28 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
passed from Britain to Natal and in 1910 to the Union of South Africa.
//. The Zulu King and the State
Certain kinship groupings persisted through the devastating wars and the great change in political organization of Shaka's and Dingane's reigns. The clans had disappeared as units, and members of a single clan might be widely dispersed over Zululand: they retained their clan-name and their respect for the head of their senior line.1 Pockets of clansmen were, however, still to be found in various parts. The important kinship groups which were the basis of social organization were still formed by the inhabitants of separate homesteads. At the head of a homestead was the senior male by descent of the group. Nearby there might be found homesteads of men of the same clan and they all acknowledged the heir of their senior line (the lineage-head) as their head. Some distance away there would perhaps be clan-kinsmen, living under a different political authority, but recognized as part of the group and therefore entitled to take part in affairs affecting it. Among these local agnatic groups there were often homesteads of other relatives by marriage or matrilineal relationship: then came a stretch of country occupied by members of another group, similarly constituted. Strangers might attach themselves to an important man, as his servants or dependants, and would be absorbed with their relatives into his kinship group as 'quasi-kinsmen'; they retained their clan-name, but could not marry into their superior's own lineage, though they could marry into his clan. The second important change in Zulu family life was caused by the younger men having to serve at the king's military barracks, which kept them from home most of the year. In the homesteads the older men and the boys herded the cattle and the women worked the fields. Each homestead had its own fields and cattle-fold. A demographic survey would show the homesteads scattered at some distance apart (a few hundred yards to a mile or two) along the hills which, intersected by deep bush-filled valleys, characterized the interior of Zululand. The fields were mostly
1 Men and women with the same clan-name could not marry one another. No new clans have been formed in the period since the clans ceased to be local, political units, as in the past a chief desiring to marry a woman of his clan would split off her lineage and make of it a separate clan. Dinuzulu attempted unsuccessfully to form a new clan of a Mandlakazi lineage into which he married.