Drinking Our Way Through History
Step into a time-traveling adventure with Drinking Our Way Through History, where Cooper and Ian uncork the fascinating secrets of the past. Embark on an enlightening and uproarious podcast experience as they uncover legendary figures, awe-inspiring sites, captivating spectacles, and remarkable events, all with a quirky blend of humor, intrigue, and heartwarming tales. Sip along as we immerse ourselves in history's intoxicating depths, turning moments of the past into unforgettable memories. Cheers to an epic journey!
Drinking Our Way Through History
Episode 30: Shaka Zulu - Legacy of the Zulu King
In today's episode we dive into the legendary Zulu king - Shaka Zulu. We cover the rise and fall of a leader who forever changed the African continent. We will uncover the riveting life of Shaka Zulu, his innovative military strategies, and the darker side of his reign.
We'll challenge the narrative surrounding Shaka, diving into the controversial accounts of his rule - exploring his power struggles, his eventual downfall, and the potential misrepresentation of his reign. We'll shine a light on the devastating effects of his rule, known as the Mfecane, which resulted in the death of up to two million people. We also take a closer look at Shaka's significant influence on African development, dissecting his complex legacy and the role he played in shaping the continent.
This is a compelling tale of power, conquest, and tragedy. We'll be raising a toast to history as we share laughs, insights, and the fascinating realities of Shaka Zulu's reign. So grab your favorite drink, sit back, and prepare to be transported into the extraordinary world of Shaka Zulu.
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["Shaka Laka"]. Hey, man, hi, you know what's shocking? No, shaka, wow.
Speaker 3:Is he right? Yeah, it's Shaka. Hahaha. Oh, you know what? I didn't look up. What If Boom Shaka Laka is for Shaka Zulu, is it? I just said I didn't look it up. Well, hahaha.
Speaker 2:That was your first mistake. My computer just went black.
Speaker 3:Oh what the fuck? Are you serious? Yeah it, just so you know what I watched. What Epic rap battles of history Do they have? One with Shaka Zulu, shaka Zulu and Julius Caesar.
Speaker 2:Hahaha, hahaha, it's who the fuck won Gotta be Shaka, you know.
Speaker 3:I think it was, I feel I don't know. It's good Back and forth though.
Speaker 2:It was a toss-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when.
Speaker 3:I would watch epic rap battles of history, just not.
Speaker 2:No, you gotta say it right.
Speaker 1:Epic rap battles of history.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I was gonna bring that up because I'll introduce it again. Is they go?
Speaker 1:I'm a rap battle, oh headshot.
Speaker 2:Hahaha, it's a calm growl now.
Speaker 3:That's awesome you can't even understand what they're saying.
Speaker 2:Wait, are they still doing that? Yeah, bro, are they still doing rap? Battles of history. They're still popping shit out, dude.
Speaker 3:No, shit and they got great like graphics and videography and everything dude Shout-outs and doubts, man, it's making history. So fabulous. Yeah Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Drinking Our Way Through History, where we cover the legendary people, places, spectacles and events that history has to offer, while enjoying a thick pour of wine today. Thick, I am Cooper and I am Ian.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Thank you, and you know what I would congratulate our listeners on what's that Well? Cooper, I'm so glad you asked. Thank you, so much. I would congratulate them on hitting that like button, hitting that five star review button, hitting that subscribe button and, if you're on Spotify, hitting that follow button.
Speaker 1:Do that yeah.
Speaker 3:Now in today's episode, we will be discussing Shaka Zulu and the rise of the Zulu Kingdom. Shaka Zulu was a great Zulu king and conqueror. He transformed the small Zulu tribe into a formidable and centralized kingdom through his military innovations and tactics. During his brief reign, more than a hundred chieftains were brought into the Zulu Kingdom. He implemented a significant change in warfare by introducing a new weaponry like the short stabbing spear, and reorganized his warriors into disciplined formations.
Speaker 2:I love how innovative that was at the time.
Speaker 1:It's like let's take the stabbing spear bro, and let's cut it in half, honestly, and give you two.
Speaker 3:It literally reshaped the entire continent of Africa. Why couldn't?
Speaker 2:we have been born back then, Like gravity wasn't even around. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Like gravity was in the round of the 1800s.
Speaker 2:Well, they were just floating around everywhere. We all know that.
Speaker 3:Shaka's military strategies were highly effective and allowed the Zulu army to conquer and assimilate neighboring tribes, expanding the Zulu Kingdom's influence. Shaka also implemented social and administrative reforms within the Zulu society, including changes in social structure, land distribution and military organization, and became one of the most influential monarchs in African history.
Speaker 1:What a shaka, what a shaka.
Speaker 2:You can expect that a lot today.
Speaker 3:Shaka's devastating reign led to what we call the mephicane, known to the Western world as the crushing, where up to two million people were killed in a 15 year period.
Speaker 2:I saw a lot of motherfuckers to die in 15 years and we'll get into it.
Speaker 3:Obviously, it lasted through 15 years, so a lot of suffering happened through this. Now we kind of need to talk about the sources here, because in African culture it's not like we're looking at European history here, where everything is documented and written down and diaried. There are literally no written down sources.
Speaker 2:There are no first-person stories, no first-hand resources is what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Historians, archaeologists go back to verbal tales and random accounts from European traders that were already there and that we already have.
Speaker 2:And, as we all know, verbal accounts are just very credible.
Speaker 3:Well, they talk about the conflicting stories from the European traders and the European people who were there to what the local people had also said. They've done their homework and they've come up with commonalities and all the differences. Now the main sources that we're using are the biography channel documentary, the People's Profile Documentary, extra History Docu-Series and also SouthAfricaHistorycom. So that's where we're kind of coming up from today. So, yeah, this shit's crazy Shaka was a insanely like. Grabbed the life by a, you know, grabbed the fucking bull by the horns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, grabbed the bull by the balls Balls. That's what I'm going for. I'm just trying, as if the balls are there, you're going for the balls Grabbing the bull by the balls not by the horns.
Speaker 1:Tugging and pulling little twist clockwise and counterclockwise, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, Cooper, where do all things begin To start? At the beginning.
Speaker 1:So to start out, so different yeah to start Same same, but different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, to start out, let's go ahead and discuss who these Zulu people were. Right, they were a smaller tribe on the eastern side of South Africa that functioned with an economy revolving around cattle. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's like I have millions, millions of what, thank you?
Speaker 3:for the description. We've got to put it plainly, you know that's how they work.
Speaker 2:I'm here for.
Speaker 1:I'm here for the people.
Speaker 2:I'm here for the people, you know, the non-scholars.
Speaker 3:So I'm doing great, yeah, yeah, no that.
Speaker 2:actually, that sounds very healthy. That's got to stay in. Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. That has to stay in while coming out. You know what I mean. You're right, yeah, like you. And when you were 16, when you came out to the whole family, it was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 3:Fucking fuck you.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So, yeah, they had this economy that revolved around cattle. They were a relatively peaceful people, and warfare was more of like a ritual deal rather than a destructive force, right, they would typically meet at predetermined locations, maybe throw a few spears here and there, and would rarely ever get close enough for hand-to-hand combat, which resulted in minimal casualties, right, so very few people would die.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the bloodshedding of like modern warfare, of what we see today and also European history, and like the Civil War of America and all the great wars that didn't exist in America, it was a lot of a healthier conflict.
Speaker 2:Interesting, Interesting, interesting. So instead of the winning side raping, pillaging and conquering the losing side's land, the side would give up some reasonable amount of territory or some cattle, and then they'd call it a day right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was pretty cordial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it was very respectful, very honorable. Maybe there were some injuries, maybe there were some casualties, but nothing crazy. All of this would be changed once Shaka comes into power. So Shaka would actually end up changing the weapons, the tactics and the way that wars were fought and then subsequently won.
Speaker 3:Now. Shaka was born July of 1787 as the illegitimate son of Zenzan Kakhona oh you practiced that.
Speaker 1:You practiced that.
Speaker 3:So these names are. There's going to be some mispronunciations through this.
Speaker 2:But that was good though. Thank you, that's what I think you got nailed it on the head yeah, okay, we'll keep going.
Speaker 3:You said it with confidence, Thank you. That's all that matters at the end of the day Now. Zenzan Kakhona was the ruler of the Zulu, which at the time was considered an insignificant and small chieftain. Shaka's mother was Nandi, who was the daughter of a Lengenny Tree chief, so she had some royalty in her blood as well.
Speaker 2:He was the daughter of a Lengenny Tree, Not a chief a Lengenny Chief.
Speaker 3:Now Shaka's actual name. Okay, this one, I didn't practice Sighiri Kansanza Kakhona.
Speaker 2:It's the same, except for it has a Kha in front of it there we go, so it's the same last name Yep, we'll go yep, but he is commonly known to everyone as Shaka.
Speaker 3:So how do you get Shaka from Sighiri? You don't Nope? Shaka directly translates to intestinal beetle. Did you just want to like pray that up with me I?
Speaker 2:don't know. I was in quotes, I felt the need. Maybe I was wrong, sorry, I tried.
Speaker 3:So here's why Sighiri is known as Shaka. Shaka's parents were not married during conception, and it is believed that he was conceived through the act of ukulolukabunga. It's ukulabunga there we go Now, which is where unmarried couples can do all the foreplay and oral sex that they'd like without actual penetration, but his parents decided to just go with the tip. Just the tip just swim in the shallows, and that was to bring Shaka into the world.
Speaker 2:How are babies made Cooper?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much.
Speaker 2:They call the Stork Foundation, and then the Storks call, and then they bring down a baby and drop it, and then the Storks come and watch them Bang. That's how it's done. It's a public event. It's a public event.
Speaker 1:The Storks fucking get off, man.
Speaker 2:The Storks are actually the horniest creatures on the planet. Little did we know.
Speaker 3:Now, since Shaka had been conceived outside of a traditional marriage, his father denied being the father and tried to claim that Nandi was not pregnant but suffering from an intestinal condition caused by the Isaka beetle. Despite his attempts to deny paternity, shaka's father eventually installed Nandi as his third wife, so Shaka's name stems from the Isaka beetle's claim.
Speaker 2:his father tried to make. That's so funny. Think about that in modern day terms. If our dad was just like, no, no, it was rape, and then they just named us rape.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically that's it.
Speaker 3:Except there was a beetle.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:Way better than rape. I'd prefer a beetle over a rapiny.
Speaker 3:No no, no, no, you have a stomach issue caused by a Yorkie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3:And now your name is Yorkie. So the relationship between his mother and father seems to have been an unhappy one, and it ended with his father driving Nandi and him into exile. So Nandi took Shaka to seek sanctuary with the Lengenie people, nandi's native people, his mom's native people. But this was far from a sanctuary, because Shaka was growing up fatherless and, due to all of the confusion of his birth, he was subject to amelioration and bullying by the Lengenie boys and also not recognized as the rightful heir to his father's throne of the Tsubu chief Chiefs it.
Speaker 3:And like this is like through. I think they were there for like three or four years and it was just they were. They were shunned, they were the ugly stepchildren of the group. They were given enough to live, but there was no like friendships or anything Like. They sheltered them in a way, but then they like they were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know it's just too strong. But, to be clear, like stories of Shaka's childhood have only come down to us by word of mouth, and eventually, around 1802, shaka and his mother were supposedly they were taken to what is it? The M-Tentois? M-tentois, yeah, the M-Tentois people the most, which happened to be the most powerful tribe in the region. When he was about 15, to live with his mother's aunt. So he was taken there to live with his mother's aunt. Yeah, now, dengasueo, dengasueo, dengasueo. That's what I just said.
Speaker 3:It's about the inflection.
Speaker 2:The infossis on the right salabel. Yeah, so to speak. Okay, how did you say it? Dengasueo, dengasueo, oh, put the emphasis on the weio. Okay, so Dengasueo was the chief of the M-Tatoa people and welcomed them graciously. Dengasueo had also become chief. Through like very fierce warfare and clever diplomacy. He had built up a federation of more than 50 tribes. 50 tribes.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:That's a lot, yeah. So Shaka spent his early years as a herd boy with the M-Tatoa. Thank you for putting the pronunciation every single time. Because I am going to need that, I do what I can. So Shaka spent his early years as a herd boy with the M-Tatoa looking after the precious cattle. But everyone soon came to realize that Shaka had more talent than the average boy. I want to be a real boy.
Speaker 3:And a real boy he was.
Speaker 2:Yes, Throughout the next eight years, Shaka grew into manhood and was becoming recognized as a fierce fighter in hand-to-hand combat. Now Dengasueo took Shaka under his wing and taught him the art of warfare, warrior ship, how to distinguish himself in battle and probably a lot of political skills as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because there is a story that I didn't put in here, but Dengasueo, there's a lot of raids for cattle between tribes, sometimes because that's money. It's money and it's also a source of life, because it was food and it was milk. Now we use paper. Yes, we do, amongst other things with money.
Speaker 2:Cocaine, yeah, lots of cocaine, specifically cocaine. It's got to be a lot of cocaine.
Speaker 3:Chetan fentanyl. I hear they're going to start using too.
Speaker 2:Ah, fentanyl. That's why we got to import so much. It's like OK, so cocaine is the dime and fentanyl is now the quarter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe like the half dollar. Yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah, so now there's a raid that Denguezweyo had Shaka go on with a few men to raid some cattle from this tribe, right. Well, denguezweyo was more about the traditional way of fighting and essentially scaring these people away and then taking the cattle. But Shaka was an absolute or nothing and so he wanted to absolutely destroy these people who he was raiding, killed them all, and he did. And then Denguezweyo got pissed at him and kind of laid into him when he got back, but he still took cattle and then he still kept promoting him through the raid.
Speaker 1:He's like well, money is money. You know what I mean. We're like don't do it again, don't do it again, don't do it again, don't say a dog. You know what?
Speaker 3:I'm saying Like that was not cool. That was not cool, but thanks for the cattle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The Shaka was tall and powerfully built. His skill and bravery gave him a natural upper hand against others in his age group and he was developing thirst for power, Thirsty motherfucker. He was so good at Zulu stick fighting that he was only challenged by boys who had not yet heard of his reputation. So people just get to the point where it's like no one around you is going to take the fight.
Speaker 3:But as soon as you get that homeboy from fucking Florida, they're like I don't know who this fucking guy is, and then he comes and fights you and then you kill him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, murder him with a Zulu stick.
Speaker 3:Now around the age of 23,. Denguezweyo drafted Shaka into the M-Tatwa regiment, where he not only found true companionship amongst the other men, which he had never experienced growing up, but also found a passion for battle. He had a lot of pent-up anger. He did, he was well I mean, like I said, he was mistreated for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bullied his whole life. It's that classic story. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:And his dad was a royal dick. He also had stepbrothers too, who, like it was just Did.
Speaker 2:He put his ball sack on their drum set. Well, he ruled him for a little while.
Speaker 3:Oh, he put.
Speaker 2:Basically the same thing.
Speaker 3:Exactly the same thing I think Honestly. Maybe a couple of dick slaps here and there? Yeah, one or two. So he climbed the ranks at an extremely fast pace within Denguezweyo's army and became one of his favorite commanders, soon becoming his commander in chief to the Ibuto, which is the entire military regiment. In this commander position, Shaka became captivated in strategy and battle tactics. Militarism became his way of life War.
Speaker 1:War, war, war, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:What's it good for? Absolutely everything. What, Wait? What is it War? What is it good for? Kevin always sings it, Sing it I can't.
Speaker 2:I just want to watch you sing it, you're so cute You're so cute when you're trying, thanks, so I do it again. So Shaka took the a sega, a sega, yeah, ok. So Shaka took the a sega, which is the traditional type of spear that was designed for long distance throwing but really had no practical use for up close fighting, and he turned it into a short handled stabbing spear and he called it the iklua.
Speaker 3:OK, I wanted to just hear how you pronounce it.
Speaker 2:I want to say iklua.
Speaker 3:So here's. So it's called ikwa. Oh, that's way easier. Why is there?
Speaker 2:an.
Speaker 3:L, because it's in Africa.
Speaker 2:Well, they're wrong.
Speaker 1:Talk about taking an L. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:This is why he named it the ikwa Because of the noise, because of the noise. I remember that, that fucking stab people Because it sounds hick as in. It goes in. And then the wha, as you're pulling it out of somebody's gut.
Speaker 2:He goes. Well, you know, what that tells you Is that he killed somebody with it before he named it.
Speaker 3:Oh sure, he probably tried out this fucking weapon on the guys he was stealing the cattle from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he's one of those no survivors types. Yeah, yeah, no survivor type.
Speaker 3:No survivors types. Oh, no survivors type. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ok, I thought you said no survivor type and I go he's pretty, he survived a lot. Yeah, no, he definitely did.
Speaker 2:The people he came against died Not so much, they did not survive. You could say he came upon them. I'm not a survivor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I killed Pashaka.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:I think, that should be a song.
Speaker 2:Ikwa. So he saw that throwing spear is highly disadvantageous. Right, like a man could throw the spear, and sometimes Mrs Mark, then the enemy could pick up that same spear and throw it right back at him. That and you also don't have a weapon anymore Because you just threw your fucking weapon. Yeah, so each of these men to move up to their opponents in close formation with their body length, cow hide shields forming an almost impenetrable barrier to anything thrown at them. And think of the Spartans kind of, when you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, like the phalings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the phalings.
Speaker 3:Spartan phalings, and it's just like a simple tactic too. It's because, when it works. Because, during this none of the other tribes were like familiar with this kind of warfare.
Speaker 2:Because nobody had tried to literally decimate their competition before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. He's an absolute, like it's either decimation or nothing. Yeah, now, the battle formation that Shaka gets the most attention for is a crescent shaped formation called the bull horn. Shaka did not invent this tactic, as many people believe he did, but he's credited by most historians with perfecting it. The main force of the bull horn was known as the chest that sat in the middle. It attacked the enemy head on, pinning them into a position and engaging in melee combat. So just hand to hand, beating the shit out of them with their little. You know, maki sticks with their with their quick.
Speaker 3:Now, the warriors who made up the chest were senior veterans. They were the toughest bad ass motherfuckers. They were just stout dudes. Well, the enemy was pinned down and occupied with the chest. The horns would flank both sides of the enemy and encircle them. The horns would creep through the tall grass and bush very quietly, and then Shaka would yell out a command to let them know that they were close enough to stand and charge at full force. How scary. Yeah, now, by flanking the enemy with young and fast junior warriors, the chest could destroy the trapped enemy. Now, lastly, the loins, of course, got out of loins, right, that's the most important part, they were a large reserve of warriors that were hidden behind the chest formation, with their backs actually turned to the battle, so that they would not lose any confidence in going up and fighting and either flee or unnecessarily engage in the battle. By being so revved up and, like I'm, going to go fuck them up.
Speaker 1:That's my brother.
Speaker 3:So they would just sit there waiting for a commander who sat in front of them watching the battle, and then he would tell like OK, go to the right flank, go to the right horn, go to the left horns, like back up the middle. So they would just engage wherever the enemy threatened to break out of the encampment.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've ever heard of another example of an army having their backs turned Like that's kind of a cool little tidbit. Yeah, yeah, that's very, very interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't think I have not heard of it. There's nothing that we've talked about.
Speaker 2:No definitely nothing we've talked about. And shout out to 30 episodes that we have not talked about 30 episodes.
Speaker 1:30 episodes ADHD.
Speaker 2:We both have ADHD, so fucking bad, jesus Christ.
Speaker 3:Now, before shock had perfected this battle tactic, men were basically free to charge and throw spears as they pleased right, kind of like a mob mentality of people with centralized focus but a lack of effective tactics. The beautiful thing about the horns formation was that it was simple. Simple. Every man knew that they were what they were supposed to do and it didn't take much coordination, which was super helpful in chaotic conditions. So if you're the chest, you charge. If you're the horns, you get around their flank, if you're the longs, you go where you're needed within those two positions. Not too hard, like anybody can figure that out, right. Yeah, another major change in the tactics of fighting and battle was to leave no man alive. Shaka Zulu believed that Tengu Sueo's policy of leaving the defeated retreating soldiers alive to fight another day was way too kind. Way too kind. Shaka wanted complete victory and we're going to get more into this in a little bit of a specific battle. Of what he did, he was an absolutist, he was a tyrant, he was a mean motherfucker, effective.
Speaker 2:He was mean. Yeah, we don't always talk about nice people here on the podcast. So in the year 1816, Shaka's father died and Shaka's half brother assumed power of the Zulu people. Tengu Sueo saw this as an opportunity to gain control over Zulu and lent Shaka the military support necessary to assassinate his half brother and allow Shaka to make himself chieftain of the Zulu, while still remaining loyal to Tengu Sueo.
Speaker 3:Which is very important, because this is how he starts building his empire.
Speaker 2:So Shaka had become Tengu Sueo's favorite commander and it seems as though he granted an unusual amount of freedom to Shaka, which Shaka took and began conquering and assimilating the neighboring chieftains, including the Lengeni, which were the people from his childhood that had humiliated and fucking bullied him and shit which must have been so satisfying.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say that Such a satisfying moment.
Speaker 2:I love to see people get there come up and Somebody had to have gotten punched in the face. I'm imagining that they didn't stop it punching them in the face. Quik, quik. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when Shaka came into power over the Zulu people, they controlled just over 100 square miles, and Zulu was just an obscure tribe numbering about 1500 people. That's kind of crazy, though. 1500 people controlling 100 square miles Kind of wild. Yeah, that's literally 15 people per mile, africa's huge.
Speaker 3:And it's so big, yeah, so much room.
Speaker 2:Yes. So by the time Shaka's regime ended, after 12 years, he had turned the small Zulu clan into the most powerful empire in South Africa by conquering more than 20,000 square miles of land, with over a quarter million people submitting to his authority. So plain and simple, it was indeed a rule of fear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was mean. He was mean. So, while Shaka would enter into friendly alliances with neighboring tribes, he would rule his own people with absolute authority In a massive display of public executions. It is said that Shaka ordered the clubbing to death of anyone who threatened him or might oppose him in the future. Lot of paranoia in his mindset, as well.
Speaker 3:I mean, I guess there's not a lot of trust to be going around as people are just dying off and this and that and the other, yeah, yeah, and twice the times, and it's all for the cattle, bro, all for the cattle.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, nowadays it's all about the money. You know, got to get that guap, got to get that crop. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Got to get that guap got to get that crop, that's a rap song.
Speaker 2:I'd say it can note Shaka.
Speaker 3:So get that guap guap cow hide. What's up, mer?
Speaker 2:So the first rate in information about Shaka comes from two white adventurers, of course. Of course, nathaniel Isaacs and Henry Francis Fan, two very, very sus characters. Yeah, sus as fuck. And for those of us who are older than 40, sus means suspect.
Speaker 1:Suspicious.
Speaker 2:God, dude, what you got the group over there, what's?
Speaker 3:up.
Speaker 2:Your name's Cooper, not Cooper. We are still getting over our chest congestion that we had last week. It's horrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Don't go away Now. Nathaniel Isaacs was about 16 or 17 years old and only spent about four months with Shaka Kind of crazy and then went off to become a slave trader Classic whites and Finn was probably on the run from the law and ended up marrying four women and having 12 kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in South Africa Also called classic whites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do that, jesus.
Speaker 3:Did. We did that Well also keep in mind. I didn't explain this, but in South Africa, polygamy was also common.
Speaker 1:Norm.
Speaker 3:Just like Northern Greenland with Peter Freyken Good old Freyken.
Speaker 1:I love the poop sickle. I love the poop sickle. What was that?
Speaker 2:episode like four or something.
Speaker 3:That was pretty early on right, it was like within the first 10,. I think yeah.
Speaker 2:God, what a banger, what a banger. So historians say that Isaacs and Finn colluded to vilify Shaka and make him out to be a mythological monster. Of course Shaka was no angel, but within the diary of Henry Francis Finn, historians have found several contradictions between his writings and the stories of the local people. Today, Zulu people don't see Shaka as a fierce war mongering animal. They actually see him as the man who brought them together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and these two guys. So there is no actual like they fabricated a lot of shit. Yeah, White people altering history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Like.
Speaker 3:Mr Finn over here is trying to sell a fucking book. No Right, he's trying to make a profit. And then the other guy fucking, nathaniel Isaacs.
Speaker 2:Some of that yellow journalism.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, nathaniel Isaacs is just like whatever and he wants to say whatever he wants because most of fucking England or Europe and all that it's not going to come to South Africa unless they're there for a bunch of resources which we'll get into later iPhones, iphones.
Speaker 3:As Shaka was becoming more and more powerful, there came a threat from another chieftain who had just as strong an ambition, named Chief Zawade. From the north, from the north, from the north Beyond the wall, I don't know why Just throwing a lot of weird inflections out there. No, I like it.
Speaker 2:No, the inflection is good. The inflection is good, cooper, you're learning from me.
Speaker 3:Now Zawade was the leader of the Andwande tribe. Now Zawade at the time was more powerful than Shaka and Shaka definitely knew that. He was not ready to face Zawade immediately. So he consolidated his defenses by moving to a new fucking capital at oh God Quabolaueo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one Quabolaueo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's say it with confidence here. Cooper, re-read that and just say it with confidence. Quabolaueo.
Speaker 3:I think you did it well enough. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So he knew that Zawade would. He would be after him soon, so he named this new capital the Place of Killings. What, that's where I want to live. Sounds like there's good real estate. Oh, it's brutal, because he also, like fucking, murders his own people. Now, by establishing this new capital, he was buying time to build up his army, and in early 1818, zawade attacked Shaka at his new capital.
Speaker 2:Okay, Now, Denguezueo Shaka's mentor died in this attempted invasion of rival chieftain Zawade. How did you say it? Zawade, Zawade, Zawade, like a soft D. That's all I got. This is soft D.
Speaker 3:You're so proud of yourself aren't you?
Speaker 2:So? According to Henry Francis Flynn, denguezueo's death was the result of Shaka's betrayal and lust for power, but this accusation lacks testimony from literally anybody else. However, it is a fact that when Denguezueo fought his last battle against Zawade, shaka did not arrive at the scene until after Zawade had captured Denguezueo, so it was kind of like he was late to the party.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and yeah like. So in the reason, like I put in, according to Henry Francis Flynn, is because in his diary thing that he published, he he's out there to vilify. Why do I?
Speaker 2:feel like Shaka just slapped the shit out of Henry one time.
Speaker 3:And Henry was like they don't actually know if they met.
Speaker 2:They don't even know if they met. Maybe it was like one of his chieftains or something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he thinks that the historians believe that Henry Francis Flynn just knew of Shaka because he was very and he decided to insert himself in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he knew that Shaka was extremely powerful.
Speaker 3:He knew that he was conquering all these tribes and taking up all this land. And he's like. I want to insert myself here and I'm going to write that book and make him whatever character I want.
Speaker 2:What's crazy is the dude 17.
Speaker 3:That's nope, that's Isaac's.
Speaker 2:Oh, how old was Flynn? Was he a little bit older, like F, five years older?
Speaker 3:So, yeah, okay, so he's still like 23. Yeah, nothing crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:Nothing crazy. So where was Shaka when Denguezweyo was captured, right? No one is certain. Obviously, these are legends passed down by word of mouth. Henry Francis Flynn would have you believe that there was some kind of coup, but historians believe that he was simply fighting elsewhere during the battle and could not protect Denguezweyo, which I'm kind of on that side too, because it sounds to me like I mean, as a dude with daddy issues myself, I mean I wouldn't want my father to be a figure to die.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and that's the biggest thing is like yeah, he very much like.
Speaker 2:This is the first community that that Shaka has actually felt a member of, and then he was put into this position of leadership. I don't think he's going to just turn on Denguezweyo because he's power hungry.
Speaker 1:I think he respects Denguezweyo. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so after Denguezweyo's capture. So what headed him? In an attempt to prevent the M Tots will regimen from winning. But Shaka managed to keep the forces intact to defeat and drive out Zawade and the end end Huawei people Right. So Shaka used many tactics to drive out the end Huawei people, tactics outside of his bullhorn battlefield strategy, such as leaving small numbers of cattle out in the open as a trap. That's kind of sick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when the end Wanda soldiers would attempt to kill and consume these cattle, shaka would spring a trap of Zulu warriors to ambush them. He would send Zulu men into the end Huawei camps to stab the enemy warriors in their beds while sleeping.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he did anything that was like.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to massacre.
Speaker 2:They're not going to fucking expect this, yeah.
Speaker 3:And he knew that Zawade was stronger than him. He had more men than.
Speaker 2:Shaka and Denguezweyo. If you get in a fight with a man who's 400 pounds in all muscle, you kick him in the balls. Yes, you kick him in the balls. That's the only option.
Speaker 3:If you have a gun, you should shoot him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yes, if you have a gun you should shoot him. Or if you got a quick.
Speaker 2:You could give him a quick and you're fine.
Speaker 3:So, after the tactful victory, the leaderless and to a state began to collapse, and Shaka immediately assumed leadership and swore vengeance for the fall in Denguezweyo. He began.
Speaker 2:He's like my father, my father.
Speaker 1:I'm not an intestinal beetle.
Speaker 3:It's kind of funny, I think. Zulu translates to heaven. So essentially is what we're calling his intestinal beetle in heaven, oh it's intestinal.
Speaker 2:It's not an intestinal beetle in heaven. It's an intestinal beetle, it's just a bunch of intestines floating around and they're just swimming through them. They're just like yes this is beautiful Nice weather we're having there, frank. They're like oh, thank you how are you intestines? My intestines are good. How are you intestines?
Speaker 3:They're good. So, after Shaka swore vengeance for the fall in Denguezweyo, he began conquering surrounding chieftains, himself, adding their forces and resources to his own, and continued building up the Zulu kingdom, a warrior culture that literally had never existed before, and changed them from being these herdsmen of the plains to conquerors.
Speaker 2:There's so much death happening, and I feel like anytime we've talked about this much death, it always revolves around one thing the Christians.
Speaker 1:But this time it doesn't. It's so nice that it's not a religious warfare.
Speaker 2:It's not religious at all.
Speaker 3:This is very refreshing.
Speaker 2:That's crazy, that's a good point. I didn't even think about that. It's like there's no Christians. Should that just be the title of the episode?
Speaker 3:Shaka Zulu. The death of millions, Not by religion.
Speaker 2:Without Christians, no Christians, no crusades here.
Speaker 1:We're terrible people.
Speaker 3:So Shaka's vengeance and the war he was about to bring would lead to a period of unparalleled chaos and devastation. And Zulu, they called it the emphakane. In English we call it the crushing.
Speaker 2:I got to say the English version is a little better to me, it's a little more powerful, it is the emphakane or the crushing Sounds like something.
Speaker 3:Kratos would say. Now, however, before delving into the crushing, it's crucial to explore why warfare escalated into genocide and why the region was on the brink of chaos at the slightest hint of conflict. Much of this complexity stemmed from European influence and not because the Europeans were instigating it. In fact, there was actually many Europeans who attempted to aid the situation. However, the stark differences in wealth, technology and societal structures between Europeans and the local population inadvertently destabilized the region merely by their presence. So it's kind of like just when Roanoke Roanoke, when they went over and then they pissed off the tribes because they were trading in one area.
Speaker 3:They caused all this little destabilizing doing a whole.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's like, you know, it's funny is it's kind of like the Red Dead Redemption 2 storyline where there's those two families and the gang tries to get in the middle of it, you know, and they're looking for them because they want the money they want the gold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, same shit, different toilets.
Speaker 3:Cowboys and Shakazula Basically same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, essentially.
Speaker 2:Now, the surge in European trade introduced new goods, triggering a population boom that heightened competition for land. Simultaneously, european ships traded for cattle to replenish their food supplies, inflating the value of cattle, which caused more raids amongst tribes. Additionally, european traders sought ivory, which necessitated the hunting of elephants, which demanded significant coordination among groups of people, because those are some big motherfuckers. Some suggest that this demand for ivory contributed to the more organized and significantly more lethal tactics implemented by Shaka. Amidst these challenges, a drought caused the more water dependent crops to fail, resulting in a famine. So many famines happen.
Speaker 3:There's always a fucking famine. It just ruins everything. It's.
Speaker 2:Africa, dude. It's where the locusts were born, I mean let's be, honest here. Consequently, the natal area was teetering on the edge of catastrophe due to these cumulative pressures.
Speaker 3:So, it was very fragile ground.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like there was all sorts of different shit happening in that toilet.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah. Lots of shit was spinning around. Now Shaka continued to expand. That was nice.
Speaker 2:Lots of shit was spinning around. I like that. I like that. That was quick, that was good. That was good.
Speaker 3:Shaka continued expanding his territory and brought in neighboring tribes with diplomacy when possible, but would often force tribes to join the Zulu Kingdom. It was either you're going to join and you're going to be happy about it, and if you don't want to join, we're going to kill every single man who is a fighting agent. Take all the women and kids.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like when people tried to convert other people to Christianity or any other religion on the planet.
Speaker 3:But this was more for a very real life, practical reason. Yeah, but this was like assimilation for the demand of building an empire for the sake of his unsecurity and wealth.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, cooper call it what it is practical genocide. Holy shit, it's so fucked up.
Speaker 1:That's not true at all. Exactly what this is.
Speaker 2:Exactly what no, no, that's exactly what Shaka thought this was. It's still fucked up. We need to make that very clear. This is a fucked up situation, but, yeah, practical genocide.
Speaker 3:So, like we said earlier, when Shaka defeated an enemy, he would set out to destroy that enemy completely. Once he had killed off the enemy's army, he would then march his men into the enemy village and kill all the men of the fighting age, assimilating only the women and the children into the Zulu tribe.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's like I know your paws gone, but we got a tent for you Once again, once again.
Speaker 3:ladies and gentlemen, there's never been a better time to be alive than right now. Dude, I'm saying You're in Ukraine or in Gaza or in Israel or actually still even in Africa. Yeah, honestly, if you were to go online and type in active war zones right now. There are 32 to 33 countries in an active war right now, so as long as you're not in one of those, there's never been a better time to be alive, may the odds be ever in your favor by chance of birth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally, literally.
Speaker 3:What a dream Swimming in the right pair of nuts.
Speaker 2:I mean. But think about it though back then, like there was probably a lot more than 30 wars going on.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Like back then, so we're still technically 30 is a low number for the world. Well, this is early 1800s, so we're talking Napoleon going on right now. Which?
Speaker 2:is like that counts as like seven.
Speaker 1:Let's be honest, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that counts as like seven, because he was fucking up a lot of different countries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they called themselves with the boars and they had an interesting proposition, because they were Dutch and then Napoleon was happening, and then Napoleon took over all the Dutch people and then the Dutch was no longer country, and yet then the people that were in Africa that were Dutch were claimed by the English or the British I'm sorry and then they were just kind of like in this weird purgatory stance for a while.
Speaker 2:You know, you're so damn knowledgeable, you're so damn knowledgeable.
Speaker 3:And they didn't even know if they were going to be assimilated back into their own fucking country, because Napoleon was doing all of his shit. God, I'm so moist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, anyway, so I'm so moist. So anyways, like we said earlier, good old Zawade was making plans to destroy Shaka in the Zulu Kingdom Shaka was building. Zawade made his second attempt by sending his entire army into Zululand in April of 1818. Even though Zawade had even more manpower, shaka had the perfect strategy to exhaust the large army. Shaka simply retreated his men and drew Zawade's forces deep into Zulu territory. How does that sound familiar? Scorched earth policy? Yeah, russia.
Speaker 3:Except they weren't scorched in the earth.
Speaker 1:No, they were just dipping. Yeah, they were just packing up, they would go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, they were like because there was little communities and stuff like that and they would.
Speaker 2:It wasn't always great, it was like hey, if you stay here, you're probably going to die.
Speaker 3:Come with us. Oh no, it was like you are going to leave, because you are not allowed to leave any kind of resources for these people. Oh, okay, yeah, and this is in a very, very quick time. This is I'm not talking months or anything when I say they're retreating. This is like in a 24 hour period 24, 48 hour period.
Speaker 2:Okay yeah. And since Zawade's army was fatigued, he positioned about 5,000 of his warriors strategically on a hill in the path of the approaching enemy. Zawade, seeking this as an easy victory due to his numerical superiority, decided to go ahead and charge ahead. Shaka took note of this and sent a faction of his men out from the hill in order to distract a large portion of Zawade's army away from the hill. But Zawade's men who were still charging the hill still outnumbered Shaka. Surprisingly, this was an advantage to Shaka. Zawade's men were getting in the way of each other as they climbed up the hill and were starting to reach the top of the hill in more of a disorganized mob rather than an organized army. That's kind of like when in the Alamo, like they're all tightly packed.
Speaker 3:Bro, I was thinking the same shit when I was writing this. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the Alamo. That's crazy Wow.
Speaker 3:Now this uphill climb and the disorganization made the long-throwing spear Zawade's men carried up the hill completely useless. They basically like turn into walking sticks. Yeah at this point.
Speaker 2:I'd be using it as a fucking walking stick. I hope I'm at least six rows back, though I got to. I give me a little time to prepare. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah no. The Zulu counter attacked, charging down the hill and crashed into the enemy line with their short stabbing spears, causing the enemy to retreat and stampede backwards down the hill. Just complete chaos from the enemy right here yeah, zawade's men.
Speaker 2:Well, it's an uphill battle.
Speaker 3:Literally, this is where that term came from. No, I have no idea where that term came from.
Speaker 2:Probably something along the same lines the Battle of Hagenkort, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:That's what the Hagenkort Shaka then gathered his men back into formation at the top of the hill and waited. Zawade's men charged up that hill five fucking times that day, and each time they were thwarted by the smaller force.
Speaker 2:You know what? I think I was thinking of Hagenkort, not the Alamo, when I brought that up. I think I was thinking of Hagenkort because in the Alamo it was more like from behind they were getting shot. Alamo.
Speaker 3:Alamo was Travis Scott's concert. Yeah. And then Hagenkort is a downhill like clusterfuck of knights wearing too much armor and a lot of mud. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like a mixture of the two. Yeah, al Alamonkort.
Speaker 3:It's called Don't Run Too Fast because the people in the front are going to fuck it up. Yeah, now, zawade's men were starting to seriously fatigue at this point, and some of the men would actually slip off to go to this river that was about a mile away to drink some water and cool off, because the sun was hotter than fuck that day, let me take a bath.
Speaker 1:Honestly, draw a bath for me, please, but we're going to go chill with the hippos bro Meanwhile each dude.
Speaker 2:There were probably fucking hippos in that river too. Of course there were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're just chilling, bro Now. Meanwhile, each time the Zulus came back to the formation at the top of the hill, they were able to refresh themselves with the supplies that Shaka had hidden at the top of the hill. Because smart yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, he had it all stacked up, so the Zulus were actually winning the day, but Shaka was of course still outnumbered. Shaka looked out to the distance and saw a signal fire, so the division force that he had used earlier to lure some of Zuade's men were actually letting him know that the enemy who was chasing them were on their way. So that's very, very smart.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were circling back around like, alright, we're not going to catch these guys. We need to actually go help out Zuade and kill Shaka, Because that's the whole point. Why are we chasing these random 50 dudes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So Shaka knew that he had to shatter Zuade's army before this enemy faction returned and strengthened the enemy numbers. The Zulus were feeling some fatigue themselves and had lost a fair amount of men during each clash, but of course Shaka was prepared.
Speaker 1:What did he have, ian? He had the lions. Oh my God, the lions, the lions, not my dyslexic ass almost saying lions.
Speaker 3:I was literally about to be like.
Speaker 2:I was about to be like. I literally read this script and I do not remember him sending a faction of lions at his enemy. No, he had the lions. There was the fresh, ready to fight lion faction, sitting in a depression on the backside of the hill that Zuade was unaware of. I mean, he's battling in unfamiliar territory. This is Shaka's homeland.
Speaker 3:Well, kind of yeah, basically His foster homeland.
Speaker 2:There you go, yeah. So Shaka called for the bullhorn formation and filled the horns with the fresh men. Seeing this large force appear as if from nowhere, Zuade's army began to panic. Pinned by the chest remember the chest and encircled by the horns remember the horns this last column of the enemy was crushed and sent survivors fleeing.
Speaker 2:When we say crushed, that means that they were fucking murdered, yeah, destroyed just decimated, decapitated, shaka sent a small contingent of men to kill any enemy they could find taking water at the river, while his main force pursued the bulk of the fleeing army. But as the group of enemy men that had gone off to chase the diversionary force began to close in, shaka was forced to call off the chase. Neither side took a prisoner and at the end of this one day, nearly 2,000 Zulus lay dead, as did 7,500 of Zuade's men, but not Zawade. He had managed to flee, fucker. Alright, dude, it's always good. Now remember these-.
Speaker 1:Cause he's hanging out in the back.
Speaker 2:He's hanging out in the back in the comfort of his tent, probably by the river, getting water and watching hippos fuck. Shhh, something like that. Yeah, he's watching.
Speaker 3:Animal Planet, but live Now. Keep in mind these people of Zawade's men, like the army that he was commanding was the Andondway, so the people that had previously raided and killed Denguezweyo. Yes, so they are very much still around. There's still a very large rival tribe, and there's fucking beef. There's some serious beef.
Speaker 1:And I'm not talking cattle.
Speaker 3:But there's so much cattle there's so much cattle, so much cattle. See, zawade was not popular among a lot of the other tribes in the region and as the neighboring tribes began to slowly ally themselves with Shaka after this crushing defeat, it helped Shaka bolster his numbers as an army and just as a nation, essentially, but Zawade did not give up. After 18 months of minor scrimmages, zawade, leading the Andondway, and the Zulus came to a head one final time.
Speaker 1:The Zulus were able to trap One final time. Finish them, finish him.
Speaker 3:Now this is crazy. So the Zulus were able to trap the Andondway by a river and separated the men on either side of the river, so diminishing the fighting force of the Andondway people. After two days of fierce fighting, the Andondays were scattered across the land. Now Shaka saw this as an opportunity and marched his Zulu army to the Andondway capital before the news of their army's defeat could reach them. So as he and his men approached from the distance, he had the Zulu men begin to sing Andondway victory songs.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And when the Andonday people came out to greet them in anticipation of celebration, they were instead met by a swift fucking slaughter. I'm so fucked up, so fucked up. They fucking massacred this entire capital of people. Now, once again, zawade managed to escape that sleaky bastard, except his mother did not. Shaka locked her in a house with jackals and hyenas to eat her alive, and then he fucking set the hut on fire so that all that was left was just trash. Oh my God yeah.
Speaker 1:So he killed all the hyenas and jackals.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, it didn't, it didn't clarify. Well, you think he let him out? I don't know no probably more about the principle. It's Shaka man, it's Shaka. So Shaka ordered his army to shock in awe.
Speaker 3:Sorry, shock in awe, shaka ordered his army to destroy the Anduande homeland in a manner that would prevent them from ever being able to rebuild there again. So it wasn't just about like assimilating these people, it was you're done, you're gone, yeah, and will murder you, yeah. This truly shattered the Anduande state, scattering them all over the land. From fleeing this battle, zawande commanders fled north, where actually, like so one of the commanders? He fled up north and established his own fucking kingdom, such as uh, which was called the Shengan Kingdom in Gaza. They traveled way north. Yeah, they traveled like literally longer than the continent.
Speaker 2:This takes place in southern Africa. Yes, and then they went up to Gaza. That's crazy. Yeah, we all know where Gaza is nowadays, nowadays.
Speaker 1:And if you don't?
Speaker 2:read a fucking news article.
Speaker 3:It's pretty popular these days, yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:By the year 1821, shaka had successfully expanded Zulu land to 9,000 square miles, conquering and diplomatically obtaining land that was truly fruitful to the Zulus. It was about this time that the Zulus became very wealthy, especially in cattle, which, as stated before, was basically the lifeblood of their economy. Shaka built his forces into the terror of the land through strict drilling and discipline. According to the Shaka Zulu documentary from the biography channel, if a warrior lost their spear in a battle, shaka would place his spear on top of the warrior's foot and begin to spin the spear very slowly, while calmly saying things such as why would you lose your spear?
Speaker 1:How will you fight and defend yourself without your spear? Your enemy could pick it up and try to kill you or one of your comrades. Do you see that you are weakening my power as king? How come you lost your spear?
Speaker 3:So scary, it's fucking dead. All while he's generally a spear into your foot, I was reading that and got scared. I was reading that and got scared.
Speaker 2:So Shaka also forbade his armies to wear sandals so they could toughen their feet Barefoot. Motherfuckers. He would make them run barefoot through thorny ground so that when they faced battle they would have no problem with their mobility or speed. It's kind of like if we've ever watched Naked and Afraid when they're in Africa and it's just thorny ground and they're just picking fucking thorns out of their feet nonstop.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it is. Yep, I'm a Naked and Afraid enthusiast. I think that's a great show. Is that your porn hub? We all know those contestants were fucking Cooper. We all know it.
Speaker 3:They just turned off the camera. Is that where you get off? Is the imagination of, like the test talking? It's just so much more natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that More primitive.
Speaker 2:I really like it when there's two dudes that are partners.
Speaker 3:So anyway, I'm sure you do Now listen to the noises I'm hearing coming from your room.
Speaker 2:Just a whole bunch of hee-haw.
Speaker 1:Why is there a donkey? Why wouldn't there be Cooper? We're in Africa, baby.
Speaker 3:Are there? Are there donkeys in Africa? Mules maybe?
Speaker 2:I thought those were Middle Eastern things they have horses?
Speaker 3:I don't think so. Oh fuck it. They hit zebras.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was a zebra. This whole time it's off camera.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't. I don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 3:They got stripes. I can't see where they're at.
Speaker 2:Colorblind Cooper. They blend into the surrounding area, so the thorny field that they trained on was produced by spreading an African acacia bush over the ground. These are the bushes that the people in Naked and Afraid would hide in to hide from the lions For fucking clarifying this.
Speaker 1:If anybody watches that show, they'll understand.
Speaker 2:They'll get it. So when he first instructed this training, he told the men take your shoes off and you will dance until the thorns are flat.
Speaker 1:I want to see no thorn uncrushed.
Speaker 3:There were. I really love your African accent.
Speaker 2:That's not an African accent, that's a badass accent. Oh okay, yeah, don't make it racial.
Speaker 3:It's not, it's fucking. Just knowing You're making it racial by do not doing the accent right what?
Speaker 2:You want me to be up here and go well, when in Jim Bob way like, and that's I sound like a fucking American. That's, that's my best attempt you can say I'm saving myself from the embarrassment.
Speaker 3:You just say take your shoes off.
Speaker 1:No, that's racist, that's, that's immediately racist.
Speaker 2:That's immediately too far.
Speaker 1:Those whole segments being taken out. You're a bald white man.
Speaker 3:Definitely cultured. I've been to Italy.
Speaker 2:One of the most white, non-white areas on the planet. Got it, man.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:It's like the South Africa of Europe.
Speaker 1:So anyway he is fucking sick.
Speaker 2:Okay, arthur Morgan made me sad. Literally made me so sad. So there were two men who ended up questioning this kind of training. Right, they were like I don't care about the thorns, this is fucked up. And so Shaka immediately had these men clubbed in the head until they were dead. Just fucking done, dunta, just Gonski.
Speaker 3:Now, this tactic was another way to make sure that, when an enemy army churned and retreated wearing their sandals, the barefooted Zulu could catch them with ease and efficiently finish them off, couldn't?
Speaker 2:couldn't they have just, oh, I don't know worn sandals or no.
Speaker 3:The point is, because they're wearing sandals, you're not able to run as fast.
Speaker 1:Okay okay, okay, okay, okay, it's adding up.
Speaker 2:It's adding up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, they became their own war dogs. They became their own Roman war dogs. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the more victory Shaka won, the more cruel he became. Women, children and the old were killed. No one was spared. Shaka's war cry was victory or death. He would keep his men enlisted in the army and ordered them continuously to go on military campaigns until he thought that they had earned the right to wear the headring of manhood, which was called the encyclical.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, which is another word for cock ring? I don't think so. No, it's a cock.
Speaker 3:It's a headband.
Speaker 2:Oh, a headband Going around the going around the head of the oh, my God Sorry it's an entire country that's going to hate you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fine, it's a continent, by the way.
Speaker 3:Now. According to I'm going to stop this right now no, according to YouTube's extra history docu-series, through Shaka's military campaigns, he had built a true empire and exerted influence far beyond the regions he could control. However, his actions had a profound impact on the tribes he displaced, the refugees he left behind and the warriors he uprooted from their homes and spread out like a virus across Africa. Herpes, oh, oh, okay, I guess it's my herpes.
Speaker 1:Technically, I guess you're not wrong Probably spread at a similar rate.
Speaker 3:you know, all of these men who had seen the Zulu fight adopted the Zulu way of war and as they fled the now mighty Zulu, they inflicted the same brutality on those around them. This was the Mephacani. This was the crushing the crushing.
Speaker 2:The causes of the crushing were multifaceted and complex. While Shaka Zulu's expansionist policies and military campaigns played a role in triggering conflicts and displacements, other factors such as environmental pressures, the slave trade, of course, and the destabilizing effects of European colonization, also contributed to this. So, as Shaka Zulu's kingdom expanded, neighboring tribes were displaced or absorbed, leading to waves of migration and conflicts among different groups vying for resources and territory. The upheaval resulted in widespread chaos, devastation and the displacement of countless communities across Southern Africa. The repercussions of the crushing reverberated across the region, leading to the formation of new alliances, the collapse of established societies and the reshaping of political landscapes. It significantly altered the social and political dynamics of Southern Africa, leaving a lasting impact on the affected communities and their histories. The tribes escaping the Zulu either perished or established their own kingdoms using similarly violent tactics learned from the Zulu, but, of course, at a great cost. Over the next 15 years, the Southern half of Africa witnessed the deaths of one million to two million people due to these refugees carving a destructive path across the land.
Speaker 3:It's so insane what this caused.
Speaker 1:It's the ripple effect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's crazy, yeah, it's just, it's sad, it's insanely sad, and it's also what we still like what's still happening today and to it's the human condition, it's absolutely the human condition of survival.
Speaker 2:Well, get this.
Speaker 3:So this is, in a way, the same kind of thing that happened in sometime in the 1700s, with American slaves being shipped back to Africa. So get this. There was a ship where I don't know where this supported from I think it might have been it was in one of the Southern states, I think and it was some fucking white dude's idea that we're like, we're going to send the slaves back to Africa. Now this is generations after the actual Africans had been stolen and kidnapped from Africa to be brought over.
Speaker 2:Those poor dudes had no idea what the fuck they were getting into.
Speaker 3:So it was what they did when they gave all these fucking old slaves guns and just dropped them off on West Africa shorelines.
Speaker 1:Well, at least they had guns.
Speaker 3:Well, you know what they fucking did? What they used those guns, thousands of guns, and they went to tribes and they did the exact same thing the whites did to the slaves, to the tribes in Africa, and started slaving around people and built their own little militia empires.
Speaker 2:The warlords.
Speaker 3:Which is why you see these warlord factions all over Africa and why everything is so disorganized.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. That was the reason I honestly I mean that specifically is not the reason, the reason, but it's a contributing factor.
Speaker 3:Like. So this example of the refugees carving this destructive path across Africa because of this ripple effect that Zulu did to all of these people and displaced them, is the same thing that happened in Northern Africa from America, which probably, if did, there was a similar thing that probably happened from Europeans, that happened from the Middle Eastern.
Speaker 2:That's very, very interesting. I never really honestly, to be completely frank I didn't realize that we had sent people back.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we yeah, there were attempts, random shit, to just happen this is just like a random ripple thing, Right right, right, right, right.
Speaker 2:But it's important to talk about because I mean, fuck, I didn't know. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of people who had no idea, and that's a very interesting contributing factor, because you send a bunch of people back with fucking shotguns and 22 rifles to an area that uses crossbows and spears and short spears. That's the only thing that's going to happen. A superior, physically superior people comes in. They're going to take over.
Speaker 3:Yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to happen. They have the weapons to do it.
Speaker 3:And also at that time Napoleon's fighting and he's in Egypt as well and he's, you know, shooting. He wasn't even shooting shit at the pyramids, but according to the movie he was. There's displacement. That's happening all over fucking Africa.
Speaker 2:That still pisses me off, oh God.
Speaker 3:I know it's tragic what history did to Africa?
Speaker 2:Well it's tragic what humans did to humans.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at the end of the day, that's very true, because it just sucks. It really does.
Speaker 2:We're all just as smart as the next fella, so to speak, and it sucks that this is our. I mean it's. I mean you look at it, this is a completely different topic for a completely different podcast, and that's fine. I'll just say it briefly. But you look at primates. It is built into our genetics to dominate, right? Sure, but that's still tragic once you get to the level of sentience that humans are Right. You know what I mean. It's just we should be smart enough not to do that. Yeah, but we do it anyway. We give into that animalistic instinct of we need to be in charge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it sucks. And one thing to keep in mind is that it's not like we were dumber back then. We had the same exact brain that we have now. Yeah, we've had the same exact brain for thousands of years.
Speaker 2:If anything, we're dumber now, because we don't have to use our brains as much I would actually.
Speaker 1:There are smarter people now?
Speaker 2:Yes, but on average I would say we're probably dumber now.
Speaker 3:I don't know about that, because illiteracy, I guess. Reading, sure, and I'm thinking more.
Speaker 2:I guess common sense Like ask a random American to practice. I guess practical knowledge Ask a random American to build a fire. 80% of them can't Well a match.
Speaker 3:I feel like that one's pretty.
Speaker 1:Well, if you have a match, yes, but I'm not giving them a match.
Speaker 2:I'm saying build a fire, you mean like two sticks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, build the fucking fire, yeah. And if, like Flint and all that shit, create the fire, yeah, maybe, exactly. Yeah, you're right, you're right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean and I'm sure 80% of these people could do it we're getting off topic for sidebarring.
Speaker 3:We are totally getting off topic. Sorry about the sidebar.
Speaker 2:I think it's an important subject. We're wine drunk, it's okay, we can talk about these things. So back to the story.
Speaker 3:In the biography channel documentary they state that after a campaign, shaka would ask his commanders who did not behave well in battle, who hid behind their shield or who hung back during the fight. Yeah, dangerous question.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because you know what's happening after that. The commanders would then name the men who acted cowardly and would then have them put to death in front of the whole army by standing in front of a designated tree called the Cowards.
Speaker 2:Bush. Yeah, and it's not pubic hair, ladies and gentlemen, that is a actual bush.
Speaker 3:I don't know why you keep calling my bush Cowards Bush, just because you can't see anything more than this If I'm a dick out of it doesn't mean that you have to keep calling it the Cowards.
Speaker 2:Bush. It's a bush with a little strawberry on the tip.
Speaker 3:I'm a grower, not a shower, all right, okay, okay, and you did not arouse me, so you don't know. He had the men raise their hands in the air and he would plunge the shortened stabbing spear into your chest cavity through the side of their ribs With this kind of consequence. It only took a few men being executed for the rest of the army to realize it was a better deal for them to join in the fight and just to act at the best of their ability and hope for the best.
Speaker 2:Or at least fucking pretend you know.
Speaker 3:at least do their best to like get to the front line, I think it's just yeah, you're just gonna go, you're gonna just, you're just gonna fight, because you're standing there and it's more of like I wouldn't.
Speaker 2:I'm a coward dude, I am not a fighter. I would, I would run and run far.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but here's the other part of this is that it wasn't just you dying, it was your family dying too, yeah, your fan. So these warriors would come back from battle who were acting cowardly, to find their children beaten to death with clubs, to find their wives raped and murdered and dismembered Like it wasn't just you. So it didn't take much of this too. Really enforce all of the men. Of course there was always the one, the two, whatever, but then that person's bloodline was gone. Mm yeah, mm-hmm, yep. Fun times in Africa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Singing and dancing traditions were extremely important to the Zulu's, and especially to Shaka. Let's go ahead and take things in a completely different direction. Yeah, we're gonna divert hats here, but then I know, we just dismembered your why, but do you wanna?
Speaker 3:dance little boy, we're gonna come back here real quick to death, don't worry yeah it'll happen soon.
Speaker 2:So he was very strict with everyone in attendance at these gatherings. If a man coughed while he was speaking, he'd be hit in the head with a club, which means he'd be killed, like we would have died three times during this podcast.
Speaker 3:Oh, he'd be so dead. Yeah, god, could you imagine just being sick?
Speaker 2:Yeah, god, like what if you have a cold?
Speaker 3:I would, just would stand in the back, bury your head in the sand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I'd stand in the back and just be like hh, hh, hh, hh, yeah. Now, if someone made him laugh while he was trying to make a serious speech, that person would be hit in the head with a club. That's so fucked up. He's like ha, ha, ha.
Speaker 1:Fucking kill him, get his ass, get his ass.
Speaker 2:So, basically, he ruled his people with an iron fist. One of the most feared locations by his people was known as execution rock, which was the definitive symbol of Chaka's rule of terror amongst his own people. It is said that half a dozen people a day could be taken to execution rock, to be thrown off into a river where they would then be eaten alive by Crocodiles.
Speaker 3:Yes, Crocodiles, crocodiles. Now, the thing about this specific cliff is that it was not tall enough to kill you, but no, it broke you, though it broke you, and at the bottom is just a mad amount of crocodiles.
Speaker 2:I have a really bad image in my mind of the exact height that cliff would need to be. Same, yeah, same.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's like it's about two, three stories high.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like you're broken, but you're not but you're going. Yeah, and then the gators come and they start gator rolling your ass.
Speaker 3:Yeah and oh, Just ripping you apart each oh yeah.
Speaker 2:We truly are alive and the best time to be alive ladies and gentlemen, as long as you're not at war right now.
Speaker 3:Now on the political side of Shaka. He actually did a good job at bringing different tribes together. He was known to be a clever diplomat and a farsighted politician. Shaka would form alliances with neighboring chieftains without any bloodshed and build opportunistic relationships, just as any good politician would do. He would station his men and women throughout the Zulu Kingdom depending on their age, gender and rank. This built a sense of community for all of them.
Speaker 2:And commonality.
Speaker 3:And commonality exactly, and like just coming together to fight for the Zulu Kingdom and build that empire together and hopefully you don't lose your head in the process.
Speaker 2:You just or get your head beaten in with a glove, you just don't make eye contact.
Speaker 3:Or the Now, when one of the Just don't make eye contact. When one of the male warriors was allowed to marry, a female would be given to the warrior as a wife. Sex was prohibited until that time. If you were caught having sex before you were allowed to marry, you would be put to death along with a woman. That's kind of ironic, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's just Yep, which is. It's very ironic, considering the fact that he was the intestinal beetle. Yeah, in heaven, in heaven, yeah, no, he is intestinal beetle heaven.
Speaker 3:He is intestinal beetle heaven.
Speaker 2:He must have had some strong intestines, but that is very, very ironic given his own familial history. Maybe, ladies and gentlemen, that kind of ties into why he was so strong on this aspect Because he was given a shite life and because Could be Of that. You know what I mean. So maybe he was feeling a little bit.
Speaker 3:But instead of just like, hey, we're gonna build a home for the bastard kids, he's like we're gonna kill your parents completely. Yeah, and you in the womb.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that's the easiest place to kill a baby. Yeah, yeah, Speaking of baby making, oh and baby taking. Shaka never had children. He actually dreaded producing a legitimate heir. He never married and women found pregnant by him were then put to death.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what he turned into his father.
Speaker 1:He turned into me. It was an intestinal beetle. I swear to God.
Speaker 2:So in one story, a woman accused Shaka of being the father of her newborn infant. That dumb ass woman, jesus Christ, why would she ever do that, anyway? So yeah, she accused him of being the father of her newborn infant. So Shaka took the infant and threw it high into the air and let the infant hit the ground, where the baby died on impact.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:He then had the mother put to death on the spot. Therefore, his households were not dominated by wives, but by stern senior women of the royal family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would do some of the politicianing with him and care to his needs this and that and the other, but no wives. Why would anybody fuck him?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think Jesus, I don't think he had a choice, so he's just gonna fuck you and then, oh, he didn't pull out, so I guess you're dead man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's all you gotta say.
Speaker 1:We kind of suck for the most part.
Speaker 3:Now, according to Donald R Morris in the Washing of the Spears, eight years into Shaka's reign in 1824, things began to change. The first warning sign was the arrival of a party of British adventurers in Portnadel, including Henry Francis Finn this fucking guy. He had heard about Shaka and the Zulu wealth and came to trade for ivory minerals and other exotic goods. But the true root of their arrival was to build a colonial settlement. Of course, of course.
Speaker 2:We just like building shit on other people's stuff.
Speaker 3:Now this is like a very complex thing. It's not just like one white dude showed up and was like I want this land here.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, there's a lot of shit already happening here.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is just a very big sum up. I'm sure to the leadership it seemed like a good idea. I mean, there's tons of resources here. It seems like they don't know about the resources yet. They don't know about the resources they know about the ivory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, elephants, that's about it, and that there was. That's enough Potential trade. It's so complex.
Speaker 2:Exotic goods. Enough for that kind of thing to be built.
Speaker 3:That's what we're called Yep. So now, like many native leaders who come into contact with colonialism, who make the big mistake of being too interested in the white man, shaka became fascinated with the white's arrivals. No, remember, this is, according to Donald Ormore's says, the washing of the spirits. Of course, ok. Now these.
Speaker 3:Shaka doesn't seem the kind to just get like enthralled with these guys, so it's questionable at the very least, and so apparently he did become enthralled with him, according to this guy. But at the same time, shaka was aware that this was potentially not good. He had a feeling that one day the Zulus would pay the price for that. So, he did come into contact with whites, but as far as actually like Henry Francis Finn, there's, the only person that says that those two came together was Henry Francis Finn, and that's where Morris, in his book the Washing of Spears, derives this factual quote. Unquote factual information.
Speaker 2:Right, Right. So during Henry Francis Flynn's stay there was an assassination attempt on Shaka's life.
Speaker 3:This is still within the book. Yeah, this is just kind of like we don't know. That's the problem. We don't really know.
Speaker 2:It's African history. It's very hard to know.
Speaker 3:This is just. It's enough in the research that it's just like this story is told.
Speaker 2:But we're like eh you know, take it with a grain of salt. So he was stabbed in the arm and the stomach. Flynn helped treat the wounds. Which bullshit I'm calling bullshit right there? No way, oh yeah, just keep going. Yeah, yeah. So he helped treat the wounds and Shaka believed that it was the European's medicine that had saved his life and wanted to express his thanks. When British saw this moment of weakness, they seized it for their own gain. They convinced Shaka to forfeit some land for a permanent settlement, including Port Natal, modern Durban. This formed the foundations of the first British colony in the area.
Speaker 3:Colonialism wasn't the only thing that Shaka was worried about. In fact, he was truly wasn't worried about the new foreigner settling quite yet. What he feared the most was witchcraft, because that's witchcraft was actually huge in Africa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Was it. Was it referred to as voodoo? I actually think it was yeah, I think that their version of witchcraft was voodoo Voodoo, what they called it, I think, and I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure I don't know the origins, but it's that sounds correct. Well, I know that voodoo has African origins. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's the same thing. I know that voodoo dolls. I know that they didn't call it witchcraft, though.
Speaker 3:So the Zulu people in Shaka himself believe that he was the living embodiment of something spiritual and holy and that if someone with malicious intent were to truly harm Shaka, it would by all means be of witchcraft. They believe that this could be done by simply stealing something that Shaka had touched, or even his own hair shavings. So this problem, this is, it's got to be voodoo. You were probably right. If a precious item was stolen, the Zulu people in Shaka believe that the enemy would curse Shaka to bad fate and the curse, and then in turn curse the Zulu people as well. Now, regardless of these fears, shaka's empire was stable and efficient. In 1827, at the height of Zulu power, shaka moved to the capital of Kuaakusa, the modern town of Stanka. Now, at this point, he held 20,000 square miles of Zulu land. So, to make progress, the man's making moves. He's doing things Like a money moves mogul moves, baby. He is scared of the witchcraft of the voodoo. I would be too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Henry Francis Flynn is a twat. That's that's, that's Okay.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, you're not wrong.
Speaker 3:That's my professional opinion, Mr Finn. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So it all seemed pretty groovy for Shaka, but personal tragedy quickly changed everything and turned him into a mad man. The shit is, he literally loses his fucking mind. He was already pretty insane, but he was like holding it together up until here. I feel like like any guy who's gonna do the things that he has done up until this point has a shit missing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So in the fall of 1827, Shaka was out hunting when he received the news that his mother, Nandi, had died. There are rumors that Shaka had actually killed his mother himself, but that's really all. They were just rumors. One story states that his mother was raising one of Shaka's sons without him knowing, and once Shaka found out, he went into a blind rage, violently attacking and killing her. Historians believe, through contemporary sources, that this was all just propaganda and put out after the fact, and that his mother actually just died of dysentery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is?
Speaker 2:more, or dysentery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dysentery, which is definitely more believable because it's very unlikely that he would have killed his mother, just like the rumors of him building Dengaswayo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she literally stuck with him his whole fucking life, exactly.
Speaker 3:He's not gonna fucking. Yeah Now, shaka was a ruthless leader, to say the least, but when his mother, nandi, died, he simply went fucking mad. Yeah, her death brought devastating consequences for all of Zulu land. He commanded that the whole nation mourn her death, or it was, and I wrote it three months here. It was for a year. Wow, for one whole year.
Speaker 2:Wow, I mean, I do the same thing for mom, yeah, but I'd be like, hey, all you bitches here's kind of maybe taking like here's maybe taking the step too far.
Speaker 3:No one was allowed to cultivate their land, to grow new crops or consume milk, which was a very significant thing to keep the Zulu people alive.
Speaker 2:Kind of a weird, kind of a weird, weird thing to choose Now this outpouring of grief led to absolute atrocity.
Speaker 3:One example was that his mother's funeral, shaka had his mother's handmaidens legs and arms broken and then buried them alive with her in order to look after her and serve her in the afterlife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure they held no grudges. I'm sure they held no grudges.
Speaker 3:None at all Going into that afterlife. This is kind of like an Egyptian thing too.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, they would bury, like the Pharaoh's, cats or pets with them. They would bury their servants with them, that kind of a thing.
Speaker 3:Another thing that he would do that is in the People's documentary, I believe is that he would if a cow got pregnant, he would wait until that cow gave birth and then he would kill the father and the mother, so the calf could understand living without a parent and mourning the same way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cows need to know. No, seriously, cows need to know who the fuck those cows. Yeah, they need to understand loss. Okay, and us Americans, we do that best Slaughterhouse, slaughterhouse.
Speaker 3:We know it, we know it, deep cutting Eminem, there.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's not Eminem, it's Eminem's friends.
Speaker 3:He's on all the songs. He's on some of the songs yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:There was turmoil and violence spreading throughout his kingdom. Anyone who was considered to be improperly mourning his mother, found without tears in their eyes cultivating land for crops, or caught consuming milk, were put to death. Think about this, think about this. You're just a farmer a hundred miles away from all this bullshit and you're just like, well, the wheat's not gonna grow unless I tell my land. I'm gonna go out there. I'm gonna tell my land. This group of warriors comes up. Hey, what are you doing? He's like well, I'm just trying to tell my land so I can feed the village and send you guys. And they're like, no, killed. Now, no one knows how to farm, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:That's what's fucked up is you're killing all of your food providers. This whole shit leads to a famine.
Speaker 1:I bet it does. I bet it does, and then, the locusts come out and it's the Bible 2.0.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it is said that he had thousands of people put to death during this time.
Speaker 3:Oh no, it couldn't have been biblical it. Could you know why there was no Christians? Well, there's just there's no white people in South Africa.
Speaker 1:Well, there was. What was his name? Very, very the.
Speaker 3:Dutch and Francis Flynn. Francis Flynn was there. Okay, so.
Speaker 1:God was with them through Francis.
Speaker 2:That's actually St Francis. We all just got it wrong this whole time. That is St Francis, sorry. So basically, it is said that he did have thousands of people put to death, right, but it's unknown how many were actually killed, and the specific reasons for those killings is unknown. But it's really, in my opinion, because he went back to it, fucking crazy. Now, whether this large estimate is directly tied to improper mourning or if there were other political, opportunistic reasons for the deaths, it still shows Chaka's brutality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and this is like he loses his kingdom. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:This is like when he became Enemy tries became to raid into Zulu land.
Speaker 2:thousands end up being murdered and the Zulu kingdom kind of started to become a little bit unstable, kind of like the kings head yeah because you can't control an empire this way. No, no, stop throwing crops, unless you're stalling or you have access to unlimited amounts of spaghetti. It's the only way.
Speaker 1:That's the only way Chef Boyardee will save us all the apocalypse.
Speaker 3:Now, koo was developed to overthrow Chaka and his claim to the throne. This Koo was devised by his own blood, his half brothers, dengene and Emlange. Now, while Zulu land was ordered to mourn for the year, chaka had sent out a large majority of his army to enforce the mourning. This is why all the people were dying Now, which did leave him by himself vulnerable, and his half brothers seized this opportunity.
Speaker 2:Dude, it's always family. Do you think? If we grew up back then, one of us was royal and one of us was second in line, we would have killed each other? Yes, really, I was about to say something like really nice and sweet. I was going to be like, no, I'd be loyal to you, I'd be like your best right hand man, man, and then when you died, then shit would get wild. I'd kill your whole family.
Speaker 3:You just think we would fuck them. But we wouldn't have made it to where we are. We would have gotten pissed off at each other when we were teenagers.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's true, because that's when most of this shit happens for these people. Yeah, I forget I forget.
Speaker 1:Life expectancy's are way different.
Speaker 2:If we were 16 and 21 at the time.
Speaker 1:So dead, so fucking dead. You threw a bircher knife at me one time.
Speaker 2:I mean, I mean, shit got real.
Speaker 3:So I guess you're right. Now it's September of 1828, danganay, and is that not? Dagonay, dagonay.
Speaker 2:In the pronunciation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Ok, so Dagonay, yeah, his two half brothers, all right, these gas holes, these little glass holes. These gas holes, they found Shaka alone in his home and stabbed him to death with the very weapon that he had developed to help build his empire.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I'm OK with that.
Speaker 3:Now, according to South Africa history online, as the great king Shaka's life ebbed away, he called out to his brother, Danganay brother, you kill me thinking you will rule, but the Swallows will do that. And his wedding met by. That was the white people, because they made their houses out of mud like the Swallows. Now, according to members of his family, Shaka's last words were are you stabbing me? Kings of the earth, you will come to an end through killing one another.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure he was so aware of being able to complete full sentences with eloquency while he was being stabbed to death. I'm sure that this is very accurate and true.
Speaker 3:No, I think, actually it probably is, I do, interesting. I do because he's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very true, but it is positive also mañana and he never然後, I think, it posed as a positive. He's a mentor and an iyi for him and, unfortunately, for all of these sense of easilyяв or並 only I don't know, let you extremelywant to throw out a Sounds good that people are going to come in and steal his shit so that they can hurt him through voodoo magic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And all of this Like he's. It happens a lot through history of very powerful people getting nervous, scared and very like what are the what's word? I'm thinking Not schizophrenic, paranoid, paranoid, yeah, of everyone around them and just freaks the fuck out. And so he's thought of this. He's like you kill me. Yeah, I am the only one holding this shit together. I am the iron fist that rules. All that keeps this together.
Speaker 2:Basically it's a long winded way of saying and that is ironic because the wind was taken from him but a long winded way of saying you're fucked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and is what Chaka most likely meant by this was saying that the white people will come and they will rule. You have no chance for success when I am dead, and you will all blame each other for what is to come.
Speaker 2:God, that's kind of eerie, yeah, like when you think about where Africa is currently at, because he was exactly right. Yeah, he was not. He was exactly right, he was not wrong.
Speaker 3:He saw these white people coming out of the shore bringing in guns, taking over their limbs inch by inch, inch by inch, inch by inch, telling him to go fucking hon-elefants and shit for their own fucking pleasure, and sees like there are forces that are larger than us and they will come and take all. I am the only thing holding this together and protecting you. Yeah, you might not like me, but I am keeping this shit together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, talk about significant. Maybe if he hadn't lost his shit.
Speaker 3:Yeah he shouldn't have mourned for so long.
Speaker 2:Granted, he was still a tyrant. Let's not get that mistaken. The guy was not a good man.
Speaker 3:Here's kind of what I equate this to is when we took out Saddam Hussein. Okay, yeah, saddam Hussein is not a good guy.
Speaker 2:No, Not a good, no, a terrible guy, but he was the head.
Speaker 3:He kept ISIS and all of these other fucking terrorist organizations out from Baghdad or Iran, Iraq, right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Iran, iran. And we went in. We were like none of it happened, you had nothing to do with it. But you're a bad guy and we need to win, so we're going to kill you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was a very, what's the word?
Speaker 3:Dictator.
Speaker 2:No philosophic victory. A symbol he was a symbolic victory. Yeah, and he was a bad motherfucker. No, he was not a good fucking guy. He was very responsible for things that killed thousands of Americans. But what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:is like they came in and they killed him because they knew that he was not good anymore. It's like he was an absolute tyrant at this point. Right, yes, they came in, killed Chaka, but they had no fucking plan. No, because there were larger forces at work that work that he was able to keep at bay. Yeah, now that's gone.
Speaker 1:Same.
Speaker 3:Thing with Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you cut off the head of the hydro. 10 more calm to take its place, exactly.
Speaker 3:There is now a power vacuum. Yes, and that's what happens because of this Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:History lesson. So, after killing Chaka, the brothers quickly buried his body in a grain pit nearby and, having died without an heir, dingane claimed the throne. Yeah, so Dingane tried to justify this assassination to the Zulu people by telling them that Chaka had become an unruly tyrant and needed to be put down. Was he wrong? Not necessarily. Did he actually have a plan? That's to be decided. He possibly had said that he killed his brother to stop the killings and Zululand, but he soon set off on his own killing spree, destroying any possible opposition from Chaka's followers.
Speaker 3:This is kind of like when Alexander ended up taking the throne after Philip died yeah. Yeah, and then he crushed all the opposition that was trying to thwart his power. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the Purge was no quick killing of a selected group of people. It ended up lasting for many years afterwards, and Dingane became a tyrant himself. Chaka's prophecy of white settlers moving in quickly became true. Within a decade, foreign white settlers were coming in and colonizing Zululand, so he foreshadowed the whole shit. The guy was smart. He knew what the fuck was going to happen. Just because he was Mad does not mean dumb.
Speaker 3:Right. I will definitely a thousand percent agree with that Right. Mad does not mean dumb. No, you're an asshole and you suck and everyone fucking hates you.
Speaker 2:Sometimes Mad means you're too smart and you overthink and then you go crazy, and I think that that's the case with Zulu. Is he or, sorry, chaka, is that he was? He went crazy because he was too smart and then the mom dying kind of over tipped it.
Speaker 3:It's like what happened when Kanye's mom died and then he started hating Jews. Rest in Yee. But just I'm sorry, I totally say that that was way too far. That was way too far.
Speaker 2:I thought of it on the spot and I just said it was very impulsive, but I want to take that back on the record. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jesus Christ, jesus Christ, I don't know what the fuck?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I'm not, I need to.
Speaker 1:Who are?
Speaker 2:you. I just apologize for fucking up and then I fucked up again right after.
Speaker 1:Oh God.
Speaker 3:Now, just over 50 years after Chaka had been murdered, tensions between the British colonizing colonists and the Zulus reached a boiling point. Boo boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, and on January 22nd 1879, the first major battle in the Anglo-Zulu war took place the battle of Insula One in slow on it's in.
Speaker 1:This is on lovely. Hold on, hold on. I can do this. You do great the battle of is on the one.
Speaker 3:There we go. Yep, thank you, I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, that was really fucking hard.
Speaker 2:And I really had confidence because I had practiced it for 20 seconds and I just got it wrong. You're so good.
Speaker 3:Dude, these are hard. Now at this point, the Zulu people had obtained firearms and were prepared to take on the British. The Zulu army, still utilizing Chaka's military tactics, took on the British forces head on and won Nice. This is actually one of the only instances in British history where a civilization that was not up to their technological level.
Speaker 2:What is quote? Unquote developed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, up, not to technological military strategy. Yeah, you good, you got it. You right, they fucking beat him, beat him off Now. Out of 1700 British military men, only 400 survived this battle. That's a lot of casualties. That's a lot of fucking casualties, especially for people with guns. And this is like I am very much high-leveling this shit, because there is a whole thing that goes into the British takeover of South America or South Africa that is revolved in colonization, getting control, post-napoleonic wars and then finding diamonds. And then the slave trade comes in heavy. Well, not really slave trade, but more of like slave operated mines in Africa.
Speaker 3:We're no longer kidnapping you.
Speaker 2:We're just making you work. Yeah, not slave trade, but just slave.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, exactly, slave labor. It was a victorious moment for Zulu land because they had just beaten the British, but it was not to last. After six more months of battles, the British brought more men and more advanced weaponry and defeated the Zulu empire. Today, there are mixed views on Chaka Zulu. He is either viewed as the Zulu hero, king of Kings, or he is viewed as a blood thirsty tyrant. Nevertheless, chaka Zulu left a significant and lasting legacy in several aspects. He revolutionized warfare in Southern Africa by introducing new tactics, weaponry like the short stabbing spear, and reorganized his warriors into disciplined formations, making the Zulu army highly effective and influential.
Speaker 2:Under Chaka's rule, the Zulu kingdom expanded significantly through conquests and assimilation of neighboring tribes, creating a centralized and powerful kingdom in the region. His military tactics, social reforms and administrative changes left a lasting mark on the traditions, social structure and identity of the Zulu people. However, while celebrated for his military prowess, debates persist about the harshness of his methods and the impact of his campaign on neighboring tribes, reflecting the complexity of his legacy. Overall, chaka Zulu is remembered as a formidable military strategist, a unifier of the Zulu people and a figure whose reign significantly impacted the history and culture of Southern Africa and beyond.
Speaker 1:And that is Chaka Zulu. Ladies and gentlemen, woo Shaka no baby.
Speaker 3:He is such a fascinating character.
Speaker 2:Honestly, dude, I knew a lot about Chaka Zulu. We've talked about him before you and I and he is just fascinating. He's fucked up. Don't get us wrong, we're not glorifying this man, but we are saying the guy was smart, the guy was insanely good at military strategy, the guy was great at fucking politics. He just went batshit crazy and fucked up.
Speaker 3:And he's really where he became a fucking tyrant, yeah. And where you have to kind of put your mindset is, especially since this is early 1800s not too long ago, right, but in South Africa early 1800s it might as well. It's kind of like the 1300s of Europe, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They are 500 years behind in tribal it is tribal, it is very much so. Village based it is very much so. Their fucking money was cattle guys, come on.
Speaker 3:And I have this idea, and I don't know if this is right, but, like, obviously, africa is the cradle of humanity right, yeah yeah, I believe.
Speaker 3:I think. I think that the reason why Europe was Europe and Asia specifically over by China like or not by China, but by Japan and China on the coastal regions, where Mongolia and all of them were in Korea right why those areas were able to advance themselves culturally and as a society and technologically faster is because of dense populations. With Africa it is more of a tribal based and very spread out small communities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the smartest man in that community is not the smartest man within 100 miles. And whereas in Mongolia, or in Europe, or in China or wherever civilization was developing, the smartest man within 100 miles was the smartest man in a million people, whereas in Africa, the smartest man within 100 miles was the smartest man within a thousand people.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I think that's right. It's what you're saying. What I'm saying is like there's a lot more smart people dense in a densely packed area together.
Speaker 2:That means the smartest is a lot smarter in those areas because of that density.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you just say that like the smartest person is now within this like a million miles.
Speaker 2:I feel like you went backwards. No, no, no, I said what you're thinking. Okay, I promise All right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's kind of my concept idea of this and I don't know this is just what when I'm going through this, what's the?
Speaker 2:theory of the development of humanity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm like why? Because I'm researching this and I didn't look this up, obviously, but I'm like why the fuck is Africa so behind on everything? Obviously, there's significantly horrible things that people did to Africa and Africans said to each other at the same time, just like every European said to themselves, and Asians said to themselves, and we did, the and also the indigenous people of the Native Americans said to themselves, and also South.
Speaker 2:America, Everybody was fighting all the time. I don't think any civilization that has never left the tribal mentality has progressed in a sense that they can conquer other people that are not of the tribal mentality. As soon as you become a mentality of civilization which is very different from tribal, keep in mind that is very, very different from tribal.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying. That's why Europe was able to advance so much quicker at a much earlier age was because they were more condensed. And there's smart people play Exactly A lot of subtle that are talking to each other, and artists and the Renaissance and all that that's going on while you got Africa that's so spread out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the smartest man in the village. The smartest man in the village is probably a lot dumber than the smartest man in the city.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly Is what I think. Exactly, we are on the same page.
Speaker 2:We are saying the same thing. This is us, me and Cooper, figuring out that we're not arguing.
Speaker 3:It does take a conversation to get there.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we got to get there, but we are saying the same.
Speaker 2:Thing. You bring up a very interesting point, because I've always wondered a very similar thing why is it that this entire planet relies on Africa so heavily for all of these materials that we need and yet Africa is quote unquote and I don't want to seem rude here but it is the less progressed part of the planet. It's because we kept them there because we became smart enough.
Speaker 3:I hate to say that word smart, because that's not a positive thing. We were able to disrupt the system there. We were, we were able to prevent them from ever capitalizing on their own resources? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Because, if they had, they'd be the number one superpower on the planet. Africa would be the most powerful continent on the planet. They would because they have everything we need. They have everything we need for iPhones. They have everything we need for all of these different technological advances that are happening. There's a reason, when you Google African minds, that they are fucked up. Look at the diamond mines, look at the Ruby mines. Look at everything happening.
Speaker 3:There's a reason they're called blood diamonds.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, and Cooper and I can make light of these situations because they happened 200 years ago, but the problem is that shit is Systemic and it's still happening. It is systemic and it is still happening Exactly. That's a very big point that I think that we need to bring up at the tail end of this, because Shaka Zulu is one example of how powerful these people in Africa can become when they become united. Well, nowadays, what happens? We keep them separated, we keep them in tribal wars, and this is obviously leading on to conspiracy theorist ideals.
Speaker 3:We can do a whole episode on this If you guys really want to see a more high level overview as to what analysis.
Speaker 3:What happened to the end of the Zulus and why they died and the blood diamonds that started to happen and the slave trade that was there and then the fucking Brits that came down. Really go and watch the oh god, what is it called? The docu-series, the extra history docu-series on YouTube about Shaka Zulu. Just got this animation walkthrough of everything, but in the part three and four they get very descriptive at a high level of the British and Europe coming down and then how they systematically divided the African tribes and pitted them against each other.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting topic that I think maybe we could cover.
Speaker 3:It's so political man. It is, it is, it is very convoluted.
Speaker 1:There's so many people? Yeah, we could cover that.
Speaker 2:But it's not necessarily content, it's not necessarily something that's very exciting, but it's very interesting to people who actually want to know about that stuff. It takes a lot of names I have a question, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, South Africa is arguably the most advanced part of Africa these days. Correct, the country of South Africa. Yeah, do you think that that might be kind of a rippling effect and this is just a question that I just thought of on the spot Do you think that this might be a rippling effect from the fact that Shaka Zulu was able to unite so many people because he was in South Africa and then the British came in and it's kind of a working of both factors into? At least a bigger part of South Africa.
Speaker 3:I think he was more of a hurdle, because a hurdle for how civilized and advanced they are today.
Speaker 2:So you think if reason, quote unquote he had stayed alive and he had, quote unquote, beat the British which I don't know if that would happen or not no, it's just like Columbus discovering the Americas.
Speaker 3:Okay, it was a matter of time that this was going to happen. Well, it's just so weird, because why it's so populated now and does so well is because of diamonds. Yeah, the discovery of diamonds and money is what made South Africa more of a first world country.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why we put so much emphasis on cattle being their currency.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, because at the time that's what it was.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, but think about the things they didn't have any need for, the the battles that were caused because of cattle, because they started giving cattle to the English, and that led to economic struggles between yeah, the inflation of cattle and then all that. It all boils down to what Money Exactly? Oh man, oh man, oh man. Yeah, yeah, this is such a fascinating topic, man.
Speaker 3:It really is In the early to late 1900s. We can oh, I got.
Speaker 2:What's up? I don't know what that did.
Speaker 3:I don't know either. I guess we'll find out and you can look up CIA operations within Africa as well, to keep them disorganized. So the CIA has done a bunch of fucking shit. We're actually going to do an episode at some point talking about God. I can't remember the fruit company, but it's a South African or South American fruit company. They destabilized the entire fucking country.
Speaker 2:South.
Speaker 3:American. Yeah, and I think it's over. It's like a banana company.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:And the CIA. It's bad Like America has fucked over the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a reason America is the number one fucking country is because we put ourselves into places that destabilize countries I wouldn't say we're the number one anymore, but I would say that we are the powerhouse for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean there's, that's a very quote unquote biggest and baddest.
Speaker 2:But I see what you're saying. I see the point you're trying to make yeah, the economic powerhouse.
Speaker 3:I should say that we are is because of a lot of things that were done through back, like door shit, which is so ironic.
Speaker 2:You think about human evolution and it's like the fuck wads of history are the ones who always come out on top. Isn't that so messed up? Doesn't that go against every movie, every movie that we've ever watched, where the good guys come out on top? Yeah, but meanwhile, like sure, we came across and we left the British because the British were kind of fucking us over, but we like over compensated.
Speaker 3:We lifted our truck Taxation without representation was a scam. That was a fucking scam for us to secede from the British Empire because they were fighting world fucking wars for us. Yeah, we should have been paying our fucking taxes to, yeah, and then.
Speaker 1:But I'll be damned if I pay taxes for tea. This is Boston. This is Boston. We're getting out talking.
Speaker 3:Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for sticking through that with us. Follow all of our shit. You can find us on drinkingourwaythroughhistorycom. Once again, we are taking a break in January. We have to. What fucking we're going to come? We're going to have episodes through December, but we will be taking a little break in January because we deserve it.
Speaker 2:30 episodes, come on, guys, we did 30 episodes every week full time jobs with full time jobs and full time side hustles, and we did the podcast anyway. Yes, so that's that we deserve a little bit of a break and we're going to fucking take it. Cooper's going to Ireland.
Speaker 3:I'm going to go to Ireland for two weeks.
Speaker 2:It's Ireland, by the way.
Speaker 3:Ireland or.
Speaker 2:Ireland, ireland, and I'm very excited for you. I'm so happy that you've been to Ireland. I'm honestly, like low key, super jealous that you're going. We'll go.
Speaker 3:I would love to go one day.
Speaker 2:But yeah, super, super cool for you. So we will be taking that break in January. So if there's a couple weeks without an episode, don't worry, we're going to come back with some fucking bangers.
Speaker 3:We're so excited for one. I'm just the the the story Cooper has this thing.
Speaker 2:Cooper has this thing that we're doing. We won't get into it.
Speaker 3:We won't get into it yet. We won't talk about it yet.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited he just banged the table. Cooper is very, very stoked about it because obviously he is very passionate about this subject and, honestly, like I'm less passionate about this subject, but I am good. Hold on, hold on. I am very passionate about it now because of how excited Cooper is. So when we come back in January at the end of it, be ready for some cool shit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about this far because I have a feeling that this is going to be a longer episode. Thank you. You are a champion. You are a formidable opponent upon any battlefield and I appreciate the shit out of you. Cooper does too. He works so hard on this podcast. If you, if you do anything and you leave a review, talk about how awesome Cooper is, because he really, really deserves it, and we appreciate every single one of you who has listened. If you made it this far, you're fucking awesome and you have our gratitude, cooper. Thanks, doll.
Speaker 3:Stay, beautiful bitches, because we fucking love you, we fucking love you.
