Zulu Isihlangu

Origins

Oval hide shields were carried by the Nguni-speaking peoples of south-eastern Africa long before the rise of the Zulu Kingdom. Zulu tradition credits King Shaka, who ruled from about 1816 to 1828, with turning the shield into a weapon of close combat. He is said to have favored a large shield that covered a man from shoulder to ankle, and to have trained his warriors to use it together with the short stabbing spear, the Zulu Iklwa. How much of this was truly new, and how much was already practiced by neighboring groups, is hard to tell, because the story was first written down many years later.

Design & Construction

A war shield was cut from the hide of a cow or ox, with the hair left on the outer face. The hide was cleaned, pegged out to dry and trimmed to a long oval. The full-sized isihlangu was up to about 1.5 meters tall and some 60 centimeters wide. Two rows of slits were cut down the center, and strips of hide in a contrasting color were laced through them. These strips stiffened the shield and held a wooden stick at the back. The stick ran the full height and stood out above and below, and its top was often dressed with a strip of animal fur. A small loop of hide made the handgrip.

In the 1850s Cetshwayo, then a prince fighting for the succession, introduced a smaller war shield called the umbumbuluzo, roughly a meter long. It was lighter and easier to run with. In 1879 both sizes were in use. Smaller shields again, usually called amahawu, were carried for dancing, traveling and everyday use.

War shields were the property of the king. They were made from the royal herds, stored in raised huts at the royal military homesteads, and issued when a regiment assembled. Each regiment, called an ibutho, had its own hide color or pattern. In general, young regiments carried dark shields, black or brown, and senior regiments of married men carried white or mostly white ones, with many patterns of patches and spots in between. By 1879 these distinctions seem to have been less strict than in Shaka's day.

Combat Use

The shield was held in the left hand, sometimes with a spare spear or a Knobkerrie gripped behind it. In fighting other African armies it stopped thrown spears. At close quarters a warrior is said to have hooked the edge of his shield behind his enemy's and wrenched it aside, opening the man's left side to a thrust of the iklwa. The methods of the Zulu Impi were built round getting to this range quickly.

Cowhide could not stop a rifle bullet. In the war of 1879 the shield gave no protection against the Martini-Henry Rifle, though it still mattered in hand-to-hand fighting, as at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January. At the Battle of Rorke's Drift that evening and night, Zulu warriors tried to climb barricades of grain bags and biscuit boxes, and the fighting was often at arm's length across the wall. British accounts describe warriors grabbing at rifle barrels and bayonets.

Legacy

After the British victory at Ulundi in July 1879 the Zulu regimental system was broken up, and with it the royal stores of shields. Many shields were taken home by British soldiers as trophies, and a number of them are now in regimental and national museums. Shields are still made and carried at Zulu ceremonies. The film Zulu (1964) made the sight and sound of massed warriors with their shields familiar to audiences round the world. The shield is described with the other Zulu Kingdom Arms & Weapons.