Each night during dinner, the local Zulu tribe entertained us with rousing traditional dance performances accompanied by the rhythmic beating of drums. This piqued our interest to learn more about Zulu culture, so when Chief Majuda approached us selling tickets to the Zulu Village down the road, we bought some. The Zulu are the largest ethnic group in South Africa with an estimated 10-12 million people living in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where we happened to be, so we were keen to learn more. The next afternoon after our morning safari, we walked to the nearby Zulu Village. This cultural center is staffed by local tribal members eager to share their history and culture with visitors . Several Zulu tribesmen dressed in leopard print tunics and cow hides complete with dangling tails, warmly greeted us at the entrance and after a handshake and bow, escorted us though the bamboo gate.
Chief Majuda welcomed us with the greeting ‘sawubona’ and a traditional Zulu handshake; shaking right hand to right hand while grasping his forearm with the left and slightly bowing. His hand felt different in my grip. I soon discovered why – he was actually six fingered; his hand had five normal sized fingers but a smaller sixth digit next to the baby finger. This genetic feature was unique to his tribe, he informed us.
Chief Majuda shared some Zulu history as we gathered around a portrait of a famous chief. Shaka was a powerful Zulu leader who united a loose confederation of tribes into a cohesive empire. By the 1820’s, the Zulu were a power to be respected – Shaka militarized the tribe through forced conscription, maintained a standing army and developed new weaponry and battle tactics. While under British occupation in the late 1870’s, envoys from the Crown demanded the Zulus, now under the leadership of Chief Cetshwayo, disband their military and accept British sovereignty. When Cetshwayo refused, war broke out. Chief Majuda proudly detailed the Zulu victory over the British at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, describing how 20,000 trained Zulu warriors, mostly equipped with spears and shields defeated 8000 British soldiers with state of the art rifles. Alas, the British reinforced, waged subsequent battles and ultimately won the war, dividing Zululand into separate sub kingdoms and encouraging intra tribal rivalry. This territory was fully absorbed into the British colony of Natal in 1897 and eventually became the Zulu homeland of KwaZulu under apartheid. When apartheid was abolished in 1994, KwaZulu was merged with the province of Natal to form today’s South African state of KwaZulu-Natal.
With the spirit of Isandlwana, we had the chance to bring our our inner warrior and try our hand at spear throwing – much harder than it seems to get a wooden stick with a metal tip to smoothly sail through the air without crashing, much less hit a target!
Next, we watched as two young men demonstrated stick fighting, the Zulu version of martial arts. Each combatant is armed with a stick and shield, with the object being to deflect the blows of your opponent while knocking the stick out of his hand. Once an opponent’s stick is lost, the match ends and the victor cannot hit his defenseless partner. The winner of the contest gets bragging rights as the Bull, the stronger of the pair. This martial art originated as a form of play between young cowherders, but today is a celebration of manhood for Zulu men. Stick fighting is often a part of Zulu wedding ceremonies serving as a friendly competition between the young men of the bride and bridegroom’s families.
Cows are an important part of Zulu culture. Traditionally, wealth was measured by the size of a family’s herd, cattle being important for food, clothing and status. A great marriage match was one where the groom provided a bride price, akin to a reverse dowry, of a negotiated number of heads of cattle to the bride’s family, the philosophy being that when a woman marries, her labor is lost to her family and should be compensated for. Today this practice, called ilobolo, is still practiced more as a symbol of pride and respect. We had great fun surmising with Chief Majuda how many heads of cattle I might be worth!
Zulu women dress differently depending on whether they are single, betrothed or married. An eligible, single woman wears a short skirt adorned with colorful beadwork with minimal coverage of her breasts, showcasing her body for a future husband. She wears her hair short. When a women is engaged she begins to grow her hair and covers her chest with a decorative cloth as a sign of respect to her in laws.
A married woman covers her body , wearing a longer skirt, clothed chest and head covering, to indicate to others that she is taken. The chief’s wife holds a prominent place in the tribe, and as befits a woman of importance, dresses more elegantly with a beaded headdress and shawl.
The Zulu community is patriarchal, with men as the heads of households, seeing themselves as defenders and providers for the community. However, like most societies in the world, women are the real workers; they are the glue that holds communities together and allows them to thrive, performing the important domestic work of cooking, collecting water and firewood, cleaning, laundry, tending crops, making clothes and raising children. Zulu women also make baskets, ceramics and beaded jewelry to sell.
Today, Zulu wear western clothing and buy food from supermarkets. But the traditional way of grinding maize to make bread and brewing umqombothi, a beer made from maize, malt, yeast and water is still alive and well.
Disappointed that the beer was not ready to sample, we headed to the kiosk where indigenous handicrafts were for sale. There was a nice assortment of woven baskets, beaded jewelry and ceramic bowls. We made a few souvenir purchases, more to support the crafters than out of need. Bidding our hosts, Hamba Kahle, we walked back to Heritage Lodge with a better understanding of the history and culture of South Africa’s majority ethnic group.