Jeff Guy – författare

In 1906, the authorities in the Colony of Natal put down, with great loss of life, an uprising that has become known as the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion. Accounts have tended to concentrate on Bhambatha, the man who led the guerrilla war in the Nkandla forest, but this book shifts the focus to the Maphumulo area where two famous chiefs led their people in violent resistance to the colonial militia. This account also goes beyond the physical conflict. It examines the rituals that preceded it and the life and death struggle in the courts which followed as the colonial authorities sought to make an example of those who, they alleged, had used not just African weapons but African medicine and superstition/religion to drive the white man out of Africa.

Remembering the rebellion narrates and commemorates the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion of 1906 with riveting anecdotes, maps and illustrations, many of them previously unpublished. The people of KwaZulu-Natal, already suffering the material and social consequences of colonialism, were further provoked by the imposition of a poll tax and the official determination to treat all protests against the tax as defiance. The resistance that followed was put down with uncompromising violence - but the memory of rebellion became an inspiration to those who continued the struggle against racial exploitation in South Africa. This is the centenary year of the rebellion. When President Thabo Mbeki bestowed National orders on 28 South Africans recently, the order Mendi for bravery in Gold was awarded posthumously to Bhambatha Ka Mancinza Zondi for his bravery in leading a rebellion against the repressive laws of the colonialist government and for laying down his life for the cause of justice.