ZULU's in South Africa

Zulu

Look i don't care whether your from England, Japan or Pakistan. When you are from outside Africa, and someone say's the word "Africa" you think "Zulu".
I never understand why Zulu's are such a huge representation of Africa. I mean some of you guys reading oversees won't know Gregory Porter (today's most famous jazz artist) but you know the there is a Zulu tribe somewhere in Africa.

Well, lets talk about the most famous clan/tribe this world has witnessed. Let's talk about the Zulu's. I ain't really a Zulu fan. Most of my bullies in high school were Zulu's.




The Zulu (Zulu: amaZulu) are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa and the largest ethnic group in South Africa, with an estimated 10–11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique.

Wikipedia says there are 10 659 309 Zulus in South Africa. that is almost twenty percent and they are the majority in South Africa. Lesotho has 324 000, Zimbabwe has 167 000, Swaziland has 107 000, Malawi has 66 000, Botswana 6900 and Mozambique 6000 Zulus. calculated in 2001. Zulu's start families more than any tribe, so the number must have doubled (LOL).

Shaka Zulu

The Zulu formed a powerful state in 1818^[4] under the leader Shaka. Shaka, as the Zulu King, gained a large amount of power over the tribe. As commander in the army of the powerful Mthethwa Empire, he became leader of his mentor Dingiswayo's paramouncy and united what was once a confederation of tribes into an imposing empire under Zulu hegemony.
Shaka is very key image for the Zulu's and respected ancestor. 
Long ago, before the Zulu were forged as a nation, they lived as isolated family groups and partly nomadic northern Nguni groups. These groups moved about within their loosely defined territories in search of game and good grazing for their cattle. As they accumulated livestock, and supporters family leaders divided and dispersed in different directions, while still retaining family networks.





 story:

The Zulu homestead (imizi) consisted of an extended family and others attached to the household through social obligations. This social unit was largely self-sufficient, with responsibilities divided according to gender. Men were generally responsible for defending the homestead, caring for cattle, manufacturing and maintaining weapons and farm implements, and building dwellings. Women had domestic responsibilities and raised crops, usually grains, on land near the household.

By the late eighteenth century, a process of political consolidation among the groups was beginning to take place. A number of powerful chiefdoms began to emerge and a transformation from pastoral society to a more organised statehood occurred. This enabled leaders to wield more authority over their own supporters, and to compel allegiance from conquered chiefdoms. Changes took place in the nature of political, social, and economic links between chiefs of these emerging power blocs and their subjects. Zulu chiefs demanded steadily increasing tribute or taxes from their subjects, acquired great wealth, commanded large armies, and, in many cases, subjugated neighbouring chiefdoms.

Military conquest allowed men to achieve status distinctions that had become increasingly important. This culminated early in the nineteenth century with the warrior-king Shaka conquering all the groups in Zululand and uniting them into a single powerful Zulu nation, that made its influence felt over southern and central Africa. Shaka ruled from 1816 to 1828, when he was assassinated by his brothers.

Shaka recruited young men from all over the kingdom and trained them in his own novel warrior tactics. His military campaign resulted in widespread violence and displacement, and after defeating competing armies and assimilating their people, Shaka established his Zulu nation. Within twelve years, he had forged one of the mightiest empires the African continent has ever known. The Zulu empire weakened after Shaka's death in 1828.

Anglo war

One of the most significant events in Zulu history was the arrival of Europeans in Natal. By the late 1800s, British troops had invaded Zulu territory and divided Zulu land into different chiefdoms. The Zulu never regained their independence (see Anglo-Zulu Wars).

Natal received "Colonial government" in 1893, and the Zulu people were dissatisfied about being governed by the Colony. A plague of locusts devastated crops in Zululand and Natal in 1894 and 1895, and their cattle were dying of rinderpest, lung sickness and east coast fever. These natural disasters impoverished them and forced more men to seek employment as railway construction workers in northern Natal and on the mines in the Witwatersrand.

Chief Bambatha

The last Zulu uprising, led by Chief Bambatha in 1906, was a response to harsh and unjust laws and unimaginable actions by the Natal Government. It was sparked off by the imposition of the 1905 poll tax of £1 per head, introduced to increase revenue and to force more Zulus to start working for wages. The uprising was ruthlessly suppressed (see Bambatha Rebellion).

The 1920s saw fundamental changes in the Zulu nation. Many were drawn towards the mines and fast-growing cities as wage earners, and were separated from the land and urbanised. Zulu men and women have made up a substantial portion of South Africa's urban work force throughout the 20th century, especially in the gold and copper mines of the Witwatersrand. Zulu workers organized some of the first black labour unions in the country. For example, the Zulu Washermen's Guild, Amawasha, was active in Natal and the Witwatersrand even before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. The Zululand Planters' Union organized agricultural workers in Natal in the early twentieth century.

The dawn of apartheid in the 1940s marked more changes for all Black South Africans, and in 1953 the South African Government introduced the "homelands". In the 1960s the Government's objective was to form a "tribal authority" and provide for the gradual development of self-governing Bantu national units. The first Territorial Authority for the Zulu people was established in 1970 and the Zulu homeland of KwaZulu was defined. On 30 March 1972 the first Legislative Assembly of KwaZulu was constituted by South African Parliamentary Proclamation.

Chief Mangosutho (Gatsha) Buthelezi, a cousin of the king, was elected as Chief Executive. The town of Nongoma was temporarily consolidated as the capital, pending completion of buildings at Ulundi. The 1970s also saw the revival of Inkatha, later the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the ruling and sole party in the self-governing KwaZulu homeland. Led by Chief Minister Mangosutho Buthelezi, Inkatha worked within the NP governments system, but it opposed homeland independence, standing for non-racial democracy, federalism, and free enterprise.

Goodwill Zwelithini

Military prowess continued to be an important value in Zulu culture, and this emphasis fuelled some of the political violence of the 1990s. Buthelezi's nephew, Goodwill Zwelithini, was the Zulu monarch in the 1990s. Buthelezi and King Goodwill won the agreement of ANC negotiators just before the April 1994 elections that, with international mediation, the government would establish a special status for the Zulu Kingdom after the elections. Zulu leaders understood this special status to mean some degree of regional autonomy within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Buthelezi was appointed minister of home affairs in the first Government of National Unity in 1994. He led a walkout of Zulu delegates from the National Assembly in early 1995 and clashed repeatedly with newly elected President Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela. Buthelezi threatened to abandon the Government of National Unity entirely unless his Zulu constituency received greater recognition and autonomy from central government control.

Zulu Kingdom

South Africa's mini bus taxi

Zulu's literally own SA's largest transport business.