Looks like the Zulu King couldn't keep a promise.

Looks like the Zulu King couldn't keep a promise.

"Before crossing the Tugela to perform the ceremony of installation, Mr. Shepstone sent to inform Eetshwayo and the Zulu nobles that the courtesy and condescension of the Natal Govemment in sending to instal ketshwayo were not to be stained by one drop of blood, and that should anyone be adjudged to die for any political offence during the presence of Mr. Shepstone in the Zulu country, such sentence should not be carried out till the charges and evidence had been submitted to him, otherwise he would refuse to proceed to the installation.

On arriving at the residence of Ketshwayo, and before proceeding to the ceremony of installation, Ketshwayo publicly agreed that the indiscriminate shedding of blood should cease in Zululand, that no Zulu should be condemned without open trial and public examination of witnesses, and that no execution should take place without the knowledge and sanction of the English.

At the time that Ketshwayo was making these promises, and notwithstanding the order of Mr. Shepstone that no drop of blood should stain his mission, Eetshwayo's right hand was red with the blood of Masipula, his late father's prime minister, and as if to stamp the hoUowness and falsity of all his engagements his coronation is inaugurated with a lie, and he informs Mr. Shepstone that Masipula had died suddenly four days previously, intimation having been made the day before that Masipula was ill, whereas
he had been executed by the order of Ketshwayo, simply because he had faithfully served Dingaan and Panda. This murder, like the many others of which this King by our installation has been guilty, might, if they had happened in the days of his father, have been allowed to pass without notice, but he has now made no parties to his atrocities. No sooner had he obtained our fomud recognition of his position, amid the thunder of artillery and the sound of trumpets, and no sooner had Mr. Shepstone turned his back upon Zululand, than the Zulu King cast his engagements to the winds, murders were continued, and the mission stations which had been befriended during his father's lifetime were so persecuted and tormented that the converts were scattered, and no missionary is now in Zululand. With such a King no promise is sacred, and no conditions binding."

I’m thinking this would have been the original Ultimatum, but it must have been decided to narrow it down. (See fig 19)

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Hi all .
This from a collegue .

[url= Not sure I really agree with the 'Zulu King Couldn't Keep a Promise' thread - there was a lot more going on there than meets the eye, and the account quoted very much takes the British perspective. In fact the evidence strongly suggests that Cetshwayo didn't really understand what Shepstone was getting at with his 'coronation laws', and that he thought it was a rather pompous expression of British support for the monarchy and for state authority at the expense of the regional amakhosi - that the 'indiscriminate killing' refered to killings carried out by regional chiefs rather than the king. In other words, the king thought Shepstone was lecturing the Zulu people on how to be good loyal citizens and respect their king while Shepstone thought he was telling the king what to do! In fact there were no formal promises and nothing was binding - at best Shepstone's 'laws' were advice on good government while at worst they were an insufferable intervention in the affairs of a sovreign state. Nobody, either in Natal, London or Zululand, took them very seriously until Frere was looking for a legal basis to pick a quarrel with the king in 1878] .

cheers 90th.