KwaZulu

A Zulu woman from South Africa. The Zulu are the single largest black ethnic group in South Africa, numbering some 9 million people. Zulu social organization is strongly patriarchal and includes such practices as polygyny and the levirate (the compulsory marriage of a widow to the brother of her deceased husband).

Former Black National State in former Natal Province, South Africa. In 1994 it became part of KwaZulu-Natal Province. It achieved self-governing status in 1971. In 1994 it was placed under a state of emergency in the run-up to the first multiracial elections, after mounting violence by the Zulu-based

Inkatha party threatened to destabilize the election process. Homelands were to progressively disappear under the 1993 nonracial constitution, but Inkatha's leader (and the homeland's chief minister), Mangosuthu Buthelezi, won substantial concessions for KwaZulu prior to agreeing to participate in the elections.

The territory consisted of ten separate fragments, with a total area of 31,393 sq km/12,120 sq mi. It was the most populous of the nine South African black ‘homelands’. Its boundaries incorporated the large commuter township of Umhlazi, adjacent to Durban.