The Zwangendaba Succession

C. J. W. Fleming

IN order to appreciate all the niceties of the Zwangendaba succession it is necessary to go back and look at the ancestry of this legendary potentate. He was the son of Hlachwayo, an induna of the powerful Ndwandwe chief, Zwide Ncumayo, who occupied the country to the north of the Black Mfolozi River in Northern Zululand. There is here, as there often is in other places, some confusion over tribal names.' Basically all the peoples in the coastal belt from Delagoa Bay to the Great Fish River were of Nguni stock but there were many subdivisions among them and many tribal names. Very often these names stemmed from the designation of the locality from which the people hailed. This appears to have been the case with the Angoni for they are often called Swazi, apparently because they came from a district called Uswazi in their original homeland near St. Lucia Bay.2 Because of this they are often confused with the Swazi of present day Swaziland, but this is wrong for it seems that there is no direct connection between the two groups except that they were both of Nguni origin. They probably derive their other name of Angoni from the wider tribal name of Nguni. The Angoni's closest associates in Zululand, where they hailed from, were the Ndandwe, their overlords, and the Kumalos, later to be known as the Amandebele, who were also at one time the subjects of Zwide Ncumayo. Their southern neighbours were the Mtetwa and the Zulus, who, to start with, were an insignificant group living alongside the Mtetwa. However this was all changed in the opening decades of the nineteenth century when Shaka Zulu, a scion of the house of Senzangakona Zulu, first of all seized the family chieftainship, then that of Dingiswayo of the Mtetwa, his erstwhile benefactor, and then proceeded to subdue all the neighbouring tribes in Zululand. All the conquered people afterwards came to be known as Zulu. Very early on Shaka turned his attention to Zwide Ncumayo and a protracted struggle followed. Zwangendaba like his father was one of Zwide's indunas and was reckoned to be one of his most successful generals in the fights with Shaka. In 1819 however Zwide's armies were finally defeated at the battle of the Mhlatuze River and the broken remnants and many women and children fled northwards and eventually collected, together with many other refugees from Shaka's reign of terror, in the country to the south of Delagoa Bay. Among them were Sochangane, an Ncumayo who subsequently usurped the Zwide chieftainship, and Zwangendaba and many of their followers.

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