WHAT IS IT?

The wide plain — the Nqutu plateau — with its sphinxshaped mountain looming over its western edge — is the site of a short and vicious battle in which some 1 300 British soldiers and their auxiliaries were put to the spear by a large Zulu force on January 22 1879. It was a great victory for the Zulu nation, but the price was dear: some 1 000 men were killed and many more wounded by rifle and cannon fire.

The battlefield today is hardly changed from that bloody Wednesday. While a settlement has spread along its edge, the battlefield is still the same yawning expanse of plain across which the Zulu army advanced at a run. Cairns of white-painted stones and a handful of memorials mark the spots where the British were buried in mass graves.

There is also a visitors’ centre and, near the foot of the mountain, a memorial to the Zulu dead in the shape of a traditional necklace.