Zulu Rising by Ian Knight

‘In that moment God closed his eyes,”recounts an African legend of the eclipse that shadowed the tragic mountain of iSandlwana in Zululand. It came like an omen on a fateful day in January, 1879, heralding two major events: the greatest disaster in Queen Victoria’s many imperial wars, and a climax to the military power spawned by Shaka Zulu.

The death of red soldiers and black warriors, fighting with bayonet and assegai, resonates through this book. Knight is so well versed in the Zulu War that the reader can experience both the massacre at iSandlwana — in which 800 British troops and 500 of their native allies died facing a force of 25,000 Zulus, bolstered by “little more than raw courage” — and the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift in which 11 Victoria Crosses were achieved in blood and bravery.

Knight offers an exceptional portrayal of this clash, essentially the betrayal of the Zulu king Cetshwayo in a mission of colonial conquest based on an impossible ultimatum that would have spelt the end of Zulu tradition. Sir Bartle Frere, London’s political representative in southern Africa, formulated the plan to defend the interests of settlers in Natal, while the arrogant Lord Chelmsford led British troops in the invasion of Zululand.

It was a colossal blunder. The British forces were first divided and then below the mountain failed to laager their wagons. The Zulus, hidden in ravines, used their buffalo horn formation to enclose the Redcoats in an arena of the utmost brutality, associated with their ritual of disembowelment.

Knight provides Zulu reflections of the killing, the ground being “slippery” with the entrails of the fallen. Few soldiers escaped, Lts Melvill and Coghill, friends in life and death, being speared as they desperately sought to carry the Queen’s Colour to safety at what is known as Fugitives’ Drift.

Knight’s battlefield descriptions are beyond expectation. Even today, as you wander the eerie plateau with its stark white monuments, you encounter descendants of soldiers who fought and died there, and Zulus proud of their ancestors, who brought the British empire crashing down on the day the moon darkened.