The Importance of Operational Accounts in African Military History

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of African Military History presents two articles on South Africa that demonstrate the continued importance of original research on operational history. In addition, they both highlight the important Clausewitzian point about the unpredictability of war including wars that, with hindsight, appear to have been one-sided. Michał Leśniewski looks at the Battle of Thukela, a hitherto little-known engagement between the forces of the Zulu Kingdom and the autonomous British colonial enclave of Port Natal (now the city of Durban) that allied with the Boers during the Boer-Zulu conflict of 1838. Based on archival material from South Africa and Britain, and Zulu oral accounts recorded in the early twentieth century, Leśniewski highlights Zulu commander Nongalaza kaNondela’s improvisation of standard Zulu envelopment tactics that enabled his men to overcome a colonial-led force of around 500 gunmen supported by several thousand traditionally equipped warriors. The Boer-Zulu war is best remembered for its start with the Zulu killing of Boer leader Piet Retief in February 1838 and the climactic Battle of Blood River in December that resulted in the annihilation of an attacking Zulu army by the firepower of a Boer defensive wagon laager. Despite the retrospective sense of inevitable Zulu defeat evokedby the overwhelming historicalmemory of Blood River, commemorated by an apartheid era public holiday known as the “Day of the Vow” and by a large monument erected on the site both of which celebrated and justified white supremacy, the earlier actions in the war favoured the Zulu. From the perspective of April 1838, the outcome of the warmust have seemeduncertain given that Zuluwarriorswith spears, axes and clubs defeated colonial trainedmusketeers at Thukela and then successfully ambushed a Boer mounted force eventually dubbed the “Flight Commando.” With similar hindsight, the result of the South African invasion of German South West Africa (Namibia today) during the early part of the First World