DINGANE

Dingane (circa 1775-1840), also known as Dingaan, was the second Zulu king, and ruled from 1828-40. He was one of the assassins of Shaka, whom he later succeeded. After he had a party of unarmed Afrikaners murdered in 1837, his forces were defeated by Afrikaner forces led by Andries Pretorius in 1838, and his power declined.

PHOTO CAPTION: Dingane. SOURCE: EA Library

Dingane was the half-brother of Shaka, both being sons of the Zulu chief Senzangakona. Somehow he survived the purge which Shaka launched upon his people on his succession to the chieftaincy of the small Zulu principality in 1816. When, by 1820, Shaka had made himself the master of a vastly enlarged Zulu empire, Dingane was one of the leading men in the Zulu realm. By 1828 key figures in the state had come to regard Shaka as an uncontrollable despot, and conspired to assassinate him. In the middle of that year, while Shaka’s army was away, Dingane with another half-brother, Mhalangana killed Shaka with their spears. Dingane, Mhlangana, and a third conspirator then ruled as a triumvirate until Dingane eliminated the other two and became king.

Shaka had moved his capital first to Ngoye (the site of the present University of Zululand), then to Dukuza, close to the small settlement of white people who held a fascination for him. Because of Dingane’s secretive and suspicious nature (noted in the praise poems that honour him), he wanted to maintain a distance between himself and the white settlement. This characteristic trait was evident in his foreign policies as well as in domestic affairs.

He was so paranoid that he had nearly all his brothers murdered. One of them, however, Mpande, who was later to succeed him, survived because Dingane regarded him as an indolent simpleton. Shaka’s capital had been called Bulawayo (the Place of Killing). Dingane named his new capital Mgungundlovu (the Elephant’s Lair). Whereas the chief interest of Shaka’s reign had been the growth of the Zulu nation by conquest, the main factor in Dingane’s reign was the shifting balance of power between the Zulu state and the growing white settlement which was to become a formidable British enclave. During Dingane’s reign, the demographic map of the area south of the Thukela River began to change drastically. The core of the Zulu empire was north of the Thukela.

Though the Zulu military institutions were still in place, there was now a measure of relaxation from the permanent war footing in which the nation had been placed. Refugees from areas devastated by the Zulu began to return to their homes south of the Thukela more often than not to areas now occupied by white farms owned either by British settlers from Port Natal, the original English settlement, or else by Voortrekkers (Afrikaner pioneers). The number of white people was growing in the area soon to be known as Natal. Dingane tolerated white settlement in the lands that Shaka had granted to the newcomers, but resented the sanctuary the whites gave to refugees fleeing the Zulu.

Alan Gardiner, a British naval officer who had become a missionary, and who arrived at Dingane’s court in 1835, drew up a treaty by which Dingane undertook to guarantee the safety of the residents of Natal, both black and white, south of the Thukela, if the whites undertook to return all fugitives from Zululand. By agreeing to this treaty, Dingane acknowledged some measure of independence for Natal, something that Shaka had not done. On the strength of this treaty, Gardiner founded a town which would be known as Durban, in honour of Benjamin D’Urban, in honour of the British governor of Cape Colony. Although Dingane did not pursue Shaka’s expansionist policies, he continued to maintain Zulu military power, and twice in 1832 and in 1837 sent his warriors against the Ndebele of Milikazi in the Transvaal. He had also received tribute from the Portuguese in Delagoa Bay, but in 1833 attacked them, sacking their garrison there and killing the governor.

From 1834 onwards, the Great Trek, a migration of Afrikaner farmers, moving away from British-ruled Cape Colony into Natal or to the north brought an influx of new settlers into the region. In 1837, Dingane’s scouts reported that these Voortrekkers were coming into Natal in increasing numbers, traveling in wagons. Led by Piet Retief, they asked for permission to settle. Dingane agreed to this on condition that they recover cattle said to have been stolen from him by Sekonyela, ruler of the Lokwa in what is now Lesotho. Retief’s party received the cattle, and returned them to Dingane in 1838, at which time Dingane signed a treaty with them, ceding them land. In fact, however, he was disturbed by the white incursions, and had Retief and his party murdered, following this act up with attacks on other Afrikaner settlers in the region.

Later that same year, however, the Afrikaner force, under the leadership of Andries Pretorius, invaded Zululand, defeating Dingane’s army at the battle of Blood River. Using muskets and artillery against the Zulu’s spears, the Afrikaners killed 3,000 Zulu, suffering casualties of only three wounded men themselves. This proved a disaster for the Zulu nation. Dingane’s capital was burned to the ground, and his power undermined. The Boers then established the republic of Natalia, although this was to be terminated soon after, in 1842, by the terms of a settlement between the Boers and the British government that was to fix the Natal-Zulu boundary on the Thukela River, and on the Buffalo River to the west of Zululand.

Meanwhile the Afrikaners annually celebrated December 16, the anniversary of the battle of Blood River, as “Dingaan’s Day.” More recent mythology has held that it is also known as the “Day of the Covenant,” because at the time of the battle the Voortrekkers had entered into a covenant with God that they would honour him in return for delivering the black people into the hands of the whites in South Africa. On the other hand, December 16, Dingaan’s Day, was also chosen by the African National Congress (ANC), before the period of its banning, which began in 1960, for the holding of its annual conference. The ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto Wesizwe (“The Spear of the Nation”) was also launched on December 16, 1961.

After the battle of Blood River, the Zulu kingdom was split when Dingane’s brother Mpande, fearful of his brother’s suspicions at such a time, fled to Natal with a large following of Zulus. He was befriended by the Boers. A joint army of Zulus and Boers then invaded Zululand. Dingane’s forces were led by Ndela, who had been a distinguished soldier in Shaka’s army. He and his men were, however, defeated by Mpande’s general, Nozishada, after which Dingane ordered Ndlela’s death. Dingane himself then fled into obscurity in Switzerland, where he died.

WANDILE F. KUSE