THE KINGDOM OF THE ZULU 29
along the ridges and the banks of streams; the low valleys, uninhabited because of fever, were winter-grazing and hunting grounds. The coastal tribes lived, similarly distributed, on the malarial sandy plain between the hills and the sea. Communication between different parts of Zululand was fairly easy; men went from all parts to the King's barracks and marriage between members of widely separated homesteads was common.
The Zulu nation thus ponsisted of members of some hundreds of clans, united by their allegiance to the king. The people belonged to the king and he therefore took the fine in cases of assault or murder. In the earlier period of Nguni history, political allegiance tended to coincide with kinship affiliation. Thus the Zulu tribe (abakwazulu) consisted originally largely of descendants of Zulu, a junior son of Malandela, as distinguished from the Qwabe tribe, the descendants of Qwabe, the senior son of Malandela. To-day the term abakwazulu still means the members of the Zulu clan, but it has also the wider meaning of all the people who pay allegiance to the Zulu king. Collectively, whatever their ckn names, they are politely addressed as 'Zulu'. Political and kinship affiliation came to be distinct also in the smaller political groups into which the nation was divided. These were composed of members of many clans, though they might have a core of kinsmen: members of a single clan might be found in many political groups. While the kinship basis of political groups disappeared, the new ones which emerged were described in kinship terms, for any political officer was spoken of as the father of his people, and his relationship to them was conceived to be similar to that of a father and his children. The territory of king or chief may be referred to as umzi kaMpande (the homestead of Mpande) or wnzi kaZibebu (the homestead of Zibebu), as umzi kabani is the family homestead of So-and-So. The children of the king are not supposed to refer to him as 'father', for, 'is not the king father of his people, not of his family only*.
The king also owned the land. All who came to live in Zululand had to acknowledge his sovereignty. Abakwazulu has too the meaning of the people of Zululand (Kwazulu) and the Zulu word izwe means nation, tribe, or country.1 The same rule applied to
1 It must be noted that the Zulu form of describing the clan is locative: abakwazulu, 'the people of the Zulu clan', literally, 'the people of the place of Zulu', not genitive, abakaZulu, 'the descendants of Zulu*.