These Zulus, These Buddhists: Temple, Veld & Empire

According to an upmarket resident-guide, some eighty percent of the 25,000 visitors to Isandlwana – the site of the famous Anglo-Zulu battle - are British.  And of the remainder, less than ten percent are black South Africans.  This in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions about the history and politics of memory. Why, for example, are the British quite so fascinated by this greatest defeat in the history of Empire, analyzing and re-analysing its reasons; whereas for today’s Zulus, this battle is apparently insignificant in the context of other dramatic upheavals that took place in the 19^th century under kings like Shaka, Dingane and Cetshwayo?

Isandlwana is a prominent sandstone outcrop that can be seen from the surrounding hills and valleys, many kilometres away.  The tall white stone cairns that mark the fallen dead are scattered liberally across the hillside - nearly five thousand were slaughtered that day, but the fallen Zulu were taken away, so the  cairns (originally over 290 of them) only mark the piles of British dead.  The 22nd August 1879 was a new moon day; like many other cultures (including those who practice Ashtanga yoga), the Zulus observed certain lunar customs.  It was a day on which Zulu impi were not supposed to fight.  Uncannily, the same day saw a partial eclipse of the sun to underwrite all that was already auspicious or foreboding about the timing and location of the battle.

On a clear day the cairns can be seen from afar.  The British badly underestimated the capacity and strategy of the Zulu army, thinking amongst other things that, like the Xhosa, the Zulu would likely use guerilla tactics.  A highly disciplined force of 25,000 men who could march-run barefoot at 60 miles a day in sweltering heat and led by a commander aged over 70, nogal, was not exactly what they were expecting.

We learned on these ‘battlefield tours’ so much about individual British soldiers yet relatively little about their Zulu counterparts. This tourism in many ways hinges on postcolonial romanticism about Empire’s values of heroism, resilience and courage – disregarding lesser details such as an unprovoked and aggressive British incursion into Zulu territory.  The focus on British individuals continues the bias that imbued so many colonial history books – that white men were dynamic individuals who were the agents of history-making, whereas women and natives were the anonymous recipients of change.

Not only memory is interesting here, but memorialization.  The memorials are starkly different: there are a variety of monuments to the British erected over the years at Islandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, but only two or three monuments created to commemorate the Zulu dead.  The Zulu monument at Islandlwana is perhaps more a work of art than anything else – a striking ‘traditional’ bravery necklace of quills and lion claws, writ large in earth-hue metal, in the shape of the ‘bull horn’ formation, the military enclosure tactic developed by Shaka.

We stayed in the old farmhouse (c.1940) at Fugitives’ Drift in the shade of grapefruit trees, under a three-quarter moon, vying with encroaching weeds to use the outside shower.  With Islandlwana too in the far distance, it was suitably atmospheric.  Fugitives Drift is so named for the two British fugitive-soldiers who met their deaths by the flooded Buffalo river as they attempted to save the Queen’s colours (the symbolic flag of regimental pride and allegiance to Victoria) after fleeing the corpse-strewn hillside of Isandlwana.  They stood for all the old-fashioned valour and fortitude of Empire, the type that reminds me of Scott of Antarctica and more latterly the college rowing clubs in Cambridge. 

So where do the Buddhists come into all this?  Well they didn’t make it to the veld of Isandlwana, but they did make it to veld of Bronkhorstpruit which is 50km east of Pretoria, and where J. and I visited last weekend.  Believe it or not, Bronkhorstspruit is home to the largest Buddhist temple, Nan Hua Temple, in the southern hemisphere.  The site was established in 1992 by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order to promote Buddhism on the African continent.  There is a resident community of monks and nuns, one of whom told me off for brushing my hands along the scented lavender rows.  I guess she thought I was (rather violently) trying to pick it.

 People of all colours and from all walks of life visit the temple complex.  To that extent, it is a more South African experience than most other excursions one could choose.  At lunch we enjoyed a vegetarian buffet at the meagre sum of 30 rand per person, served on saucer-sized plates to foster reflection on greed.  Diners sit at slim bench-tables, all facing in the same direction, and are encouraged to eat in silence, whilst reflecting on the prayerful eating guidelines boldly displayed above on the wall.  We sat in the back row with some of the kitchen workers who have mastered the art of piling voluminous loads of noodles into the saucers.  It’s a fuss-free and functional affair, and about a hundred diners were in and out of the hall in under 40 minutes.

From there we went on to the sleepy village of Cullinan, famed for its diamond mine and the discovery of the largest diamond in the world - yup, over half a kilogram. The stone was bought by the (recently defeated Boer) Transvaal government and presented to King Edward as a birthday prezzie c. 1905, before parts of it were later incorporated into the Crown Jewels.  And this only 25 years or so after the Zulu army decimated the British at Isandlwana.   Could things have been different? The Boers aside, more twists and ironies of Empire as visions of Zuma’s five wives rise before me… each wearing a 120 gram diamond.