Zulu

Zulu warrior pictured in front of a thatched hut in Zululand, South Africa. He is wearing an ostrich-feather head-dress, a collar, and a skirt. The photograph is dated c. 1970.

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).

Member of a group of southern African peoples mainly from Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa. They are traditionally agriculturalists. The Zulu language, closely related to Xhosa, belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family. Many Zulus are supporters of the political organization Inkatha, founded by Chief Buthelezi in 1975.

History Formed into clans whose chiefs are the genealogically senior members, they divide into age sets which form sections of the army. In the 1820s they were forged into a nation by Shaka, who formed them into fighting regiments, conquering many neighbouring peoples. Shaka was assassinated by his brother Dingaan, who was in turn defeated by the Boers 1838-43. In 1879 the Zulus, under Cetewayo were defeated by the British, and Zululand was annexed by the UK, although sporadic fighting continued until 1907. The South African apartheid government assigned them a ‘homeland’, KwaZulu, with self-governing status from 1971, at the nucleus of the once extensive Zulu kingdom. Many Zulus violently opposed the non-racial constitution adopted in South Africa in 1993. Land erosion and the lack of sufficient remaining land to support the population has meant that many Zulus today work in the industrial centres around Johannesburg and Durban.