The Boer Invasion of The Zulu Kingdom 1837-1840, by John Laband

The Boer Invasion of The Zulu Kingdom 1837-1840 by John Laband. Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Johannesburg, South Africa 2023. ISBN 9781776192700 / ISBN 978-1-77-619270-0

Preface to The Boer Invasion of The Zulu Kingdom 1837-1840 by John Laband: Monuments at war.

Monuments at war

Not all battlefields retain their disturbing aura of long-past bloodlust and grim exaltation, of courage and fortitude, unmanning dread and panic, anguish, pain, and violent death. Nor are their sites all marked by mem-orials that serve as the continuing focus of emotional commemoration. Indeed, not all battles themselves remain the pivot of heated debate, their disputed significance freighted with present-day discord. One that does is the battle of Blood River - called Bloedrivier in Afrikaans and Ncome in isiZulu - that was fought on 16 December 1838 on flat, bleakly open, treeless grassland in what is now the Province of KwaZulu-Natal in the Republic of South Africa. Blood River vindicated the superiority of concentrated musket-fire from within an all-round defensive enclosure of wagons (a laager) over greatly superior numbers of warriors armed primarily with spears. It was the climacteric battle in a bitter war of betrayal, massacre, fierce resistance, and retribution that began in late 1837 when groups of Dutch-speaking pioneers (or Voortrekkers), who were part of a mass migration from the British-ruled Cape Colony - a movement which has gone down in history as the Great Trek - invaded the Zulu kingdom ruled by King Dingane. The intention of these Boers was to settle there and to establish their own independent republic on its soil. They fought the Zulu armies in alliance with English-speaking hunter-traders from the little enclave of Port Natal, and the war ended only in early 1840 once the Boers were able to take advantage of a civil war that broke out in the dislocated and weakened Zulu kingdom and drove Dingane from his throne. Successive generations of Afrikaners continued to celebrate their forebears victory over the amaZulu at the battle of Blood River as triumph of Christianity over barbarism, and embraced it as an unmistakable sign of the favour in which God held their nation. The battle thus affirmed the God-given right of Afrikaners to rule over the Africans they had defeated, and out of this stirring foundation myth arose the ideology of apartheid. Afrikaners long held that this crucial event required commemoration. With the Union of South Africa in 1910 that brought the British colonies and Boer republics of the subcontinent together in one country, 16 December was proclaimed a public holiday. It remained one until the eventual fall of apartheid 84 years later, and during these years it was annually celebrated with increasing fervour. The battlefield itself was elevated to a sacred site that became a place of pilgrimage that celebrated the Afrikaner nation and reaffirmed its political and cultural ascendancy. With increasing confidence in their dominance, Afrikaners required monuments to celebrate their history and its heroes. The most imposing of these is the enormous, monolithic Voortrekker Monument on its hill outside Pretoria, designed by Gerard Moerdyk and inaugurated on 16 December 1949. The floor of its Hall of Heroes has a central opening that reveals the cenotaph commemorating the Voortrekkers who died in violently opening up the South African hinterland to white domination, while the vast chamber s surrounding walls are adorned by a marble frieze with 27 panels that illustrate heroic scenes from the Great Trek. Two years earlier, in 1947, a considerably smaller monument had been inaugurated on the Blood River battlefield. Designed by Coert Steynberg, it took the form of a massive but sombre ox-wagon sculpted out of granite and embedded into flights of steps. [...]

The Boer Invasion of The Zulu Kingdom 1837-1840, by John Laband.

Title: The Boer Invasion of The Zulu Kingdom 1837-1840
Author: John Laband
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Johannesburg, South Africa 2023
ISBN 9781776192700 / ISBN 978-1-77-619270-0
Softcover, 15 x 23 cm, 368 pages, several b/w photographs, images and maps