Zulu Iklwa

Origins

Southern African warfare before the 1810s was conducted at a distance: opposing lines exchanged volleys of light throwing assegais, and casualties were comparatively few. The military revolution attributed to Shaka kaSenzangakhona — how much was his invention and how much an acceleration of existing trends is argued by historians — replaced the thrown spear with a heavy stabbing weapon that could not be thrown away, backed by a discipline that made running to close quarters the whole point of battle. Tradition holds that the name iklwa is onomatopoeic: the sound the broad blade made being withdrawn from a wound.

Design & Construction

The iklwa reversed the proportions of the throwing assegai. Its iron blade, forged by the specialist smiths whose craft carried hereditary prestige in Zulu society, ran roughly 30 to 45 centimeters long and up to 5 centimeters broad — a short sword's worth of edge and point — socketed and bound with wet rawhide onto a hardwood haft of only 60 to 90 centimeters. The result handled like a one-handed thrusting sword with a spear's reach economy, used underarm with the point rising. It worked as a system with the isihlangu, the man-high oxhide shield: hook the enemy's shield aside with your own, stab into the opened line.

Combat Use

The iklwa dictated Zulu tactics rather than serving them. The impi attacked in the impondo zankomo — the beast's horns — with the chest fixing the enemy while the horns raced around both flanks to close the ring; every element of the formation existed to bring shield and iklwa into contact. Warriors carried one or two light throwing spears to discharge in the final rush, but the battle was decided body to body. Against the British in 1879 the system met breech-loading rifles: at Isandlwana the horns enveloped an overextended camp and the iklwa killed over 1,300 of Lord Chelmsford's men — the worst defeat a modern army had yet suffered against a spear-armed one — while at Rorke's Drift, hours later, the same weapon could not break a prepared barricade defended by the Martini-Henry Rifle. Ulundi ended the kingdom six months on.

Legacy

Few weapons are as completely identified with a nation as the iklwa is with the Zulu. It stands for the military organization that built a kingdom in a generation and made 'impi' a word the British Empire respected; Isandlwana remains the classic study of what disciplined shock infantry could still do in the rifle age, taught at staff colleges ever since. Nineteenth-century examples — broad blade, rawhide binding, dark hardwood — are well represented in collections, though the trade in tourist-made pieces began almost with the war itself, and honest provenance is what separates a battlefield relic from a curio.