The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

were murky and secretive, but were all subservient to his main interest of
furthering his prospects at Port Natal. 28 In June and July 1828, the Thembu and
Gcaleka states appealed to the colony for help against this very same Zulu
army. Following reconnaissance, Colonel Somerset, based in Grahamstown,
ordered a colonial army consisting of more than 800 British troops with twenty-
five pieces of artillery, 900 colonial militia - mounted and armed with firearms -
and approximately 40000 African auxiliaries to the Transkei in August in order
to repeat what the Griqua/Tlhaping army had done at Dithakong, to turn back
the overwhelming foe who threatened the colony and its African allies. This
was, until 1828, the largest force the British had ever assembled to invade
African territory. They found the enemy at the town of Mbholompo and at dawn
launched an artillery-supported surprise attack on it, defeated the enemy and
found that they were not the dreaded Zulu army, but the Ngwane chiefdom
under inKosi Matiwane. The articles, however, reveal an attitude of indifference
to the blunder.
Questioning of the numerous women and children who were taken back to the
colony as prisoners to labour on farms revealed that this state was originally
situated on the upper Thukela River in Natal, and Shaka had driven them out
onto the highveld where they were involved in widespread raiding. 29 However,
they were expelled from there by raiders of European/Khoi descent 30 and thus
moved south into the Transkei, where they raided cattle from the local
chiefdoms until their demise.
In published accounts on the build-up to the battle of Mbholompo it is clear that,
by mid-1828, the Zulu state was again regarded as the causal agent in the
expulsion of an African chiefdom from Zululand, with subsequent devastation on
the highveld and in the Transkei. Thus, reports by the Gcaleka and Thembu
28 B.J.T. Leverton (ed), Records of Natal, Volume One, 1823 - August 1828, South African
Archival Records: Important Cape Documents, 4 Vols. (Pretoria, 1984), IV, 154 onwards.
29 ‘Extracts from the Journal of W. Shaw – 30 September 1828’, Missionary Notices, 6 (April
1829), 56.
30 Ibid. 56. Communication from Pringle to Thompson in 1825. G. Thompson, Travels and
Adventures in Southern Africa, 2 Vols. (London, 1827), I, 381-2.
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