Lendle

Men, ordinary men, fight the wars that are caused by leaders. These wars are always made out to be something to be proud of. Patriotism is the usual call, the fight is a righteous fight, the enemy is in the wrong and has to be destroyed. Men either join the army voluntarily or are conscripted. They then fight bravely – you kill or are killed. When patriotism is not available to ensure loyalty and a will to fight and when coercion is not effective loyalty of the fighters has to be found in something else. Shaka instituted loyalty to the regiment as the driving force. Each regiment had its own distinctive shields and battle ornamentation. The French Foreign Legion adopted the same stratagem.While men fought the wars the women and children stayed behind. The have almost always been the people who have suffered the most. With the men gone off to war they have had to see to all the multitude of matters that needed to be done. If their men were defeated, as happened in all wars, they suffered far more than the men suffered. Women have been the victims of wars. Death, torture, rape, mutilation, being carried off as prizes, severed for ever from their families and people have been their invariable lot.Shaka continued the unification of the numerous Zulu tribes into a nation which had been started by his mentor Dingiswayo. Shaka’s childhood had ensured that he grew up with a burning hatred in his heart and a burning ambition to be the best and greatest warrior. The result was that when he was an adult he had not a vestige of kindness in him.Of all the Zulus, Shaka is the best known and the man whose influence on South Africa and indeed on the world is still felt. His reign was one of terror which upset the lives of by far the greater majority of people in South Africa and even had the British government at the Cape Colony troubled.His wars, total wars, uprooted millions of people who fled helter skelter across the length and breadth of a major portion of South Africa. He destroyed the age old civilisation and culture of the Zulus, turning his country into a massive military establishment.