DECEMBER 16 has been known by various names in this country during my lifetime. For my grandfather — who was born on that day in 1903, some 24 hours before the Wright brothers made their historic first flight at Kitty Hawk — it would always be Dingaan's Day.
"Why, Thatha?" I asked (as I would hundreds of times every day) (which is expected from a four-year-old). And he told me a tale that I would in later years re-learn at university.
Great military strategists are almost never defeated on the battlefield. So it was that in 1828, while Shaka's army had crossed into Delegoa Bay in pursuit of the Soshangane, he was murdered by his half-brother, Dingaan.
Dingaan enjoyed the fruit of his treachery until 1837, when two parties of trekkers crossed into Natal, led by Piet Retief and Jacobus Uys, who approached Dingaan asking for permission to start a settlement.
Dingaan had been warned against allowing white settlers access to the land by Xhosa refugees, but was indecisive about what course of action should be followed. Eventually, he agreed to lease to the Boers land between the Tugela and Umzimkulu rivers on condition that they recaptured cattle stolen by Sekonyela, chief of the Tlokwa. When Retief returned with the cattle in tow, Dingaan became even more apprehensive and suspicious. No one will know exactly what happened afterwards. What is clear is that Retief's party was asked to leave their weapons outside Dingaan's kraal. On entering the kraal, they were killed.
In military terms, Dingaan's killing of the Boer party could be considered to be shrewd politics, as the Zulu might not have had an easy time of an open confrontation against Boer guns. At the same time, Dingaan was by no means close to being the military genius Shaka had been. His decision to send out troops to crush the remainder of the Boer presence to the west, where the rest of Retief's party had established camp, was slow in coming, allowing the latter time to seek refuge. Similarly, his attack that followed on the English settlement at Port Natal was ill-timed, allowing the English to board a ship in the bay.
As it would turn out, letting the remainder of the Boers escape was a costly mistake. Regrouping under Andries Pretorius, the Boers gathered at Blood River where they formed a laager — a makeshift fort created by lashing ox-wagons together in a circle. Flanked by Blood River on one side and a ditch on the other, the laager was ideally placed for a siege.
An astute general might have been content to starve the Boers into submission. Dingaan instead chose to attack. The Zulu forces were almost completely wiped out without the loss of a single life on the part of the Boers.
Apartheid society since celebrated that victory against the Zulu people as the Day of the Covenant, along with promoting the myth that Blood River saw the crushing of the Zulu empire. Thatha refused to call Dingaan's Day anything else.
In reality, only a fraction of the Zulu forces had been destroyed by the Boers. Dingaan attempted to salvage the situation by burning down his own capital at Ulundi and fleeing north, possibly to regroup his forces. At that critical moment, he — like he had done with Shaka — was betrayed by his own half-brother Mpande, who set up an alliance with Pretorius and drove Dingaan into Swaziland, where he was killed by the Swazi.
Mpande was crowned ruler of the Zulus with support from the Boers. The territory between the Umzimvubu and Tugela Rivers was ceded to the Boers and black people living in this region were ordered to leave.
The Boers set up the Republic of Natalia in the territory ceded to them by Mpande. Their control was not to last long. In 1943, the British annexed Natal, ruling it as a district of the Cape Colony. Most Boers were not willing to accept British rule yet again, and so pulled up roots and trekked into the Transvaal. They left behind the land fought for at Blood River, and a Zulu nation which was relatively intact — Shaka's territory between the Tugela and Pongola was almost untouched.
Mpande ruled in peace and relative prosperity for 32 years.
Thatha died in 1987 and so did not get to see Mangosuthu Buthelezi — as Minister of Home Affairs of a free South Africa — receive praise for renaming it the Day of Reconciliation.
Buthelezi joins King Goodwill Zwelithini to unveil a Zulu warrior monument at Blood River on that day this year.
I remind both of them that the interests of reconciliation are best served by monuments to warriors of peace.