The bond between Boer and Zulu

The friendship forged between Louis Botha and Dinuzulu as boys in rural Natal later led to co-operation and land donated to the Boers to establish a new republic around present-day Vryheid, writes Graham Jooste.

- Graham Jooste

As time goes on, many new facts come to light about our past in South Africa. The one relayed here is a positive one about a friendship that developed between two great leaders of their time. Their statues stand close together in Durban to this day.

Louis Botha was born in the village of Greytown, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), on 27 September 1862. He was one of seven sons and eight daughters born to Louis Botha Sr and Salomina Adriana van Rooyen, both from Somerset East in the Eastern Cape.

His parents moved to the Vryheid district in Natal and obtained the farm Waterval on which the young Botha spent most of his childhood. He became an expert cattleman and had many friends among the Zulu boys from the area. He was an excellent linguist with good communication skills and comprehension of problems.

When Botha was six years old, a baby boy was born into the royal house of Cetshwayo, king of the Zulus, and named Dinuzulu. It is said that the two men’s friendship began when they were still young and out and about in the rural area of Msinga in Zululand. The Boers from the northern Natal region often traded livestock and general goods with the Zulus on friendly terms.

The Zulus and British were entering a hostile period, and when Dinuzulu was 11 years old, Cetshwayo ordered an attack on the British garrison camped at Isandlwana, securing a stunning victory over his foe.

The famous defence of Rorke’s Drift by a small detachment of troops followed, and became the most decorated defence in the annals of British military history. Botha, who was 17 years old at the time, watched the proceedings as the Boers prepared themselves for a possible attack by the Zulus as well, but none was to come.

BATTLE FOR THE THRONE

After Cetshwayo’s defeat at the Battle of Ulundi, he was captured by the British and exiled to Cape Town for imprisonment.