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QUESTION 1
1. Discuss the migration of the Africans and the Great Trek in South Africa in the 19th Century.
Introduction: A Confluence of Migrations in a Shifting Landscape
The 19th century in Southern Africa was defined not by a single migration, but by a series of
interconnected population movements. Before the 1800s, the region was home to diverse African
societies like the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho, as well as Dutch-speaking pastoralists, known as Boers, in
the Cape Colony. Both African migrations, often associated with the Mfecane/Difaqane, and the
Boer Great Trek were responses to complex pressures.
These included environmental factors such as drought, the rise of new political states under
ambitious leaders, and the expanding, destabilising influence of European colonialism at the Cape
and slave trading from Delagoa Bay. Historian Julian Cobbing controversially argued that the
Mfecane was a conspiratorial 'alibi' created to obscure the devastation caused by these colonial and
slave-trading activities, rather than being solely the result of African state-building (Cobbing 1988).
The term Difaqane (or lifaqane) itself, meaning 'wandering horde', was used in Sotho historiography
from at least the 1890s to describe the wars and migrations of the 1820s, though its modern, broad
application to the events west of the Drakensberg was popularised by historians Monica Wilson and
Leonard Thompson in their Oxford History of South Africa (Wilson and Thompson 1969). This
period was therefore a confluence of internal African dynamics and external pressures, the legacies
of which would shape the subcontinent for generations.
The Mfecane/Difaqane: African State-Building and Displacement
The migrations and upheavals among African peoples, known as the Mfecane (Zulu) or Difaqane
(Sotho), constituted a complex period of conflict, state-building, and population displacement rather
than a simple, singular event. This period of turbulence began as a result of the movement of several
Nguni groups across the Drakensberg from KwaZulu-Natal in order to escape Zulu expansion (South
African History Online 2011). The rise of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka was central to these events,
though the process of consolidation into rival confederacies had begun earlier under leaders such as
Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa and Zwide of the Ndwandwe (Mills n.d.). Shaka built upon these
foundations, introducing revolutionary military innovations including the iklwa (short stabbing
spear), the isihlangu (large cowhide shield), and the famous "buffalo horns" formation that enabled
surrounding and annihilating enemy forces (The Ulwazi Programme n.d.). His organisation of
warriors into disciplined, age-based regiments (amabutho) that were kept permanently mobilised
created a formidable military machine (Mills n.d.). This consolidation of power caused a domino
effect of warfare and displacement among neighbouring groups, most notably the Ndebele under
Mzilikazi, a general who had fled from Shaka's army and subsequently wrought destruction across
the highveld, decimating smaller tribes such as the Bakwena and Ba-Hurutsi as far as the Orange
River (South African History Online 2011).
QUESTION 1
1. Discuss the migration of the Africans and the Great Trek in South Africa in the 19th Century.
Introduction: A Confluence of Migrations in a Shifting Landscape
The 19th century in Southern Africa was defined not by a single migration, but by a series of
interconnected population movements. Before the 1800s, the region was home to diverse African
societies like the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho, as well as Dutch-speaking pastoralists, known as Boers, in
the Cape Colony. Both African migrations, often associated with the Mfecane/Difaqane, and the
Boer Great Trek were responses to complex pressures.
These included environmental factors such as drought, the rise of new political states under
ambitious leaders, and the expanding, destabilising influence of European colonialism at the Cape
and slave trading from Delagoa Bay. Historian Julian Cobbing controversially argued that the
Mfecane was a conspiratorial 'alibi' created to obscure the devastation caused by these colonial and
slave-trading activities, rather than being solely the result of African state-building (Cobbing 1988).
The term Difaqane (or lifaqane) itself, meaning 'wandering horde', was used in Sotho historiography
from at least the 1890s to describe the wars and migrations of the 1820s, though its modern, broad
application to the events west of the Drakensberg was popularised by historians Monica Wilson and
Leonard Thompson in their Oxford History of South Africa (Wilson and Thompson 1969). This
period was therefore a confluence of internal African dynamics and external pressures, the legacies
of which would shape the subcontinent for generations.
The Mfecane/Difaqane: African State-Building and Displacement
The migrations and upheavals among African peoples, known as the Mfecane (Zulu) or Difaqane
(Sotho), constituted a complex period of conflict, state-building, and population displacement rather
than a simple, singular event. This period of turbulence began as a result of the movement of several
Nguni groups across the Drakensberg from KwaZulu-Natal in order to escape Zulu expansion (South
African History Online 2011). The rise of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka was central to these events,
though the process of consolidation into rival confederacies had begun earlier under leaders such as
Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa and Zwide of the Ndwandwe (Mills n.d.). Shaka built upon these
foundations, introducing revolutionary military innovations including the iklwa (short stabbing
spear), the isihlangu (large cowhide shield), and the famous "buffalo horns" formation that enabled
surrounding and annihilating enemy forces (The Ulwazi Programme n.d.). His organisation of
warriors into disciplined, age-based regiments (amabutho) that were kept permanently mobilised
created a formidable military machine (Mills n.d.). This consolidation of power caused a domino
effect of warfare and displacement among neighbouring groups, most notably the Ndebele under
Mzilikazi, a general who had fled from Shaka's army and subsequently wrought destruction across
the highveld, decimating smaller tribes such as the Bakwena and Ba-Hurutsi as far as the Orange
River (South African History Online 2011).
