It is a century since Bhambatha kaMancinza, inkosi of the Zondi, ambushed a police patrol at Mpanza north of Greytown in Natal and, with 150 men, headed for the Nkandla forests in Zululand. There, joined by thousands, he defied the colonial government.
This was the Bhambatha rebellion or impi yamakhanda, the ”war of the heads”, named after the head or poll tax that sparked it off.
The imposition of the poll tax was a provocative act. The closing decade of the 19th century in Natal, with 100 000 whites and a million Africans, was increasingly tense. Mining in the interior had attracted capital and immigrants, putting pressure on the African population. Land values, rents and evictions increased.
After the South African Anglo-Boer War the gold mining industry tightened the migrant labour system, which was to devastate African life for the rest of the century. Then the region was hit by severe recession. In Natal, old settlers and new immigrants, who had hoped for a prosperous colony, faced bankruptcy and unemployment, an invigorated Boer political movement and a dangerously disaffected African population.
A poll tax would divert African wages into the colony’s revenue account and show them who was boss. But it was more difficult to handle rumour. Africans were said to believe supernatural intervention was about to destroy colonial rule: the plagues and typhoons that had swept the colony were a prologue, the final act would be led by the Zulu royal house, and a great army would return Africa to the Africans.
The poll tax was imposed amid this tense, rumour-ridden situation. There was no discussion — complaints were treated as defiance. Most Africans paid, but some magistrates reported hostile demonstrations. One happened near Richmond in February 1906; in a bungled attempt to arrest the troublemakers, two policemen ended up dead.
Martial law was declared and the colonial militia mobilised, seizing the property of the suspects, shooting 14 of them and hanging three more. These members of an independent church went to their deaths singing of going to ebuhleni obukhulu, a beautiful place where they would receive the justice denied them on Earth.
The militia moved towards the coast, fining, flogging and imprisoning those they accused of plotting treason. They then disbanded, convinced they had ”nipped the rebellion in the bud”.
Then came news that, north of Pietermaritzburg, the recently deposed Zondi chief, Bhambatha, was causing trouble. A police squad sent to sort him out was ambushed at Mpanza and four of its members were killed. When the militia reached the area with artillery and Maxim guns, Bhambatha was gone.
He headed for the Nkandla forests on the steep, northern wall of the Thukela valley, which, throughout Zulu history, has been the site of the last battle after retreat. Here Bhambatha made contact with the 96-year-old Shezi inkosi, Sigananda kaZokufa, who joined him.
Superior in numbers and weaponry, the militia now faced guerrilla war. It was unable to stop the rebels from making opportunistic raids and moving rapidly from hideout to hideout in the forest. In response, the militia burnt the homesteads, plundered the food stocks and seized the cattle of anyone suspected of not being totally committed to the official side.
The British army could not be called on, as a self-governing colony had to defend itself. But the other colonies were eager to help. Mounted infantry arrived from the Transvaal, urged on by the authorities and the mining industry. The Castle Beer Company sponsored a Maxim gun.
The forests were shelled and swept and there were clashes during which the rebels lost many men. But the troops were stretched thinner and thinner as the rebellion spread into ever more inaccessible areas.
In early June the rebel commanders decided to concentrate their scattered forces, draw in the soldiers and attack. However, military intelligence heard of the plan. The rebel force was surrounded while asleep in the open where the Mome stream leaves the Nkandla forest. At dawn on June 10, artillery and machine guns opened up on the rebels and, for the rest of day, the survivors were hunted down. It was a massacre. The authorities announced that the rebellion was over and most of the leaders, including Bambhatha, were dead.
Then, in the Maphumulo district, a store was raided and a military convoy ambushed. At the end of June troops poured into the area. This had the effect of persuading many with homes there that their families, property and chiefs were under military threat. Workers left their jobs in Durban and moved north to offer protection. The troops were waiting for them and fierce clashes took place in which hundreds of Africans were killed. The area was then looted and burnt.
On July 8 the militia trapped 500 rebels in the Izinsimba gorge, closed off the exits and killed them all.
By August 1906 the Natal authorities could announce, this time with some truth, that the rebellion was over.
Thousands of rebels had been killed and tens of thousands of homesteads destroyed. It cost the Natal government about a million pounds, a few dozen soldiers’ lives and its reputation locally and in Britain: for the young Winston Churchill, Natal was ”the hooligan of the British Empire”.
But even in the devastated landscape seeds were sown. The rebellion was noted by radicals in Britain who were to become leading figures in the anti-colonial movement. It heightened the determination of rising African writers, journalists, lawyers and activists to find effective forms of resistance, and was a factor in the founding of the ANC six years later. It reinforced traditions of resistance. When a young Nelson Mandela was told the stories of the heroes who had confronted colonialism, Bhambatha was among them.
It was widely believed that Bambhatha escaped the Mome massacre. Like popular heroes throughout history, he could not be killed, and for a century his name has stood for opposition to tyranny.
Jeff Guy is research fellow at the Campbell Collections at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His Remembering the Rebellion: The Zulu Uprising of 1906 will be published this month by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press