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QINGDAO TODAY
在线翻译:
szdaily -> Speak Shenzhen -> 
Shaka’s conquest
    2019-08-27  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

James Baquet

It is wrong to think that nothing happened on the vast African continent before European colonization. Kingdoms rose and fell, heroes emerged and were vanquished, peoples arose and assimilated — all the forces of history were in effect.

One of Africa’s greatest stories tells of Shaka Zulu and the Zulu Empire of South Africa. Born circa 1787, Shaka was the illegitimate son of a Zulu king, and grew up in his mother’s care in another empire, the Mthethwa. As a young man, he fought for the Mthethwa leader Dingiswayo. When Shaka’s father died in 1816, Dingiswayo helped him remove his half-brother (the legitimate heir) and become chief of the Zulu, though as a kind of vassal state to the Mthethwa.

As a young man, Dingiswayo had plotted against his own father and fled when his plans were discovered. In exile, he observed European fighting styles and as king adopted these techniques to create a more disciplined and effective army. As his general, Shaka learned these techniques well.

Dingiswayo was captured by a rival named Zwide and beheaded in 1817. The Mthethwa army was scattered, but its remnants reformed under Shaka.

With Dingiswayo’s death, Shaka created an alliance with the leaderless Mthethwa, but his success was not a foregone conclusion. It was not until April 1818 that he had enough support to go after Zwide, first at the Battle of Gqokli Hill, in which Shaka’s outnumbered army beat the Ndwandwe through superior strategy.

He hid his main force, causing the rebel leader to underestimate his strength and say that it would be “like butchering cattle in a kraal.” When Shaka sprung his reserve force on the Ndwandwe, it was in a pincers movement that came to be called “the beast’s horns,” a signature move of Shaka’s strategy. Shaka finally defeated Zwide in the Zulu Civil War of 1819-20.

Alas, Shaka began to behave erratically with the death of his mother, issuing unreasonable edicts and alienating his people. At last in 1828 he was assassinated by his half-brothers, one of whom became leader of an enlarged Zulu kingdom, which at Shaka’s death encompassed around 30,000 square kilometers.

Vocabulary:

Which words above mean:

1. born outside of marriage

2. something assumed

3. driving away, making enemies (of)

4. cattle enclosure or native village in southern Africa

5. servant

6. blended into a larger group

7. remains, what’s left

8. around, approximately

9. oddly, crazily

10. beaten

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