Episode 63 – Shaka’s isicoco regulation, a “she” rebellion and Lieutenant Colonel Collins collects intel

Last episode we spent some time back in Zululand hearing about the amaMthethwa, the amaNdwandwe, the amaHlubi, the amaQwabe and that tiny little chiefdom called the amaZulu.
They were largely irrelevant in the history of South Africa at the time, until Zwide’s amaNdwandwe began pushing southwards into Mthethwa territory. Then Dingiswayo’s amaMthethwa needed to bolster their flank and that’s when the AmaZulu became much more important.
We’ll also return to the Cape where Governor Caledon was going to send a military man into the frontier to collect intelligence.
First, it’s time to feel the ancients, smell the south eastern coastal regions of the Zulu once more, my homeland. By the time of Shaka’s emergence as a teenager, the area was covered with thousands of scattered imizi, looking like circular villages if seen from the air, dotted through the countryside. Each married man or umnumzane lived in each of these umuzi with his two or three wives and children. A man of extreme wealth may have up to a dozen wives, and the umuzi would look more like a large compound with a dozen or more huts.
The changes coming which we’ll hear about in future podcasts were under way before Shaka, but he put the finishing touches on the system. This was to gain control of the self-sufficient imizi by regulating marriage. IN Zulu society, an adult man could not free himself from his father’s umuzi and head off to establish his own homestead without marriage.
In October 1808, the Jij rebellion or “she” rebellion, broke out when the enslaved people of the Cape rose up. It wasn’t all slaves and Khoe involved, there were two Irishmen who joined the uprising.
Meanwhile the Fish River was the key to security so Governor Caledon sent 33 year-old lieutenant colonel Richard Collins to spy on the amaXhosa.