Far from helping build and protect the Zulu kingdom, the Zumas helped the British destroy it PICTURE: GETTY IMAGESIn 1879, the British destroyed the Zulu kingdom, putting paid to one of the last major precolonial polities in southern Africa. To hear white supremacists and apologists for the British Empire tell it, the defeat of King Cetshwayo’s army marked the triumph of European enlightenment over African barbarism; to hear Zulu and African nationalists tell it, the destruction of the Zulu kingdom signalled not the end of Zulu political sovereignty but the beginning of a pan-African struggle against white rule.Both accounts present the overthrow of the kingdom in stark terms, as a struggle between African and European, black and white. In fact, matters were messier than these accounts are willing to acknowledge. Sure, the British army was the most powerful military force at the time, with the hardware and training befitting its status as the defender of the world’s reigning superpo...
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