"…Gqokli Hill (in the Nguni language pronounced with a clicking noise in the back of your throat for the "Gq" phoneme--non-Nguni speakers may have trouble without gagging) was the first battle in which the upstart Shaka, the new CEO of the tiny clan of Zulus, was able to try out his wholly original military innovations on a living enemy….a soon-to-be not-living enemy.
In the history of the Zulu people, Gqokli is probably as famous as Gettysburg or Waterloo to Americans and Europeans. The narrative I've based this article on is mostly from E.A. Ritter's biography of Shaka, much of that from A.T.Bryant's Olden Times in Zulu-land and Natal, which itself was compiled in the 1920s from personal interviews with old men whose fathers had fought with Shaka. Since Ritter's and Bryant's narratives come from a prehistoric (literally) period of history, the details should be taken with a grain of salt, much as the historical accuracy of the Iliad or The Bible might be.
In terms of the wider war in which Gqokli was one of the opening battles, the Mfecane ("The Crushing" ) was a brutal period in South African history from 1815 to about 1840. This period saw almost incessant warfare between Nguni clans and tribes, resulting in millions of deaths and complete depopulation of much of what is now Natal. In many ways it could be compared to the devastation in Europe during the Thirty Years War, and in terms of its utter savagery could, in our own time, be compared to the civil wars in central Africa from Rwanda up to Darfur. The prime instigators of the Mfecane were at first the Ndwandwe and subsequently the Zulu, who, at the date of Gqokli Hill, were a tiny clan but would soon grow to be the dominant military power in southeastern Africa…"
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