THE KINGDOM OF THE ZULU OF SOUTH AFRICA3 By MAX GLUCKMAN
/. Historical Introduction
I DESCRIBE Zulu political organization at two periods of Zulu history—under King Mpande and to-day under European rule. Zulu history has been well described by Bryant and Gibson, and I here give only a bare outline which can be filled in by referring to their books.2 I have used historical records partly to illustrate the functioning of the organization in each period and partly to discuss changes in the nature of the organization.
The Nguni family of Bantu-speaking people who later formed the Zulu nation migrated into south-eastern Africa about the middle of the fifteenth century. They were pastoralists practising a shifting cultivation.. They lived in scattered homesteads occupied by male agnates and their families; a number of these homesteads were united under a chief, the heir of their senior line, into a tribe. Exogamous patrilineal clans (men and women of common descent bearing a common name) tended to be local units and the cores of tribes. A tribe was divided into sections under brothers of the chief and as a result of a quarrel a section might migrate and establish itself as an independent clan and tribe. There was also absorption of strangers into a tribe. Cattle raids were frequent, but there were no wars of conquest. By 1775 the motives for war changed, possibly owing to pressure of population. Certain tribes conquered their neighbours and small kingdoms emerged which
1 The information contained in this article was largely collected during fourteen months' work in Zululand (1936-8), financed by the National Bureau of Educational and Social Research of the Union of South Africa (Carnegie Fund). I wish to thank the Bureau for its grant. I have also used many, books, dispatches, and reports about Zululand in the last 100 years. For a bibliography of these, and an account of Zulu society, see E. J. Krige's Social Systems of the Zulu (Longmans, 1936).
2 A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (Longmans, 1938); J. Y. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus (Longmans, 1911). The account of the Zulu nation in this article is reconstructed from histories, contemporaneous records, and my questionings of old men.