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The  ‘House’  and  Zulu  Political  Structure  in  the

Nineteenth  Century

Adam  Kuper

The  Journal  of  African  History  /  Volume  34  /  Issue  03  /  November  1993,  pp  469  -­  487DOI:  10.1017/S0021853700033764,  Published  online:  22  January  2009

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Journal of African History, 34 (1993), pp. 469-487Copyright © 1993 Cambridge University Press

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICAL STRUCTURE INTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY1

BY ADAM KUPERBrunei University

I

T H E R E is a general consensus amongst historians that in southern Africa inthe late eighteenth century some clan-based chieftaincies began a process oftransformation into stratified, centralized states. These states were built ona much larger scale than the old chiefdoms, whether one considers the areaof land controlled or the density or extent of the population; and theydeveloped radically new administrative structures, which had far-reachingsocial and economic repercussions.

The Zulu are taken to represent the most complete example of thisprocess. In 1929, in Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, Bryant identifiedShaka's accession to the Zulu leadership as a political watershed:

The passing of Senzangankona marked the end and the beginning of two distinctperiods in East-Nguni political history. On that day a long past of patriarchal rulewas tolled to its grave and the tocsin sounded of a new era of autocracy to beinaugurated by his son... The primordial system of numberless clans and in-dependent chieftains would, amidst much wailing and bloodshed, be graduallydemolished, and upon and out of its ruins would be built up a grandiose nationruled by a imperious despot.2

But although he posited a political revolution, Bryant insisted that there wasconsiderable continuity in social organization. The passage I have citedcontinues: 'despite these drastic political changes, the social habits of thepeople would mostly continue undisturbed' .

This view has recently been challenged. In the second half of the 1970s,Wright and Hamilton report,

some historians began to argue that in south-east Africa during the late eighteenthand early nineteenth centuries a deep-seated transformation from one kind ofsociety to another had taken place... The emergence of states entailed not simplyan increase in the size and in the degree of militarization of political units, but alsocomprehensive changes in the nature of political, social, ideological, and to someextent, economic relations between rulers and ruled.3

1 A grant from the NufReld Foundation allowed me to conduct undisturbed researchon pre-conquest Southern Bantu political processes during the academic year 1991-2.This article is one of the products of that period. I am extremely grateful to ProfessorJ. F. Holleman and Dr Robert Ross, both of Leiden University, for their helpfulcomments on a draft of this paper, and to Carolyn Hamilton of the University of theWitwatersrand for a radical and creative critique that led me to recast the argument.

2 A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London, 1929), 70-1.3 John Wright and Carolyn Hamilton, 'Traditions and transformations: the Phongolo-

Mzimbkhulu region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries', in Andrew

47O ADAM KUPER

The institutional changes most commonly cited in this connection are thebreaking up of the local lineages and clans by centralizing rulers, the trans-formation of the traditional system of neighbourhood age-sets into nationalregiments, and the development of a hierarchy of political offices. Theideological changes - more sketchily indicated in most sources - have to dowith the celebration of kingship. In the economic sphere, the thesis is that theold economy of independent family units was replaced by somethingapproaching a command economy, organized to support the king and hisarmy. The exploitation of female labour is often emphasized, and theargument is typically phrased in neo-Marxist terms, which represents theshift as one from a 'domestic mode of production' to a 'tributary mode'.4

Only the immediate precipitating causes of this transition have beenmatters of serious dispute, the favoured candidates being the rise ofindividual chiefs of genius; a population explosion; an ecological crisis;changes in the nature of external trade, particularly with the Portuguese onthe east coast; or a chain reaction which followed the growth of the Europeancolony on the Cape frontier.5 Recently, Julian Cobbing has suggested thatthe early history of the Zulu state must be read as a defensive reaction toslave-trading, but the debate he provoked refers particularly to the extensivedisruptions of the 1820s, and is only indirectly relevant to the origins ororganization of the early Zulu state.6

Yet despite the consensus it is by no means certain that a political, socialand economic transformation-'state-formation'- really happened in thelate eighteenth century in south-east Africa. One difficulty is that we havelittle insight into the nature of earlier political systems in the region. Thefew, sketchy European reports of Nguni chiefdoms before the late eighteenthcentury give only a vague impression of the nature of the coastal chiefdoms.Most collections of oral tradition date to periods after the colonial conquests,at least a century after the supposed revolution, and these sources do not, inany case, generally refer to structural transformations.7

The archaeologists tend to be more reserved than the historians. In hissurvey, Hall doubts whether the Zulu and Xhosa can be said to have formed

Duminy and Bill Guest (eds.), Natal and Zululand: From Earliest Times to igio : A NewHistory (Pietermaritzburg, 1989), 49-82, citation, 57.

4 For the Zulu case see, e.g. J. J. Guy, 'The political structure of the Zulu kingdomduring the reign of Cetshwayo kaMpande', in J. Peires (ed.), Before and After Shaka :Papers in Nguni History (Grahamstown, 1979), 49-74; J. J. Guy, 'Ecological factors inthe rise of Shaka and the Zulu kingdom', in S. Marks and A. Atmore (eds.), Economy andSociety in Pre-industrial South Africa (London, 1980), 102-19.

5 A valuable critical survey of these hypotheses, with special reference to the rise of theZulu state, may be found in John Wright, ' The dynamics of power and conflict in theThukela-Mzinkhulu region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: a critical reconstruc-tion' (Doctoral thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1989). The arguments aresummed up in Wright and Hamilton, 'Traditions and transformations', 59-74.

6 See Julian Cobbing,' The mfecane as alibi: thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo',J. Afr. Hist., xxix (1988), 487-519. Cf. Elizabeth A. Eldredge, 'The "mfecane"reconsidered', J. Afr. Hist., xxxm (1992), 1-35 and Carolyn Anne Hamilton, 'Thecharacter and objects of Chaka', J. Afr. Hist., xxxm (1992), 37-63.

7 For a thorough discussion of oral traditions among the northern Nguni, see CarolynHamilton, 'Ideology, oral traditions and the struggle for power in the early Zulukingdom' (MA thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985).

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICS 471

states.8 According to Maggs, the most significant shifts indicated in thearchaeological record are the colonization of extensive Natal interior grass-lands in the early nineteenth century, associated probably with the spread ofmaize; the increase in stone structures; and the growing use of metal.Reviewing the situation in what is today Natal, Maggs drew on Portuguesesources which indicated that the coastal population was organized into smallpolitical units at the end of the sixteenth century, but he pointed out that oraltraditions suggest that larger-scale units could be found further inland.9These were politically unstable — but then so were the nineteenth centurychiefdoms of the Xhosa and the northern Nguni, including, at least until1840, the Zulu.

Those who argue for a radical social transformation commonly point to thereplacement of a lineage and clan based form of social organization by a state-imposed territorial system. This thesis has been taken over by historiansfrom anthropologists. Hilda Kuper, for instance, summed up Swazi historyin terms of three stages:

(1) the period of migration of Bantu kinsmen organized into small patrilineal clans;(2) the contact of different clans and the growth of rival clan heads into petty chiefswith non-clansmen among their subjects; and (3) the dominance of one clan andthe organization of subjects on a military non-kinship basis under the leadershipof the head of the ruling clan.10

This kind of argument is familiar in African historiography. It derives froma classical anthropological theory, which held that all human societies wereoriginally organized on the basis of blood ties. Very primitive communitieswere little more than extended families, but most societies, for much ofhuman history, were made up of corporate groups recruited by unilinealdescent: 'clans' or 'gentes'. At last, however, a great revolution occurred inthe more advanced societies, and the clan system gave way to a state whichcontrolled a particular territory. I have traced the history of this intellectualfantasy elsewhere, and criticized the notion that lineages ever formed thebasis for social organization. I have also shown specifically that there is noevidence for primordial lineage and clan-based societies in southern Africa.11

Hammond-Tooke has developed this criticism and directed it specifically tothe work of southern African historians.12 The relevance of this critique inthe present context is evident enough. If there was no aboriginal system ofclans and lineages that the states destroyed, what is the basis for arguing thata social revolution occurred ?

We urgently require a sceptical reassessment of the thesis that a social andpolitical revolution did take place among the northern Nguni peoples of

8 Martin Hall, The Changing Past: Farmers, Kings and Traders in Southern Africa,200-1860 (Cape Town, 1987), 124-8.

9 T. Maggs, 'The Iron Age farming communities', in Duminy and Guest, Natal andZululand, 28-48.

10 Hilda Kuper, An African Aristocracy : Rank Among the Swazi (London, 1947), 11.11 See A. Kuper, Wives for Cattle: Bridewealth and Marriage in Southern Africa

(London, 1982), ch. 4; A. Kuper, 'Lineage theory: a critical retrospect', Annual Reviewfor Anthropology, 11 (1982), 71-95. The development of this theory is the subject of mybook, The Invention of Primitive Society : Transformations of an Illusion (London, 1988).

12 D. W. Hammond-Tooke, 'In search of the lineage: the Cape Nguni case', Man, xix(1984), 77-93-

472 ADAM KUPER

southern Africa in the late eighteenth century. Changes of scale may beidentified, but these need not have entailed major social and politicaltransformations.

More attention must be paid to possible regional continuities. Historianshave tended to follow the trajectory of a single political dynasty, but if oneconsiders, for example, the set of political systems that rose and fell amongthe northern Nguni peoples in the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, rather than focusing obsessively on the Zulu, it is evident that aseries of similarly constituted polities confronted each other. The Mthethwa,Ndwandwe and Ngwane chiefdoms of northern Natal are generally treatedtoday as precursors of the Zulu political model, but the Hlubi of the Natalinterior offer another parallel and probably independent case.13 There mayhave been other, even earlier examples of similar political systems, which,however, left no institutions behind them to preserve their historicaltraditions. Political systems contemporary with the early Zulu state, in-cluding such well-known examples as the Ndebele of Mzilikazi, the variousNgoni migrants chieftains, and the Swazi, were organized on similar lines.They are often assumed to have borrowed Zulu forms, but may ratherrepresent parallel developments of a common, long-established model ofsocio-political organization. In short, the argument has been that the Zulusystem derived from the innovating Mthwethwa, and was borrowed byneighbours and seceding chiefs. An alternative hypothesis might be thatthese similar systems - including the Mthethwa, Ndwandwe, Ngwane andZulu - emerged in parallel, under similar historical stimuli, from a commonnorthern Nguni historical model, and without radical structural changes.

Another indication of continuities comes at a lower, more domestic levelof social organization. I tend to agree with Bryant that the systems of kinship,marriage and household organization of the northern Nguni remainedremarkably stable among all the peoples of the region for whom we havereliable information throughout the nineteenth and in some cases well intothe twentieth centuries. I do not endorse his characterization of thesecontinuities, for he was a prisoner of the clan model, but the persistence ofsimilar domestic institutions throughout the culture area in the modernperiod suggests that there are continuities with earlier institutional forms.

In this paper I shall focus on a relatively neglected social and politicalinstitution, the 'house', by which I mean both the physical homestead, laidout according to enduring conventions, and also the social group that isassociated with it. Archaeologists have demonstrated that the physicalorganization of the south-eastern Bantu residential unit has been continuousfor perhaps a thousand years. Similarly structured homestead and villagesites continued to provide the basis of domestic organization throughout thenineteenth century amongst all the northern Nguni peoples. Ethnologicalstudies have shown that the 'house' served as a residential site, a base forcrucial kinship and domestic institutions, and an economic unit. It provideda physical crystallization of family history, and the geography of the housesin a locality mapped the nodes of contemporary social networks. In its layoutit modelled - displayed, one might say - ritual values and ideas about the

13 John Wright and Andrew Manson, The Hlubi Chiefdom in Zululand-Natal: AHistory (Ladysmith, 1983).

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICS 473

organization of the world. I shall argue that it also served as a model for theorganization of the state.

This emphasis on the residential local grouping is in line with a con-temporary anthropological tendency to treat what has come to be termed the'house' as a major unit of social organization. There is a terminologicaldifficulty here, for in southern Africa ethnology the convention is to speak ofa polygynous ' homestead' organized into a set of semi-autonomous ' houses',each of which is established by a major wife of the homestead head. I shallfollow the established conventions for the rest of this paper. In theanthropological literature, however, the 'house' is the local family com-munity, and also its residential structures. The idea is that this domesticsettlement forms the crucial unit in economy, kinship system and regionalpolitical organization; and that its layout is a symbolic representation ofprinciples of the socio-cosmic system. It is a far richer and more realisticanalytical concept than the old notions of the 'lineage' or 'local descentgroup', and has the great advantage that it seems to correspond verygenerally with indigenous ideas about social organization.14

There is a methodological issue here, that needs to be made explicit. Thehistorical method used by almost all contemporary students of southernAfrica is directed to the identification and explication of change. I aminterested rather in regional structure continuities, and in a Braudelianhistory of the long term. This leads me to make comparisons betweenneighbouring social systems at different points in time. I would askhistorians of a different persuasion to suspend their methodological objec-tions and to consider my results, which are susceptible to empirical tests thatemploy their preferred procedures.

II

In 1980 I published an analysis of the relationship between the lay-out of thesouthern Bantu homestead and the social organization of the domestic group,based on the comparison of a large number of descriptions drawn from awide culture area, and recorded at different times over the past century anda half.15 The comparison revealed that beneath the temporal and regionalvariations lay a single fundamental structure, common to all; and whereethnographic evidence was adequate it was possible to show that the samesymbolic values were being deployed throughout the region.

14 For some relevant early Africanist work upon which this new discourse built, seeJ. Goody (ed.), The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (Cambridge, 1958);R. F. Gray and P. H. Gulliver (eds.), The Family Estate in Africa : Studies in the Role ofProperty in Family Structure and Lineage Continuity (London, 1964). The modernargument was inspired largely by Levi-Strauss and he provides a convenient summary ofhis views in the entry 'Maison', in Pierre Bonte and Michel Izard (eds.), Dictionnaire deI'ethologie et de Vanthropologie (Paris, 1991). See also his essay ' L'organisation sociale desKwakiutl', in La voie des masques (Paris, 1984); and several essays in his collection,Anthropology and Myth (Oxford, 1987). Cf. P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice(Cambridge, 1990), especially 271-83; C. Macdonald (ed.), De la hutte au palais (Paris,1987); S. Gudeman and A. Rivera, Conversations in Columbia : The Domestic Economy inLife and Text (Cambridge, 1990).

18 'Symbolic dimensions of the Southern Bantu homestead', Africa, L (1980), 8-23,reprinted as chapter 10 ('The system on the ground') in Wives for Cattle (London, 1982).

474 ADAM KUPERThe chief hut is placed at the apex of the settlement, which is also usually

both the highest and the westernmost point. The sacred elements of thesettlement — graves of ancestors, places of sacrifice — are also concentratedhere. The other huts are arranged in a horseshoe around a central space, thefocus of the settlement, which is occupied by a cattle byre and mens'assembly place. Women cannot normally enter the cattle byre, whichrepresents the male and agnatic principle in the community. There is, then,an opposition between the central core of the settlement - the cattle-byre andchief hut - which are associated with the homestead head and his fathers andsons, and the periphery, which is associated with the wives. These domesticquarters arranged around the cattle-byre are divided by the inhabitants intotwo or three sections: a right, a left, and perhaps a central section. The rightis always of higher status than the left. Within either side, those units nearerthe apex have a higher status than those placed below them.

The social group which occupies the homestead is in the ideal case apolygynous family, and the various wives are distributed about the home-stead in accordance with their relative status. The top-bottom, left-right,centre—periphery axes are used to mark off units within the homestead.

Thomas Huffman and, later, other archaeologists have identified this basicstructure - now known among archaeologists as the ' Southern Bantu CattlePattern'-throughout the region, and going back some thousand years.16

There are clearly significant differences between such domestic settlementsand the royal capitals, central towns or ritual settlements which are found inthe larger southern African chieftaincies. Nevertheless, even these royalsettlements embody some of the same symbolic spatial dimensions as thehomestead.

The central cattle pattern takes various forms in south-east Africa (asignificant difference occurring between Sotho-speaking and Nguni-speak-ing regions), and there are also more local variants, each realizing the basicstructure in a particular fashion. I turn now to the Zulu case.

I l lAn important but neglected model of the Zulu house and polity wasproposed half a century ago by the anthropologist J. F. Holleman.17 In 1940Holleman published a paper entitled 'Die twee-eenheidsbeginsel in diesociale en politieke samelewing van die Zulu', based on recently-completedethnographic field research. It appeared in the same number of Bantu Studiesas Gluckman's 'Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand'. However,while Gluckman's paper became something of a classic, Holleman's at leastequally significant analysis has been largely ignored. This first paper wasfollowed up by a two-part article which appeared in 1941, again in BantuStudies, under the title 'Die Zulu Isigodi'. Part one of this article has

16 See, e.g. T. Huffman, 'Archaeological evidence and conventional explanations ofsouthern Bantu settlement patterns', Africa, LVI (1986), 280-98; M. Hall, The ChangingPast, 69-73.

17 J. F. Holleman, 'Die twee-einheidsbeginsel in die sosiale en politieke samelweingvan die Zulu', Bantu Studies, xiv (1940), 31-75; 'Die Zulu isigodi', Bantu Studies, xv(1941), 91-118, 245-276.

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICS 475

Up/West

Indlunkulu - Great hut/

Right

Sibaya - Cattle-byre

Left

Down/EastFig. i. The symbolic dimensions of the Swazi homestead, (from A. Kuper, Wives for

Cattle (London, 1982), 146).

recently been republished in English,18 but while the translation is mostwelcome it is marred by the introduction of the misleading term ' lineage'where Holleman wrote of the family, or family-branches.

One reason for the neglect of Holleman's papers is perhaps that they werepublished in Afrikaans, though that should surely not have been a barrier toSouth African readers. A more serious problem was that the theoreticalframework, largely implicit in the papers, would have been unfamiliar tomost of the readership. Holleman's father, Professor F. D. Holleman, wasa Leiden man, one of the famous group of Leiden Indonesianists -anthropologists and lawyers - who developed a proto-structuralist accountof Indonesian cultures. This was derived largely from their reading ofMauss, Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown; and Levi-Strauss has acknowledgedit as an anticipation of his own work. The crucial elements in the Leidentheory which Holleman borrowed were perhaps these:

(a) Social systems are represented in folk models which are oftenconcretely expressed in art and architecture.

(b) These models are frequently constructed on the basis of a series ofdual oppositions.

(c) The same principles — the same structures — can be uncovered inapparently diverse fields of social life (for example, in domestic and politicalorganization, in the classification of plants or animals, in the arrangement ofa homestead, in the symbolic acts of a ritual, and in the array of regimentsgoing out to do battle).

Holleman introduced his paper 'Die twee-eenheidsbeginsel' with thestatement that ' intensive research into the nature and structure of the Zulu

18 J. F. Holleman, 'The structure of the Zulu ward', African Studies, xiv (1986),IO9-33-

476 ADAM KUPER

Fig. 2. A Zulu royal settlement-Mgungundlovu. This plan of Mgungundlovu,Dingane's royal homestead, taken from James Stuart's book, uKulumetule, is adetailed reconstruction based on a number of interviews. The representation issomewhat idealized, for the settlement was actually elliptical in shape. The mainsection of the settlement - equivalent to the Indlunkulu in a normal homestead - isbounded by E, the fence of the white isiGodlo, where the handmaidens of the Kinglived. Within it was the black isiGodlo (fenced by F), where his own women lived,and which no other man might enter. G was the guardhouse for the isiGodlo, H thehouse of the King, and J the house of his mother. On both sides of the settlementwere the soldiers' huts, marked N. Barracks fences are marked W. The twocommanders occupied the main huts on the right and left sides, O and P,respectively. Cattle were kept within the settlement. K L was the byre for cattledue for slaughter, and the place where the King was washed. Other cattle were heldin the side byres marked M. Q was the abattoir enclosure and R the milkingenclosures. S was the enclosure in which soldiers danced at milking time. Thethree small huts A, B and C were used for food. D was the perimeter fence of thesettlement. T were gate posts and U the central dividing gate post. Cf. JohnParkington and Mike Cronin, 'The size and layout of Mgungundlovu 1829-1838',South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series, in (1979), 133-48.

THE 'HOUSE* AND ZULU POLITICS 477

homestead — umuzi — reveals a division on both social and territorial prin-ciples into two sections'.19

A mature, horseshoe-shaped homestead incorporates four or five mainwives, each of whom occupies a 'house' which takes its name from the titleof the oldest son, its heir and most important representative. These housesare arranged as though an imaginary line was drawn through the homesteadfrom the gate which gives entry to the cattle-byre, at the bottom, to the greathouse, which is at the apex of the horseshoe. This great house, theIndlunkulu, is associated with the homestead head, though it is actuallyoccupied by his mother, or if she is dead by his great wife. The left-hand halfof the homestead is termed the ikhohlwa (or uhlangothi), while the right handside is the isibay' esikhulu (literally, great cattle-byre). The right-hand half issuperior in status to the left-hand half. The Indlunkulu represents the unityof the homestead, and it is the repository of ritual objects and the site ofappeals to the ancestors.

The homestead head will generally occupy a separate hut immediately tothe right of the Indlunkulu. Beside his personal hut is the dwelling of his mainwife, the Inkosana house. These constitute the topmost cluster of huts on theright-hand side of the homestead. To their right, and closer to the entry tothe cattle-byre, is the house of the umnawenkosana family, instituted by themarriage of the homestead head to his third wife. Her house is subordinateto the inkosana. (Umnawe means younger brother.) Immediately to the leftof the Indlunkulu house is the house of the ikhohlwa family, belonging to thesecond-married wife of the household head. Below it, and also on the left, liesthe hut of its ' younger brother' family, the umnawekhohlwa family, institutedby the marriage of the homestead head to his fourth wife.

The Indlunkulu represents the homestead as a whole. The homestead headis its leader, but the settlement is associated particularly with the homestead'mother'. Each side of the homestead constitutes a distinct, though formallysubordinate, organizational unit, the two houses in each section being linked(as senior to junior). Each side also forms a unit for purposes of inheritance.Failing an heir in the senior house in either section, the succession passesto the junior house in that section. The right-hand section inherits thelion's share of the estate of the homestead head, and always provides theheir, but property is also allocated to each house during the lifetime of thehead.

Other family members and commoners could be drawn into the system,being allocated a place within a particular 'side' of a homestead, or beingallowed to form an independent homestead under the authority of one of themain houses. But it is always the household structure of the dominantfamily which gives form to the broader settlement and demarcates the linesof political affiliation.

Holleman then pointed out that the left—right opposition — a synchroniccontrast - coexists with a diachronic contrast between the first-built andenduring element in the homestead, the Indlunkulu, and the right and leftsections, which are destined to move away to become the core of newhomesteads, which are termed 'heads'. There is also sometimes a furtherelement in the structure, the house of the uyise wabantu. It is associated with

19 J. F. Holleman, 'Die twee-einheidsbeginsel', 31.

478 ADAM KUPER

Fig. 3. The Zulu homestead, (after Holleman, 'Die twee-eenheidsbeginsel' 32).There are many similar representations, but one of particular interest is to befound in R. C. A. Samuelson, Long, Long Ago (Durban, 1929), illustrated betweenpp. 144-5 ar>d explicated on pp. 249-53. (Samuelson also provides a detailedaccount of some royal homesteads.) A recent paper by Kathleen Mack, Tim Maggsand Dana Oswald, 'Homesteads in two rural Zulu communities: an ethno-archaeological investigation', Natal Museum Journal of Humanities, in (1991),79-129), deals with regional variation in homestead structure. Key: Indlun-kulu-great hut: 1. Indlunkulu; 2. Ilawu (sleeping hut for homestead head).Right-hand section - Isibay' esikhulu: 3. Hut of inkosana (first son of greatwife, head of right-hand section); 4. Hut of umnawenkosana (head of the juniorpart of the right-hand section, the 'hand' of the inkosana); 5. Ilawu (bachelor hutwhere the inkosana and his younger brother actually sleep); 6-7. Huts of otherfamilies in the homestead associated with the right-hand section. Left-handsection - Uhlangothi: 8. Family hut of ikhohlwa (senior son of major left-handwife, and head of the left-hand section of the homestead); 9. Family hut of theumnawekhohlwa, the head of the junior part of the left-hand section; 10. Bachelorhut where the ikhohlwa and his umnawe sleep. 11-12. Huts of other familiesassociated with the left-hand section of the homestead.

the Indlunkulu, and its heir (whose mother may be the last-married mainwife) will remain in the old homestead as guardian of the ancestor shrines.20

The formal procedure is that the homestead head allows each side of thehomestead to establish a separate homestead, as the families of the sonsmature. The two main houses of the right-hand section establish onehomestead. In this new homestead the senior son is associated with the right-hand half, while his younger half-brother from the same side establishes the

20 Cf. Bryant on the u Yise wamuzi, in ' The Zulu family and state organization', BantuStudies, L(i923), 47~5i-

THE HOUSE AND ZULU POLITICS 479

left-hand half. A similar process leads to the establishment of a newhomestead for the old left-hand section of the original homestead, and it isalso divided into a senior right-hand section, for the ikhohlwa, and a left-hand section for the umnawenkhohlwa. In due course each of these home-steads splits, the left-hand section establishing its own homestead.

The head of the original, core homestead is formally the umnumzana, orfamily head of the whole cluster of related homesteads, but in the course oftime, and especially after his death, these relationships of relative authoritybecome attenuated, each homestead gaining greater autonomy, though theoriginal homestead, now under the uyise wabantu, retains a ritual pre-eminence.

IVTo explore the relationship between this model of the 'house' and thepolitical process among the Zulu, Holleman offered a case-study of theButhelezi tribe. Shaka's father, Senzangakhona, established Nsokaze as theadministrative headquarters for a section of his territory. Shaka placed hisinduna yomhlaba - prime minister - Ngengelela-Buthelezi there as regionalchief. Ngengelela established four satellite homesteads, termed 'heads', eachunder one of his wives. These corresponded to the four homesteads whichemerge from the traditional Zulu homestead, and each was associated with aparticular category of son (inkosana, Umnawenkosana, ikholhwa and un-mawekhohlwa). As the fortunes of the Zulu state changed, the Buthelezifamily successfully consolidated its local control, and also provided a numberof key functionaries for the central government. The original four satellitehomesteads split in turn, yielding new dependent, chiefly homesteads. Eachserved as an administrative centre for a ward of the chiefdom.21

Holleman pointed out that the tendency to continuous fission is in practicelimited by migrations or by demographic or political circumstances. Thereis also a counter-process, reinforcing central control. In each generation theruling homestead introduces its own satellites at a superior level, over theheads of the minor satellites which derived one or two generations ago fromprevious ruling homesteads. Appointees of the ruling chief incorporate theexisting homesteads and their satellites under their local control.

Holleman suggested that similar processes may be discerned even at thelevel of the Zulu state itself. The king established royal towns across thecountry, each under a specific wife, to each of whom an administrative officerwas allocated. These served as administrative centres and as military campsfor particular regiments. They were ordered hierarchically in relation to eachother. The chief induna of a town which emerged from the right-hand sideof the capital would have been superior in status to the chief induna of a towndrawn from the left-hand side.

Holleman noted that the regimental system of the Zulu exhibits thesame 'two-in-one' structure. Each district raised a part of the regiment, itsiviyo, and these were often quartered locally, in the district capital, whichtherefore was home to several regimental divisions, but to no complete

21 This particular case-study is expanded, with detailed genealogical and censusmaterial, in the two-part paper published by Holleman in 1941. The English translationof part one of that paper (Holleman, 1986) fills out the brief outline I have given here.

480 ADAM KUPER

regiments (which assembled only at the national capital, where some werequartered as whole regiments). Some regimental sections in a district wouldtherefore be associated with right-hand households, others with left-handhouseholds, and this determined their relative status. Whole regiments werealso classified as "left-hand" and "right-hand" regiments. When regimentswere encamped at the capital, they were quartered in right and left sections.Within each section the higher status regiments were placed closer to theapex of the homestead.22

A senior man in an older regiment acts as adviser and guide to a juniorregiment, with which it is linked, and the leading general of the Zulu army,uKhambi-Mnguni, suggested to Holleman that this man had the role of theuyise wabantu, the son who remains at the old homestead, and serves as aritual centre for its satellites - another clear indication, as Holleman com-mented, that similar structural principles are at work in the regimental andhomestead organization.23

VOther sources on the northern Nguni support this analysis. I shall justmention two, which, like Holleman's, have been rather neglected.

One is the work of John Barnes on the processes of house and statesegmentation among the Ngoni of Zwangendaba, who left Zululand in 1821and eventually established themselves in the Zambia/Malawi border region.Barnes was influenced by the British lineage theorists and his analysis of theNgoni adapts the theory of segmentary structures, derived from lineagestudies. However, he is quite clear that the Ngoni did not organize on thebasis of segmentary lineages:The old alignment of agnatic lineages disappeared, for the great majority of Ngonijoined the system by capture, not by birth. In its place a quasi-agnatic residentialsystem was evolved, in which men and women bore allegiance not to their ownagnatic senior but to their lord or captor. This system was, however, tied in withan arrangement of royal homesteads which in itself was a development of thedivision of polygynous households into great, left- and right-hand 'houses'.24

Leaving aside the probably false notion that a segmentary lineage systemused to operate in pre-Shakan Zululand, the gist of Barnes' argument is thatonce the Ngoni broke away from the Zulu their political system was based onresidential units, each of which was associated with a particular 'head', aroyal homestead. These royal homesteads were generated by the processes ofsegmentation within the royal family itself.25

A third neglected source is D. H. Reader's Zulu Tribe in Transition. Basedon a Cambridge doctoral thesis, and supervised by Fortes, Schapera andJ. D. Krige, the book describes the kinship and political system of a minorZulu chieftainship, the Makhanya, a Qwabe offshoot. Although influenced,like Barnes, by lineage theory, Reader insisted that only the 'lineage' of the

22 Holleman, 'Die twee-eeinheidsbeginsel', 65-7. A case in point can be reconstructedin some detail from the Stuart Archive. See C. de B. Webb and J. B. Wright (eds.), TheJames Stuart Archive (4 vols.) (Pietermaritzburg and Durban, 1976-86), iv, 84-6.

23 Holleman, 'Die twee-eenheidsbeginsel', 65.24 J. A. Barnes, Politics in a Changing Society : A Political History of the Fort Jameson

Ngoni (London, 1954), 6. 25 Ibid. 9-12.

THE 'HOUSE* AND ZULU POLITICS 481royal family is structurally significant: otherwise, 'all descent groups arelevelled down by the sole criterion of tribal membership'.26

The Makhanya fled from Shaka into Natal, under a leader named Duze.Reader was able to reconstruct the kin-based structure of the polity in somedetail from the time of Duze's heir, Makutha (1875-1909). Makuthaestablished four royal homesteads, situated from east to west, and in the greathomestead he placed Mtambo, his heir. Mtambo subsequently changed theorder of seniority amongst Makutha's homesteads, in order to regulate thesuccession.27 Reader hinged his description of the political system on theordering of territorial units, which were defined with reference to the ' house'system of the reigning chief's family.

VICan this model be applied to the Zulu royal house? One difficulty is thatpublished genealogies often specify only fathers and children, not disting-uishing the offspring of individual wives, and not grouping the wives into'houses'. Such information must be reconstructed piecemeal, but Bryantprovides many useful pointers, and rich data are available in the records ofJames Stuart's informants.28 Some provide 'house' references for eachgeneration, and if they do this then they tend to list four houses.

Bryant29 named four residentially distinct sections of the Zulu royal house:the Zulu, Biyela, eMgazini and eGazini. These appear in one of Stuart'scomposite genealogies as the four ' houses' of Ndaba (the Zulu royal sectionbeing inherited by Jama).30 Stuart's informant Mmemi also listed fourhouses of Jama: those of Senzangakhona, Sojisa, Nobongoza and Nkwelo.Nkwelo's is identified as the left-hand house.31

What, however, of the ' houses' of Senzangakhona, the seed-bed of Zuluhistory in its great period ? This is still very doubtful country, but one thingwhich does stand out is the association of several wives with the great wife,Mkabi. Bryant lists Nandi, Langazana and Bibi as junior wives associatedwith Mkabi.32 Their sons included Shaka, Magwaza and Sigujana. Therewas another important wife, married later, Sondaba, of the Buthelezi. Herson Bakuza was heir apparent, and therefore presumably of the great house.However, Bakuza was killed by Dingiswayo.33 Senzangakhona next nomin-ated Sigujana as his heir. Sigujana actually succeeded Senzangakhona, butwas almost immediately killed by Shaka.34 It is arguable that Shaka wasreally next in line, as a son affiliated to the great house of Senzangakhona.

The mothers of Dingane, Mhlangana and Mpande are the only heir-bearing wives who are not listed by Bryant as being affiliated to the greathouse. If they did all belong to the left-hand section, this may help to accountfor their subsequent alliance against Shaka. Finally, Senzangakhona married

26 D. H. Reader, Zulu Tribe in Transition : The Makhanya of Southern Natal (Man-chester, 1966), 90. "• Ibid. 87-90.

28 Four volumes of the James Stuart Archive see n. 22, have been published by theUniversity of Natal Press. More volumes are planned. This is a resource which hastransformed the basis of Zulu historical scholarship. 29 Bryant, Olden Times, 39-40.

30 The James Stuart Archive, vol. ii, 210.31 The James Stuart Archive, vol. iii, 265. 32 Bryant, Olden Times, 45-62.33 Ibid. 55. 34 Ibid. 119-20.

482 ADAM KUPER

NdabaI

Sections:

Sections:

Xoko(Biyela)

Jama(Zulu)

INtopo

(eMagazini)

Zivalele(eGazini)

Nkwelo(Left-hand)

Sojiyisa(Mandhlakazi)

Major wives of Senzangakhona(Great House)

Mkabi, Nandi,Langazana, Bibi

SonsSigujanaShakaMagwaza

Sondaba

Bakuza

Major wives of Mpande**

Ngqumbazi Nomontshali

INobongoza Senzangakhona

(Zulu)

Mpikase, Mzondwase,Songiya

DinganaMhlanganaNzibeMpande

Fudukazi Gudayi

SonsCetshwayo

DabulamanziMtonga

* Senzangakhona also married a woman in the eGazini line, and had a son Ggugqu,whom Mpande murdered.

* * Shaka allocated a wife to Mpande, who bore Mbuyazi.Fig. 4. Zulu royal genealogy. This is a composite and selective genealogy, which isintended simply to help the reader understand the case-studies which follow.Kings are shown in bold type. Sources: Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal(London, 1929), 29-62; Hamilton, 'Ideology, oral traditions and the struggle forpower in the early Zulu kingdom' (MA thesis, University of the Witwatersrand,1985), especially chapter 7; James Stuart Archive, ii, 210—11; iii, 110, 265-6, 273-6.

a woman from the collateral, eGazini, line established by Ndaba. Mpandekilled this woman and her son, Gqugqu.35 This may have constituted thefourth house of Senzangakhona.

VIIIn the tradition of the Leiden school, Holleman's emphasis was on folkmodels of social structures. My view is that the homestead and its houseswere also crucial components of the political process. The 'house' system isa segmentary structure. Its nodes are female-centred units, clusters of wivesand their heirs. These nodes represent the points of impact of marriage

Ibid. 37, 43.

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICS 483

alliances made by the homestead head. To understand the political dynamicsof the great homesteads, one must therefore pay attention to the pattern ofroyal and noble marriages, and to the political position of leading women.

The restrictions on marriage among the Nguni are often described in theold language of clan sociology, as a ban on marriages into the clans - orperhaps the lineages - of direct ancestors. The Swazi are an obviousexception. They had an ideal system of preferential marriage betweencousins with a common ancestor three generations back.36 There areindications that a comparable system operated in nineteenth century Zulu-land and Natal.

One of Stuart's informants describes an intriguing moment in themarriage politics of the Qwabe royal house. The chief's heir, Phakathwayo, acontemporary of Shaka, married a patrilateral parallel cousin with whom heshared a direct ancestor five generations back. This proved acceptable.However, two members of his house wished to marry patrilateral parallelcousins with a common great-grandfather. This was forbidden, and theyboth eloped with their chosen brides and joined the Zulu.37

Similar principles seem to have operated in the Zulu royal family.According to Bryant, Ndaba married one of his daughters into a juniorbranch of the royal family. He also established a separate settlement underhis first-born son, Xoko, which he named the emGazini. One of Senzan-gakhona's wives, Mehlana, was descended from the emGazini, and Dinganetook two emGazini women into his isiGodlo.38

Such marriages must be related to the processes of homestead and familyfission. As the houses of new chiefs succeeded at the apex of the hierarchy,they propelled some peripheral houses of earlier regimes to the very edge ofthe royal family. After five generations they were extruded from the royalfamily and became marriageable. It is significant that Grout, Bryant andStuart all noted that chiefly genealogies were normally of only five-generation depth.39 More closely related royal houses did not intermarry,however, and heirs were normally produced by wives who had been takenfrom outside the royal family. These wives were often foreign princesses.

The marriages of princesses were not like those of commoners. 'Zuluprincesses in olden times', wrote Bryant, 'evinced aversion to the bonds ofmatrimony and preferred to remain queens... Their particular penchant wasto go off and, sometimes, though rarely, get a child, then leave it behind andreturn home. There they were received like conquerors, and were rewardedwith separate kraals of their own, where they reigned henceforth asfreelances.'40 In 1856, Bleek noted in his diary 'that there are a number ofold princesses who never marry, I think, for political reasons'.41 Notableexamples were Senzangakhona's sisters, Mkabayi and Mmama, who featuredin the turbulent years of the early Zulu state as heads of major royalsettlements, as did Senzangakhona's widows Langazana and Mkabi. Called'mother' (as were the widows of former chiefs), such women occupied a

36 K u p e r , Wives for Cattle, ch . 7. 37 The James Stuart Archive, vol . iii, 2 4 9 - 5 7 .38 Bryant, Olden Times, 39-40.39 Lewis Grout, The IsiZulu : A Grammar of the Zulu Language (London, 1859), 377;

Bryant, Olden Times, 34-5; James Stuart Archive, vol. iv, 169.40 Bryant, Olden Times, 41.41 O. Spohr (ed.), The Natal Diaries of Dr. W. H. I. Bleek (Cape Town, 1965), 82.

484 ADAM KUPER

position comparable in some ways to that of the 'mother' of an ordinaryhomestead head. There are evident parallels with the position of the SwaziQueen Mother, who has often been represented as a unique figure among thenorthern Nguni.

But Bryant was perhaps misleading when he suggested that when prin-cesses returned to their paternal homes they left their children behind them.The sons of such women commonly returned to live for extended periodswith their maternal kin. But they could hope eventually to go back to theirfather's chieftaincy and claim the succession, with the support of theirpowerful maternal relatives, when the time was ripe. When Jobe died,Dingiswayo returned to his maternal people to prepare his challenge for theMthethwa succession.42 At the time of Bukuza's nomination as heir toSenzangakhona, he was on a visit to his maternal people, the Buthelezi(where, however, he died in a skirmish with the Mthethwa).43 Shaka'smother, Nandi, ended her wanderings among the Mthethwa, where she tookrefuge with her father's sister under the headman Ngomane,44 and Shakaeventually seized the Zulu throne with the crucial assistance of his maternalhalf-brother, Ngwadi, and of Ngomane, who became his first prime minister.

Royal marriages are therefore not to be read in the Panglossian terms ofmuch anthropological discourse, as straightforward 'alliances'. Potentialsuccessors mobilized maternal kin in their support. A chief who despatcheda wife to a rival was making a political intervention, aspiring to control thesuccession to the chiefly house into which the princess was introduced. Therise of the Zulu coincided with the defeat and decline of Dingiswayo'sMthethwa, amongst whom Shaka had made his early career. The Zulu wereconcerned to maintain control over the remnant of this powerful chiefdom.Shaka imposed Mlandela as Mthethwa chief, and Dingane sent Mlandela asbrides two sisters of Senzangakhona and also Shaka's full sister, Nomcoba.Mpande followed up with the presentation of three other daughters ofSenzangakhona, one of whom, his own full sister Ntikili, produced the heirto the Mthethwa throne.45

Princesses made problematic wives. They were regarded as potentialtraitors against their husbands, on behalf of their brothers. Several traditionstell of chiefs betrayed by princesses who had been sent to marry them by rivalchiefs. That is how Zwide, the Ndwandwe leader, is said to have encom-passed the fall of Shaka's patron, Dingiswayo. His contemporary Matiwane,the Ngwane chief, is reported to have placed a similar trick on Mthimkulu,the Hlubi chief.46 While these stories - which hinge on the capture of seminalfluid for magical use - are presumably not to be read too literally, they drawattention to the tensions which arose when chiefs married foreign princesses.

This discussion of royal marriages suggests a fresh perspective on thecurious refusal of Shaka and Dingane to marry. Or were they, in fact, single ?Both men accumulated women into their isiGodlo, which were located in thepart of the homestead typically reserved for wives, and they enjoyedexclusive sexual access to these women. Moreover, Shaka himself apparentlymarried two Swazi princesses sent to him by Sobhuza: that, at any rate, is the

42 Carolyn Hamilton, 'Ideology', 120. 43 Bryant, Olden Times, 55. 44 Ibid. 63.45 Ibid. 203; Stuart Archives, vol. ii, 216.46 Bryant, Olden Times, 163; James Stuart Archive,!, 176-7; ii, 186-7; i»> 232, 245; iv,

106, 198, 218.

THE 'HOUSE* AND ZULU POLITICS 485

Swazi interpretation.47 However, the kings did not pay bridewealth forisiGodlo women. The women were called ' sisters' and might be married onto other men, who did pay bridewealth for them, to the king. The marriagesof at least some isiGodlo women also had political significance.48

Both Shaka and Dingane married isiGodlo girls to their brother Mpande,and Stuart's informants repeatedly suggest that these wives were supposedto rise up heirs to, respectively, Shaka and Dingane. Shaka allocated awoman described by one informant as his betrothed, and according to severalinformants she was to raise his heir. She bore Mbuyazi, whom Mpandeidentified as Shaka's son; and Mbuyazi became the leader of Cetshwayo'senemies in the civil wars of the 1850s. Dingane made an isiGodlo womanpregnant, according to some, and married her to Mpande. She was placed byMpande in the section of Mbuyazi's mother.49

Yet, crucially, Shaka and Dingane did not have children of their own.Shaka was reported to fear the rivalry of any sons, but that consideration maybe rephrased to suggest that he was not prepared to foster the political roleof rival contemporaries. Although he accepted (perhaps even demanded) twoof Sobhuza's daughters - including Sobhuza's beloved first-born - he subse-quently put them to death, apparently when one became pregnant.50

Unlike his formidable brothers, Mpande did marry. Hamilton's analysisshows that he had four main wives, each head of a particular homestead:Nomantshali, who as located first at Nodwengu, then at Mdumezulu;Fudukazi at Bulawayo; Gudayi at Ndabkwawaombe; and Cetshwayo'smother,Nqumbazi, at Gqikazi.51 The complex set-up at Gqikazi was de-scribed to Stuart by an informant named Mkebeni. Mpande's wives in hisgreat house were all originally based in his first homestead, Mlambongwenya,under his great wife, Ngqumbazi. Ngqumbazi was later sent to establish aresidence at Gqikazi, as chief wife in the right-hand house. One of her co-wives established the left-hand house at Gqikazi.

Cetshwayo was apparently the son of Ngqumbazi, but for some reason hewas ' taken from the stomach' of Ngqumbazi and placed with her junior co-wife, Zangusa, being ranked above Zangusa's own son, Dabulamanzi.Zangusa remained at Mlambongwenya 'until he [Cetshwayo] went out toform his own ikanda at oNdini. His mother [i.e. Zangusal]... went withhim... [She] became the chief wife at oNdini. [She]... now reported on theaffairs of the umuzi of her son, Cetshwayo; she now reported to Mbonde'sdaughter [Ngqumbazi] at Gqikazi the minor matters of the upper part of the

47 Hilda Kuper, An African Aristocracy, 14.48 The most interesting analysis of the isiGodlo and of marriage is to be found in

Hamilton, 'Ideology', ch. seven.49 James Stuart Archive, iii, 232, 245; iv, 48, 106, 198, 218.50 Bryant, Olden Times, 320-1; James Stuart Archive, i, 149-50; Hilda Kuper, An

African Aristocracy, 14.51 Hamilton, ' Ideology', 449. There was also the house of Hamu. Hamu was fathered

by Mpande for his full brother, Nzibe, who had died without an heir. Hamu was treatedby both Mpande and Cetshwayo as an independent chief, and even had his own isiGodlo.He became a major player in the Zululand of Cetshwayo. Nzibe would have representedthe junior house of Mpande's side of Senzangakhona's family, and so Hamu was a largelyautonomous baron in the generations of Mpande and Mpande's sons. See J. Laband andP. Thompson, 'The reduction of Zululand: 1878-1904', in Duminy and Guest, Nataland Zululand, 205-15; James Stuart Archive, iii, 267; iv, 117-8, 301.

486 ADAM KUPER

umuzi.>52 This is an instance of the segmentation of a homestead along theclassical lines described by Holleman.

VIIITo sum up, I have suggested that the Zulu 'house' - the homestead and itssegments — should be treated as one fundamental element in Zulu society inthe nineteenth century. The houses provided both the geographical and thestructural nodes of the society. The developmental cycle of the homesteadideally followed a set pattern, creating a fresh alignment of units in eachgeneration. The points of segmentation were provided by the 'houses', eachwith a chief wife and her designated heir. Each of these houses representedthe impact, within the homestead, of relationships with outside groups,whose leaders (the father and brothers of each wife) threw their weightbehind particular factions in the political processes within the family.

The conceptual model of the Zulu was dualistic. The homestead wasdivided into right and left sections, each with its own identity and destiny.This opposition was mapped into the layout of ordinary homesteads androyal settlements. It was carried through into the organization of regiments.

There was also a second political process, which was shaped by the systemof patron-client relationships that the Zulu termed Khonza. This linkedindividuals and homesteads and even subordinate chieftains to particularroyal homesteads, superimposing the homestead map of the royals upon thekingdom as a whole. It was by way of this system of Khonza allegiances thatthe segmentary politics of the royal family became the politics of the entirestate. The rivalries, succession disputes and civil wars of the nineteenthcentury were in essence the politics of the royal house writ large.

The same system may be identified in lesser chieftaincies, as Hollemanshowed for the Buthelezi and Reader for the Makhanya of Natal. The StuartArchives provide ample material for reconstructing similar political processesamong the Cele and other peoples. Other northern Nguni peoples evidentlyoperated by similar principles. I have mentioned Barnes' account of theNgoni, and indeed his analysis might well be used to illuminate the politicsof the Zulu. The Swazi and Ndebele seem to have run their affairs in a verysimilar fashion.

One conclusion suggested by this analysis is that the political system of theZulu, as it developed after Senzangakhona, did not constitute a revolutionarybreak with local traditions of social organization. An established, indeeduniversal, northern Nguni - perhaps pan-Nguni - house system was the basisof all the politics in the region in the nineteenth century. Through theoperation of patron-client relationships the house system could provide theframework for a polity of much greater range, without greatly changing itsbasic nature. This is not to imply that the system was static. Changes in scalemust have required innovation. Nevertheless, the core principles remainedconstant, and if the homestead base could provide the model for an ex-panding political system, it could, equally, prevent collapse into anarchy asthe inevitably unstable grand structure broke up. Reflecting on the fate of theZulu polity after the Anglo-Zulu war, Laband remarks that:

52 James Stuart Archive, iii, 203. Cf. 102-4, 2^7-

THE 'HOUSE' AND ZULU POLITICS 487

as the Zulu people were not dependent on centralized authority for the economicfunctioning of their homesteads, their way of life was secured as long as thehomestead structure survived. And as the Anglo-Zulu war was to show, thisconsideration all too frequently came before a commitment to the politicalstructure.63

SUMMARY

The rise of the Zulu power in the early nineteenth century has conventionally beentreated as the outstanding example of a contemporary southern African process of'state-formation', which was associated with revolutionary social changes. Thispaper advances an alternative view, that there were strong continuities withestablished forms of chieftaincy in the region, and in particular that the Zulupolitical system was based on a traditional, pan-Nguni homestead form oforganization.

The Zulu homestead was divided into right and left sections, each with its ownidentity and destiny. This opposition was mapped into the layout of ordinaryhomesteads and royal settlements. It was carried through into the organization ofregiments. The homestead and its segments provided both the geographical andthe structural nodes of the society. The developmental cycle of the homesteadideally followed a set pattern, creating a fresh alignment of units in eachgeneration. The points of segmentation were provided by the 'houses', constitutedfor each major wife and her designated heir. Each of these houses represented theimpact, within the homestead, of relationships sealed by marriage with outsidegroups, whose leaders threw their weight behind particular factions in the politicalprocesses within the family.

63 J. Laband, 'The cohesion of the Zulu polity under the impact of the Anglo-Zuluwar: a reassessment', Journal of Natal and Zulu History, vm (1985), 34.

AFH34