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[QUOTE]Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: [qb] Having just re watched the movie Zulu Dawn I was wondering why they didn't move across the Buffalo river and sacked the cape,that a mistake in the command of this fellow below and the debilce at Rouke's drift may explain this,the history of South/southern Africa may have been vastly different had he followed orders and wasn't a such a hot head. [IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Dabulamanzi.jpg[/IMG] Perhaps the man who saved the Brits from being driven into the sea While the Undi Corps had been led by inkhosi kaMapitha at the Isandlwana battle, the command of the Undi Corps passed to Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande (half-brother of Cetshwayo kaMpande, the Zulu king) when kaMapitha was wounded mopping up British fugitives from Isandlwana. Prince Dabulamanzi was considered rash and aggressive and this characterization was borne out by his violation of King Cetshwayo's order to act only in defence of Zululand against the invading British soldiers and not carry the war over the border into enemy territory.[25] The Rorke's Drift attack was an unplanned raid rather than any organized counter-invasion, with many of the Undi Corps Zulus breaking off to raid other African kraals and homesteads while the main body advanced on Rorke's Drift. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke's_Drift http://tubeplus.me/player/652448/Zulu_Dawn/ ^^^^ Link to the movie easy to use streaming is very fast. [/qb][/QUOTE]Good question Brada, and it is true that on several occassions Zulu subordinates disobeyed their king's instructions as in the ROrke's Drift affair. But the Cape was hundreds of miles distant from Zululand. A much better target for attack, which if successful would have destroyed important British supply lines would have been an attack on nearby Natal colony. Natal was a launching point for the British invasion, had a port on the coast and was laced with important supply lines sustaining the imperial invaders. The ZUlu had the outstanding mobility to attack such lines but never really waged war in this way. WHen they did make such logistics attacks, such as wiping out a redcoat supply detachment on the Intombi they had success and slowed the imperialist advance. Destruction to the cross-border Natal area by the Zulu, according to a number of historians, would have severed communications and cut off part of the lumbering imperial force, essentially bottling it up in inactivity. The Zulu did just this with one invading British column, that they surrounded and penned up in garrison for months at Eshowe, unable to do anything productive. They did this by constant pressure and threat on the redcoats, without the need for costly human wave attacks against the fortified garrison. They could have multiplied this success even more. Failure to cut this important line of communication meant that the British could continue to get much needed war material with relatively little hindrance, material employed to dire effect on the Zulu. Still Zulu king Cetaswayp fought his toughest battle according to his own understanding at the time, based on limited information about the new enemy he was facing. Not only was Britain at that time a major world power with all the modern advanced technology, but her forces were among the most experienced in the world. It was a tough call for the Zulu, who had limited supplies of manpower to begin with- some 30k to 40k effectives - which was most of the nation's effective armed strength. Not a lot really when contemporary European powers were putting that amount of men into single battles routinely on the European continent. Lack of big manpower reserves was to dog African armies when they clashed with European opponents. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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