THE HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE ZULU PEOPLE - Onyeji Nnaji
Copied from the book, Reality as Myths by Onyeji Nnaji
The world of the Bantu travellers shows the walls of the
migration that recorded the highest population among the African settlement.
Originating from the largest population among the four races that settled in
the east before time, all Bantu travellers were pygmies; for that was the
nature of the Umudiala, the
generation that gave birth to them. The Wikipedia map for Bantu migrations shown below will be of help towards digesting our descriptions of the Bantu people.
The word, Bantu, was derived from reference to the characteristic lifestyle
of the hunters with distinct faces. In those days, the people called Bantu
today usually mask their faces with ashes and charcoal to make them look like
animals until they get closer and kill them. This masking style made them look
like wild animals or monsters. Therefore, the Igbo of the neighborhood referred
to them as Ọ bantu, a people who apply ash on the body. The picture below
belongs to the Kikuyu Bantu. He is a typical example of Bantu hunters and
warriors.
This was the habit they imbibed
while they travelled far and wide. It proved true in the languages of some
Bantu settlers. For instance, Bantus like Kirundi, Zulu, Xhosa,
Runyakitara and Ganda speak of themselves as Abantu. While Gusii and Mpondo call themselves
Abanto and Abantru respectively. Each Bantu settlement has a related term as
self-identity that describes them as belonging to the Bantu group. We have
listed these identity words in chapter three above.
The implication of this situation is that each Bantu
settlement would have to trace her origin from the very point where her
knowledge of migration ends. Then, to get at the root of the Bantu movement,
one would have to trace these end-point roots of different Bantu settlers to
the aboriginal take off point. For as the study showed itself obviously, the
road from where this population strayed is still obviously pointing towards
Nigeria as their ancient home. We have clarified issues concerning the original
home of all Bantu in chapter three above.
The first set of Bantu was the Efik. The Efik population had
their original home at Nwa Ngene, now one of the Local Government Areas in Imo
State, Nigeria. The Efik migration is claimed to have dated 9,000 BC (the truth is yet to be ascertained). Their departure and
settlement at Osak Edet (towards the Bakasi peninsula that bounded Nigeria and
Cameroon) made that area an outlet for the Bantu populations. Osak Edet is so pronounced because the Efik/Ibibio and Anang language family have no use of the /g/ and /l/ consonants, otherwise the correct words for this new home is Osa Ngele, according to the language user. This was their later way of expressing their "Oso Ngele" hobo. Even Efik is rightly pronounce as Efk.
Researching in
the Niger region in the days of the Christian Missionaries,
Dr. W. B. Baikie who wrote in 1854 noted that “All the coast dialects from Oru
to Old Calabar are either directly or indirectly connected with Igbo”. He
further asserted that the Igbo are “separated from the sea by petty tribes all
of which trace their origin to this great race”, the Igbo. Major A. G. Leonard,
writing in 1906, recorded that it was the view of missionaries and travelers in
these parts that people around the coastal regions are all Igbo.
Comparing
the language as it is spoken in all of these different localities, the
dialectical variations are not very marked, the purest dialect being spoken, as
already pointed out, in Isuania and neighbourhood, while the most pronounced difference
is to be found between the Niger dialect, especially that which is spoken right
on the river or on its western bank, and that of the more eastern sections,
which lie nearer to the Cross river and in proximity to the Ibibio. It has been suggested by missionaries and
travellers that the languages spoken by the Ibibio, Efik, Andoni, and others
have all been derived from Ibo at some ancient period; also that there is a
distinct dialectical affinity between the Ijo dialects of Oru, Brass, Ibani,
and New Calabar, and the Isuama dialect of Ibo. (Lower
Niger, 43).
These were the
linguistic evidence to this great migration out of the east. It was about that
same period that the population that peopled the present day Cameroon parted;
moving further afield, they settled at the present day Cameroon. The movement
of the Bantu travellers is shown on the map below.
Number one shows the place of the genesis, at the eastern
region of the present day Nigeria. We have the route labeled 2a and 2b; they
are indications of the route that founded Cameroon and the equatorial Africa as
shown through the arrows of 2b and 2a respectively. Both 2a and 2b showed
routes that located Equatorial Africa from where the rest of the Bantu
dispersed. There is a unique arrow that locates a different direction, this
arrow located Nubia where some population strayed to. Detail is discussed in
the succeeding subheadings.
All the far Bantu travellers converged at Equatorial Guinie.
From there they furthered their tour to the place where they lived today. The
map of these later tours is shown below.
Issues concerning the later movements to their permanent
settlements are discussed below in line with the respective community of Bantus
involved at each time.
(1) The Zulu Nation
Zulu recorded the largest Bantu settlement among the Bantu
family. They were made consolidated through their common goal intention and the
determination to remain as a people. From their collective characterizations,
it was apparent that the Zulu Bantu may have had one ancestor in terms of
their consanguinity. They did things together and championed one course in
their heydays. Unlike the Efik community whose origin was very precise and
still within memory, no one can fathom from which part of the Umudiala they had
travelled. But on the significant note, the Zulu did not take the same route
with the rest of the Bantu travellers. They took a different direction.
Therefore, rather than take part in the central community of Bantus in
Equatorial plane, the Zulu travelled differently and far enough to the hills of
the Nile plane and settled in the Nubia community. Zulu was the only Bantu
travellers who were able to get to the Nile region at the earliest time when
Nubia was yet to experience her ancient civilization.
Zulu arrived the Nile region when Egypt conquered Nubia. Nubian civilization
embraced its untimely drop-down following the defeat of the government in the
days of Pharaoh Snefru (c. 2575 BC). About the
same period, Zulu entered Nubia and travelled southward to their present home in
South Africa when the civilization has finally ended with the further defeat of the kingdom by the Ezana led warriors. By the time they arrived South Africa, the Bush men had
already settled. At that time, Zulu never had a particular name for that set of
Bantu. Although several evidences abound that proved them of having come from
the same family line. The picture below shows the Zulu soldiers.
The term Zulu, which later became the identity lexicon for a nation of
people, came from a unanimous concept which served as the conglomeration word
for the race that gave birth to all Bantu. Of course, it stands the most
credible pointer to their place of origin and marked them as belonging to a
sect before the evil days of hobo for the Zulu Bantu – the time when Nubia had
never been overtaken by the Pharaohs of Egypt – the word, Zúlú was originally used to summon the Zulu Bantus in Nubia together whenever there were things to be discussed that were in the interest of the
community. Of course, the ordinary meaning derived from its translation in the
Igbo language is to gather. According
to its earliest purpose, it was a verb translated to mean “gather or come
together”. Another useful pointer to the trace of the origin of the Zulu is on the way the Zulu refer to their clans. According
to the Zulu’s oral tradition,
Zulu's
descendants, the Ama Zulu, settled
in the White Umfolozi valley under the chieftainship of Zulu's
great-grandson Ndaba kaPhunga - The Man of Affairs. The Zulu continued to live
a peaceful existence when the mantle of leadership was passed to Jama - He of
the Stern Countenance - even though crucial power struggles were developing all
around them as paramount chiefs dreamed of statehood.
The Zulu clans till date are
referred to as Ama Zulu. Among the
Igbo, Ama is a prefix used to
introduce people and places. In the
North-eastern Igbo land, we have AmaNgwu, AmaOkwe, AmaAgu, AmaEke, Amanze and
other places referred thus. Generally, in the Igbo settlement, Ama is used alternatively with Umu. Where Umu is used to draw reference the descendants of a particular
ancestor who, perhaps, founded the place, Ama
is used in reference to the possible things – say topography, nature course,
popular tree, legendary river, mystic geometry etc. – that led to the
settlement of such an Igbo community or that is prominent in the area. In the case of
the Zulu having her name as the root word to the prefix, Ama, it is simply to reiterate the cognate of familial
consanguinity as a people.
The possible proof which the Zulu
Bantu could give to their origin revolves around the name
Nguni whom they have always explained
as their ancestor. For so reasoned, the Zulu refer to themselves as the Nguni people. But Nguni was never the
Zulu ancestor; nevertheless, he fathered many of the Zulu population as one of
the earliest man, at least since their departure from Nubia. Named after the
charismatic figure who in a previous epoch had led a migration from Nubia, he
became the only ancestor known to the Zulu whom they could concretely speak of
while mentioning ancestors.
Even hitherto, Nguni remains the mystical figure among
Zulu storytellers to the present day. More significantly, he was the initiator
of the movement out of Nubia and reckoned prominently with the consistent use
of the word, Zulu, whenever it was
necessary for any information to be related. Therefore, after him, the word
remains memorable like a totemic instinct among the population. Meanwhile, they
referred to themselves as the descendants of Nguni. According to oral sources, “There
was however, no central authority at that time, nor was there even a clan
called Zulu among those who constituted the Nguni people.”
The statehood of Zulu
at that time was clan oriented. The different family lines that could recognize
themselves saw reasons for togetherness. As they form their circle, each clan
was headed by its prominent man. The conglomeration of the different sections
of the Zulu Bantus led to the actualization of the Zulu state led by Ndaba
kaPhunga, according to the Zulu oral tradition. That was the condition until
the days of Senzangakhona. What stood between the Ndwandwe and total dominance
of the entire region between Phongolo and Thukela Rivers used to be the small
Zulu state under its new leader, the illegitimate son of Senzangakhona and
Nandi, King Shaka with whom Zulu emerged an empire.
Shaka conquered the entire clans of
the Zulu Bantu and extended his territory beyond the Zulu boundaries. Nandi
(Shaka’s mother) had conceived before official recognition as the chief's wife,
and her obvious pregnancy was unconvincingly dismissed as affliction by an
intestinal beetle known in Zulu medical circles as “shaka”. That was how he got
his name upon his birth in 1787.
For this reason, his father's eldest son from
the other woman denied Shaka heir to the Zulu throne. But when Shaka had
orchestrated the murder of his younger brother and legitimate heir to the Zulu
throne, Dingiswayo sent a military force to assist Shaka seize the
chieftainship. The young leader justified his overlord's patronage with
regional military successes against the Mthethwa's enemies, but when that state
was overrun and Dingiswayo assassinated, Shaka Zulu found himself the sole
object of Ndwandwe battle plans.
Shaka did not allow
Europeans entry into Zulu as he had fought them relentlessly. But, after the
conspiracy that led to his injury, he gave them a trial opportunity to prove
the efficacy of the Whiteman’s medicine. When Shaka died in 1828, Europeans
beclouded his subjects and forced them into imperialism.
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