pastoral people into a formidable kingdom.
Born around 1787 in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, Shaka came from a modest regional group that lived on cattle, sorghum and milk. He and his mother eventually moved to the Mthethwa, the strongest clan in the area, where he served under the chief Dingiswayo. When Dingiswayo learned Shaka was of royal blood, he gave him command of a regiment, an apprenticeship that shaped his thinking on tactics.
Shaka refined the existing regimental system and built alliances with smaller neighbours against raids by the Ndwandwe from the north. He became known for the iklwa, a short stabbing spear, though he probably did not invent it, and for an encircling formation likened to a bull's horns. At Gqokli Hill his men held the summit against a frontal attack, then reserves swept around to strike from behind. Later he won a two-day running battle on the Mhlatuze River and marched a fresh force some 110 kilometres to destroy the Ndwandwe royal homestead.
Force was only part of it. Shaka won over several chiefs with patronage and rewards rather than battle, and some groups even reshaped their family histories to appear closely related to the Zulu, building cohesion that never became complete. His reign overlapped with the Mfecane, a period of turmoil that emptied much of southern Africa between 1815 and 1840, though his share of responsibility is disputed. In the mid-1820s the trader Henry Francis Fynn treated him after an attempt on his life, and Shaka let European settlers operate in his kingdom, while holding that Zulu ways were better.
After his mother Nandi died in 1827, his behaviour became erratic and his enemies multiplied. In 1828, with most fighting men away on campaign, his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangana killed him. Dingane took the throne and purged Shaka's supporters.
Source: Shaka
