Durban - A series of four podcasts about AmaHlubi Chief Langalibalele kaMthimkhulu Hadebe was launched this week to mark the anniversary of his arrest in 1873.
It is presented in the words of early Zulu intellectual Magema Magwaza Fuze, written in a series of articles published in the newspaper Ilanga lase Natal in 1915 and during the period September 1919 to January 1920.
“Fuze gives a blow-by-blow record of the trial of Chief Langalibalele and of the political upheavals that followed in governing circles in colonial Natal and imperial Britain,” according to Sizakele Gumede of the Five Hundred Year Archive attached to the History Department at the University of Cape Town.
“Among other things, he describes the abrupt and tectonic fallout between Bishop Colenso and Theophilus Shepstone, who had been Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal for nearly 30 years.
“Colenso and Shepstone had been political allies and close friends for a long period. The bitter quarrel between them started when the bishop discovered that Shepstone and other colonial officials had worked in underhand ways to falsely accuse Langalibalele of having mounted a rebellion, an accusation which Colenso publicly refuted.”
Gumede added that what is special about Fuze’s account of these matters is that it was written by an African with first-hand experience of them. The podcasts presents Fuze’s account in his own words.
The podcast can be accessed at https://studio-emandulo.uct.ac.za/magema-magwaza-fuze-in-his-own-words-defending-nkosi-langalibalele/
The Independent on Saturday