King Zwelithini and the Historians

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the death of King Goodwill Zwelithini on 12 March 2021, three historians of KwaZulu-Natal came together to discuss the historiography on the Zulu monarchs. Jabulani Sithole (JS), Liz Timbs (LT) and Jill Kelly (JK) speak about how scholars have written about the late king, the sources available for historians and the limitations of these sources.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 L. Timbs, ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’, Africa Is a Country, 3 December 2018, https://africasacountry.com/2018/12/the-emperor-has-no-clothes, accessed 12 May 2021; L. Timbs, ‘The King Is Dead’, Africa Is a Country, 7 April 2021, https://africasacountry.com/2021/04/the-king-is-dead, accessed 12 May 2021.

2 J. Laband, The Eight Zulu Kings (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2018).

3 J. Sithole, ‘Zuluness in South Africa: From “Struggle” Debate to Democratic Transformation,’ in B. Carton, J. Laband, and J. Sithole, Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009): xiii.

4 C. Hamilton, ‘Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom’ (MA thesis, University of Witwatersrand, 1985); J. Wright, ‘The Dynamics of Power and Conflict in the Thukela-Mzimkhulu Region in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries: A Critical Reconstruction’ (PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1989); C. Hamilton and J. Wright, ‘The Making of the AmaLala: Ethnicity, Ideology and Relations of Subordination in a Precolonial Context’, South African Historical Journal, 22 (1990), 3–23; C. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

5 G. Maré, Brothers Born of Warrior Blood: Politics and Ethnicity in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1992); G. Maré and G. Hamilton, Appetite for Power: Buthelezi’s Inkatha and South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987); Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda (London: Zed Books, 1988).

6 For example, J. Sithole and P. Ngonyama, ‘The Land Question – The Ingonyama Trust Controversy’, Polity, 11 (May 2018), https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-land-question-the-ingonyama-trust-controversy-2018-05-11, accessed 7 May 2021.

7 N. Cope, To Bind the Nation: Solomon KaDinuzulu and Zulu Nationalism: 1913–1933 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1993).

8 S. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism, and the State in Twentieth-Century Natal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); A. Kolberg Buverud, ‘The King and the Honeybirds: Cyprian Bhekuzulu KaSolomon, Zulu Nationalism and the Implementation of Bantu Authorities in Zululand, 1948–1957’ (Master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2007); S. Ndlovu, African Perspectives of King Dingane KaSenzagakhona: The Second Monarch of the Zulu Kingdom (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); M. M. Hadebe, ‘A Contextualization and Examination of the Impi Yamakhanda (1906 Uprising) as Reported by J.L. Dube in Ilanga Lase Natal, with Special Focus on Dube’s Attitude to Dinuzulu as Indicated in His Reportage on the Treason Trial of Dinuzulu’ (M.A. thesis, University of Natal, 2003); J. Sithole, ‘Changing Meanings of the Battle of Ncome and Images of King Dingane in Twentieth Century South Africa,' in Carton, Laband and Sithole, Zulu Identities: 322–330. H. Mokoena, ‘“How I Photographed Cetshwayo”: Photography and the Spectacle of Exile in Colonial South Africa’ (15 April 2013), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2251364, accessed 7 May 2021.

9 A. Parcells, ‘Ethnic Sovereignty and the Making of a Zulu Homeland in Apartheid South Africa’ (PhD thesis, Emory University, 2018).

10 O.E.H.M. Nxumalo, C.T. Msimang, and I.S. Cooke, King of Goodwill: The Authorised Biography of King Goodwill Zwelithini Kabhekuzulu, First Edition (Cape Town: Nasou Via Afrika, 2003).

11 J. Sanders, Apartheid's Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa's Secret Service (London: John Murray, 2006).; J. Sithole, “The Inkatha Freedom Party and the Multiparty Negotiations,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 6 [1990–1996] (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2013), 837–75.

12 Parcells, ‘Ethnic Sovereignty.' M. Hunter, Love in the Time of Aids: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010).

13 M.P. Buthelezi, ‘Sifuna Umlando Wethu (We Are Searching for Our History): Oral Literature and the Meanings of the Past in Post-Apartheid South Africa’ (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012).

14 S.S. Yende, ‘Zulu King Is “Exploiting” Us’, City Press, 11 November 2018, https://www.news24.com/citypress/News/zulu-king-is-exploiting-us-20181111, accessed 7 May 2021.

15 Nxumalo et al., King of Goodwill; J. Sithole, “Neither Communists nor Saboteurs: KwaZulu Bantustan Politics,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 2 [1970–1980] (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2006), 805–45; J.E Kelly, To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800–1996 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018).

16 M. Makhanya, ‘King Goodwill Zwelithini: Apartheid’s Useful Idiot’, City Press, 14 March 2021.

17 Kelly, To Swim with Crocodiles.

18 L. Timbs, ‘The Regiments: Cultural Histories of Zulu Masculinities and Gender Formation in South Africa, 1816–2018’ (PhD thesis, East Lansing, Michigan State University, 2019); F. Rueedi, The Vaal Uprising of 1984 and the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 2021).

19 For more on this, see L. Timbs, ‘An In(Ter)Vention of Tradition: Medical Male Circumcision in KwaZulu-Natal, 2009–2016’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 32, 1 (1 January 2018), 55–77.

20 Sithole, ‘Changing Meanings.'

21 M. P Buthelezi, “Sifuna Umlando Wethu (We Are Searching for Our History): Oral Literature and the Meanings of the Past in Post-Apartheid South Africa” (Columbia University, PhD thesis, 2012); J. S. Arndt, “Struggles of Land, Language, and Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of the Hlubi,” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 9, no. 1 (2018): 1–26.

22 The Nhlapho Commission was established in 2003 with the purpose of resolving chieftainship battles and defining the boundaries of ‘traditional communities’. Some of its findings undermined the claims of the Zulu monarchy.

23 J. Wright, ‘Before Mgungundlovu: The Upper Umngeni–Upper Mkhomazi Region in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in J. Laband and R. Haswell (eds), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988: A New Portrait of an African City (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press: Shuter & Shooter, 1988): 18–21.

24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p8pyQ4yq5Y&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish (accessed 7 May 2021)

25 M. wa Afrika, ‘Amabutho Rebellion at King Zwelithini’s Funeral Meant to “Embarrass” Ramaphosa’, IOL, 21 March 2021, https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/amabutho-rebellion-at-king-zwelithinis-funeral-meant-to-embarrass-ramaphosa-38424e33-3e7d-4dbb-8b07-2f0bf2468580, accessed 12 May 2021.

26 J. Wright, ‘Control of Women’s Labour in the Zulu Kingdom’, in J.B. Peires, ed., Before and After Shaka: Papers in Nguni History (Grahamstown: Rhodes University, 1981), 82–99; J. Guy, ‘Gender Oppression in Precapitalist Societies’, in Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers Ltd, 1990), 33–47; S. Ndlovu, ‘A Reassessment of Women’s Power in the Zulu Kingdom’, in B. Carton, J. Laband, and J. Sithole, eds, Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008), 111–121; S.M. Ndlovu, ‘Women, Authority, and Power in Precolonial Southeast Africa: The Production of Historical Knowledge on Queen Mother Ntombazi of the Ndwandwe’, in W.H. Worger, C. Ambler, and N. Achebe, eds, A Companion to African History (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 95–117.

27 Ndlovu ‘A Reassessment of Women's Power'; J. Weir, ‘"I Shall Need to Use Her to Rule": The Power of "Royal" Zulu Women in Pre-Colonial Zululand’, South African Historical Journal, 43, 1 (2000): 3–23; C. Sibiya, Zulu Woman: [Autobiography of Christina Sibiya] (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948); Nxumalo et al., King of Goodwill; K. Shange, ‘Ngiphathel’ u Ghubhu Lwam’ Ekhaya Lapha, Mnawami! UMntwana UMagogo and the Photographic Image’ (PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2020).

28 J. Guy, ‘An Accommodation of Patriarchs: Theophilus Shepstone and the Foundations of the System of Native Administration in Natal’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 32, 1 (2018): 81–99; B. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 2 (1983): 139–171; T.J. Tallie Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

29 S. Mnisi Weeks, ‘Securing Women’s Property Inheritance in the Context of Plurality: Negotiations of Law and Authority in Mbuzini Customary Courts and beyond’. Acta Juridica, 1 (2011), 140–173; S. Mnisi Weeks, ‘The Violence of the Harmony Model’, in M. Buthelezi and D. Skosana, eds, Traditional Leaders in a Democracy: Resources, Respect and Resistance (Johannesburg: The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), 2019), 182–223.

30 Laband, The Eight Zulu Kings, 8.