Upon Shaka's assassination, one of the murderers, his half-brother Dingane, would take the throne. Over the course of the next decade Shaka and his warriors conquered and absorbed most of the tribes in the region, building the largest native empire ever seen in southern Africa. In 1816 AD, Shaka would seize the chieftainship of the relatively insignificant Zulu tribe two years later he would assume leadership of his mentor's tribe, the Mtetwa. This was the spirit with which Shaka would forge a Zulu empire, and Cetshwayo would challenge the mighty British. At the beginning of each winter, the all-conquering Zulu warriors would gather in their ancestral land to pledge themselves to new glories with the cry "Ngathi impi" (loosely: "Because of us, war").
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |