Mpande's - University of Zululand Institutional Repository

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During his reign Mpande instituted a fixed, customary procedure known
to all Zulus for the trial of crimes and disputes'O The basic principles of
this procedure were probably to be traced back to pre-Shakan times as a
part ofthe common cultural inheritance of social order among the Nguni
clans."
Mpande distinguished between offences against authorities and offences
against commoners, the first considered to be the most serious. It appears
too categoric, as E.J. Krige and P. LautenscWager indicated, to state that
all offences against the chief or king-horn ever trivial - were punished by
death.'2 The sources used by these two authors apply to the times ofking
Shaka, and under his rule people were exterminated in great numbers for
minor offences. At the time of Mpande the ruling and judicial practice
was obviously not so harsh. The attempted murder of a headman
(induna), for instance, would not be punished by death, but by a fine of
cattle. 53 At the height of his power Mpande welcomed Christian
missionaries from Natal Colony to the Zulu kingdom." The missionaries
were not overtly imperial agents, but acted as informants on affairs within
the kingdom for the benefit ofthe British Colonial establishment in Natal.
50
" 52
53
54
C. de B. Webb: A Zulu king speaks: statements made by Cetshwayo ka Mpande on the history
and customs ofhis people. p. 75.
Ibid., pp. 75 - 76.
E.J. Krige: The Social sYstem ofthe Zulus. p. 228; P. Lautenscblager: De Sozialen Ordnungen
bei den Zulu un