The historical setting
Shaka kaSenzangakhona (c. 1787 – 24 September 1828), also known as Shaka Zulu, Shaka the Zulu, and Sigidi kaSenzangakhona, was the king of the Zulu Kingdom from 1816 to 1828. One of the most influential monarchs of the Zulu, he ordered wide-reaching reforms that reorganized the military into a formidable force. King Shaka was born in the lunar month of uNtulikazi (July) in 1787, in Mthonjaneni, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The son of the Zulu King Senzangakhona kaJama, he was spurned as an illegitimate son. Shaka spent part of his childhood in his mother's settlements, where he was initiated into an ibutho lempi (fighting unit/regiment), serving as a warrior under Inkosi Dingiswayo.
King Shaka refined the ibutho military system with the Mthethwa Paramountcy's support over the next several years. He forged alliances with his smaller neighbours to counter Ndwandwe raids from the north.
Expansion of power and conflict with Zwide
As Shaka became more respected by his people, he was able to spread his ideas with greater ease. Using his background as a soldier, Shaka taught the Zulus that the most effective way of gaining power quickly was by conquering and controlling other tribes. His teachings greatly influenced the social outlook of the Zulus. The Zulu tribe soon developed a warrior outlook, which Shaka used to his advantage. Shaka's hegemony was primarily based on military might, smashing rivals and incorporating scattered remnants into his own army. He supplemented this with a mixture of diplomacy and patronage, incorporating friendly chieftains, including Zihlandlo of the Mkhize, Jobe of the Sithole, and Mathubane of the Thuli.
These people were never defeated in battle by the Zulus; they did not have to be. Shaka won them over with subtler tactics, such as patronage and reward. As for the ruling of Qwabe, they began re-inventing their genealogies to give the impression that Qwabe and Zulu were closely related (i.e. as Nguni) in the past. In this way, a greater sense of cohesion was created, though it never became complete, as subsequent civil wars attest. Shaka still recognised Dingiswayo and his larger Mthethwa clan, as overlord after he returned to the Zulu land but, some years later, Dingiswayo was ambushed by Zwide's Ndwandwe and killed.
Weapons changes
Shaka is often said to have been dissatisfied with the long throwing assegai, and is credited with having introduced a new variant of the weapon: the iklwa, a short stabbing spear with a long, broad, sword-like spearhead. Although he is credited with introducing the iklwa to his people, Shaka likely did not invent it himself. He most likely outsourced it from Nzama, who later had a feud with him because he did not want to pay for the spears. Deneys Reitz also reports an account that Shaka's use of the iklwa was inspired by a British explorer, a Dr. Cowan, who told him that British troops owed their military success to the bayonet.
According to Zulu scholar John Laband, Shaka insisted that his warriors train with the weapon, which gave them a "terrifying advantage over opponents who clung to the traditional practice of throwing their spears and avoiding hand-to-hand conflict." The throwing spear was not discarded, but used as an initial missile weapon before close contact with the enemy, when the shorter stabbing spear was used in hand-to-hand combat. It is also supposed that Shaka introduced a larger, heavier version of the Nguni shield.
Biographical sources
Scholarship in recent years has revised views of the sources on Shaka's reign. The earliest are two eyewitness accounts written by European adventurer-traders who met Shaka during the last four years of his reign. Nathaniel Isaacs published his Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa in 1836, creating a picture of Shaka as a degenerate and pathological monster, which survives in modified forms to this day. Isaacs was aided in this by Henry Francis Fynn, whose diary (actually a rewritten collage of various papers) was edited by James Stuart only in 1950. Their accounts may be balanced by the rich resource of oral histories collected around 1900 by the same James Stuart, now published in six volumes as The James Stuart Archive.
Stuart's early 20th century work was continued by D. McK. Malcolm in 1950. These and other sources such as A.T. Bryant gives us a more Zulu-centered picture. Most popular accounts are based on E.A. Ritter's novel Shaka Zulu (1955), a pot boiling romance that was re-edited into something more closely resembling a history. John Wright (history professor at University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg), Julian Cobbing and Dan Wylie (Rhodes University, Grahamstown) are among a number of writers who have modified these stories.