SHAKA ZULU FACTS
◆ HE FORBADE HIS TROOPS FROM MARRYING
Shaka also prohibited his soldiers from having homesteads. He believed marriage would somehow negatively affect the readiness of his troops, something the troops silently resented.
After Dingane murdered Shaka and installed himself as king, he allowed the troops to marry and have families as a way of buying their loyalty, and it worked. Many respected him, some admired him, others plainly wished he were still alive.
Shaka was a legendary warrior who never backed down.
◆ HE KILLED MANY ZULUS TO MOURN HIS MOTHER
When his mother died, Shaka declared a mourning period of more than a year. During this period, crops were not planted and any woman who became pregnant was killed, together with her husband. All the cows that gave birth were killed, so that their calves could know how it felt to lose a mother.
Although a lot of sympathisers have come to cast doubt on many of the accounts regarding Shaka, there is no doubt that he was a ruthless man who killed more of his people than any other king.
◆ HE STOLE THE CROWN
Even though Zulus and other people praise King Shaka, the truth is he usurped the crown when he killed his half-brother and installed himself as the king.
Nguni culture orders that an illegitimate child cannot take his father’s crown under any circumstances, but Shaka did. He was an illegitimate child.
The king denied him, although he later took Shaka’s mother as his third wife. But soon after she gave birth to Shaka, the king ordered them both out of his palace. ◆ SHAKA WAS A REBEL
He was a true rebel who had very little patience with certain aspects of the Nguni culture which he did not deem particularly valuable. He decommissioned initiation school, where boys and girls were taught how to be men and women, and girls were ordinarily initiated by their family by performing coming-ofage ceremonies. He did away with such institutions, replacing them with military training for boys.
Shaka Zulu is one of the most famous leaders to ever come out of South Africa.