Episode 88 – Somerset’s printing press paranoia and Shaka’s Inkatha power

This is episode 88 it’s the period of 1821/1822 heading into a decade of disaster, drought, despondence and disorder.
As we heard last episode, the 1820 Settlers were suffering the effect of a crops losses and pestilence.
These years would also be characterised by an expanding Zulu empire, and trekboers leaving the Cape once the English emancipation laws took effect, and a general mass movement of people across the sub-continent.
There are many theories about all of this. I’m going to stick to the facts as we know them rather than speculate on any main reason for what became known as the Difakane or Mfecane. There’s a propensity for historians to finger point about this decade, so I’ll explain each supposition as we go.
But enough about esoterics, let’s get on with this episode.
Something had arrived in the Cape as part of the 1820 Settlers fleet that had put the fear of God into Lord Charles Somerset, and he’d immediately banned the object in question.
This of course was a printing press.
Nothing strikes fear in a bureaucrat more than the public’s power to spread their own messages. Ask Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin if they are more afraid of Twitter than an F16 fighter jet and the answer will be She Dah and Dah respectively.
Yes in other words.
Just as an aside, isn’t it interesting that Dah is part of the word yes in both Russian and Mandarin? Makes it easier to agree with each other when they vote on the Security council I suppose.
By 1821 Shaka had subjugated the major group the Qwabe and the Mkhize, and had just sent the Ndwandwe packing – Zwide had fled to the area of modern day Mpumalanga, at the headwaters of the Komati River.
Back in Zululand, or more specifically, the area around the Umhlatuze to the black Mfolozi, and down to the Thugela, Shaka was now the major force in the region. It’s time to focus more specifically on what was going on socially behind this new power.
Shaka had followed the ritual of a new king, and what an amazing process it was. We need to dig deep into this process to fully understood in its complexity to appreciate the fact that it is carried out to this day.
And we hear about the crucial inkatha yezwe yakwa Zulu – a venerated object, a circular grass coil and the most important ritualised object in Zulu tradition.