Mfecane

The word Zoulou Mfecane returns traditionally to the cycle of wars and migrations generated by the rise to the capacity of Chaka, king of the Zoulous, after it launched out in the conquest of the people Nguni between the rivers Tugela and Pongola at the beginning of the 19th century, and amalgamates them in a militarist kingdom.

In fact, Mfecane had started before Chaka does not reach the capacity, with the engagements between Zwide, Dingiswayo and Matiwane, which led to the escape of Matiwane and its people.

One advances sometimes that it is the introduction of the Maïs (coming from America) which allowed demographic rise the Zoulouland. But a ten years dryness at the beginning of XIXe launched the competition to monopolize the grounds and water. Thus ambitious Chaka began its career of conqueror.

The kingdom of Chaka assimilates the conquered tribes, but especially the women and the children. Taken refuge men of these tribes mix with the Xhosa in the current province with the Cape-Eastern and become the septe Mfengu (known by the Britanniques like the Fingoes ).

Mfecane upsets the political map, demographic and ethnic of all the Southern Africa. Beside the new States which are constituted, of the whole people made of fugitive of any origine are tiny room to the famine and the wandering. The push of White (Large Trek) prohibited any displacement towards the south and the east, while in the west, the aridity of the grounds discourages any attempt at establishment. The Ndebele and the Ngoni will find their safety towards north. The people not organized in State, like the Fingo, do not have any more a place as communities in new balance. Fingo are of source multiple, some coming even from the coast of the Mozambique. They operate mainly on the coast between Durban and Port Elizabeth, and are reduced to beg their food, from where the nickname of mfengu (beggar, become the ethnonyme Fingo). They find their place only as guards of herds on behalf of the Xhosa, of the Pondo and the Thembu.

The king Moshoëshoë Ier rejoins mountain clans Sotho with his cause. Its kingdom fights against the Zulus and will constitute roughly speaking the Lesotho of today.

Soshangane, a general demolishes by Chaka, flees with the Mozambique. He and its army oppresses the Tsonga there, and part of the latter cross the Lebombo mountains towards the Transvaal.

Another Zulu general, Mzilikazi, break with Chaka and establish a kingdom ndébélé in the futures free State of Orange and Transvaal. When farmers Afrikaners (the Boer S ) settle there thanks to the Grand Trek in 1837, they demolish Mzilikazi in several battles. Mzilikazi thus chose to move its kingdom beyond the river Limpopo. At this point in time the kingdom “Matabele” is in current the Zimbabwe.

The Swati (known at the time under the name of Ngwane) took refuge in the country of in top about the year 1820 in order to avoiding the Zulu attacks. Sobhuza establishes the kingdom called there the Swaziland.

Bibliography (in French)

Chaka, king of the Zulus , Henry Francis Fynn, editions Anacharsis, 2004, translated from English ( The Diary off Henry Francis Fynn )

OMER-COOPER J.D, The Zulu Aftermath has Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Bantu Africa , London: Longman, Green and Co, 1966,208 p.

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