The Assassination of King Shaka

Amazon.com Price: $21.00 (as of 06/05/2019 06:25 PST- Details)

Description

In this riveting new book, John Laband, pre-eminent historian of the Zulu Kingdom, tackles one of the vital questions that swirl around the assassination in 1828 of King Shaka, the celebrated founder of the Zulu Kingdom and war leader of legendary brilliance: Why did prominent members of the royal house conspire to kill him? Just how significant a part did the white hunter-traders settled at Port Natal play in their royal patron’s downfall? Why were Shaka’s relations with the British Cape Colony key to his survival? And why did the powerful army he had created acquiesce so tamely in the usurpation of the throne by Dingane, his half-brother and assassin?

In his seek for answers Laband turns to the Zulu voice heard through recorded oral testimony and praise-poems, and to the written accounts and reminiscences of the Port Natal trader-hunters and the despatches of Cape officials. All through probing and assessing this evidence the writer vividly brings the early Zulu kingdom and its inhabitants to life. He throws light in this elusive character of and his own unpredictable intentions, at the same time as illuminating the fears and ambitions of those making an attempt to prosper and continue to exist in his hazardous kingdom: a kingdom that however endured in all its crucial characteristics, particularly militarily, until its destruction fifty one years later in 1879 by the British; and whose fate, legend has it, Shaka predicted with his dying breath.

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