1# Swazi History
Labotsibeni
I have been reading and re-reading Gillis and Matsebula and I had thought to write a few vignettes about Swazi history, with the first one focusing on Queen Labotsibeni, however, I must confess, I found it difficult to be brief without taking away from the quality I hope to convey. So, as has become my custom, I will divide my account into two brief treatments of Labotsibeni - with this being the first - and a few more explorations of the most critical historical figures and events in Swazi history.
In 1859, somewhere in the untouched wilderness of what would eventually become Barberton, a Swazi chief, - Matsanjana Mdluli - thrust his assegai, a short spear made famous by Shaka, into the midriff of a Tsibeni warrior, lacerating his arteries and organs. He would have been one of the great Paladins of the Swazi realms’ most formidable sovereign; Mswati II, the great Mavuso. While this great knight of the realm waged war, a baby girl was born at Luhlwekweni, the northern bastion of the Swazi kingdom. Hale and with the intense eyes of her lordly father, she was named Labotsibeni - in honor of her father's campaign in the north.
This child, who would prove so gifted, was born on the shores of a historical moment darkened by the oncoming tides of Western civilization and the depredations and dislocation caused by the Intrusions of an alien and hostile civilization.
Four centuries had elapsed since Portugal had sallied forth, into the great unknown, giving birth to the Age of Exploration. For Labotsibeni and her people, this culminated in the shocking spectacle of an ocean disgorging a stream of pale, aggressive, and strangely clad men.
Though few in number, they proved irresistible in battle. Having landed on the coast they drove the African tribes that had populated the south inland, careening into each other. This process accelerated the ‘Mfecane’ - the great crushing - the series of migrations and military conflicts that engulfed the region, and out of which Shaka and the Zulu nation emerged as warriors, par excellence.
By the time the young Labotsibeni drew her first breath, the foreigners had already established themselves as the preeminent states in the region. They had divided into multiple states: the British Cape and Natal colonies, the Boer Republics (the Transvaal and Orange Free State), and the Griqualand Republics.
While Labotsibeni was transferred to the royal court and received an education in courtly politics, tensions between the Boers and the British intensified. These tensions were stoked by an expansionist British policy and the discovery of some of the largest diamond deposits in Afrikaner territory.
Not far from these processes a vivacious, noble, and highly intelligent, Labotsibeni would capture the eye of the young king Mbandzeni, and just as her charms had beguiled our erstwhile king, so too had the verdant plains of her fatherland begun to attract the avaricious appetites of those foreign men.
The Concession Crisis
It was to the management of foreign avarice that much of her talents would be directed. Before she had even taken the measure of these foreign men they had already established their bridgehead into the Swazi nation under the kingship of Mswati II.
Mswati II had accommodated the first whites seeking grazing rights by allotting them land in the south. This concession of grazing rights was explicitly temporary and strategic in nature; by placing the concessionaires on Swaziland’s southern border region, he hoped to use them as a buffer against Zulu incursions. Indeed, one of the concessionaires, Conrad Vermaak, had a concession that encompassed part of present-day Ingwavuma as the extent of the Swazi Kingdom under Mavuso was four times as large as the present state. In the short term, this gambit worked beautifully, allowing Mavuso to direct his energy to the north - alas, in time, it proved the first act, in the Swazi tragedy.
In 1865, Mswati II, the great warhorse of the Swazi kingdom, prematurely succumbed to the blandishments of that great and eternal hereafter. In his place was established a regency under Tsandzile Ndwandwe and the young Ludvonga (II) was designated Crown Prince; he would not live long enough to reach his majority.
It was in these circumstances that President Pretorious of the South African Republic (Transvaal) sent a commission, alongside the Swazi representatives - Magwazidili Dladla, Madolo Dlamini, etc - to establish the extent and nature of the concessions granted to the whites in Swaziland.
Initially, the commission was able to accomplish its work without rancor and skulduggery, with the demarcation being the line of the Ngogweni hills southwest of Mahamba. This line was accepted both by the whites and blacks, however, when it came time to draw up the demarcation map the mischief-making that would bedevil the concessions problem began.
The Boer commissioners had actively adopted a policy of encroachment and duplicity. This is borne out in a letter the Boer commission chairperson wrote to the President of The South African Republic.
We... wish... to bring to your notice that, because we succeeded .. . to obtain more lands in favour of our Government as what had been sold to us according to the contract of sale of 1855 ... We therefore request Your Excellency cordially to treat us favourably by granting each of us a farm (in addition to the salary due to us) in the regions of the Kwimpies (Ngwempisi) or Luslelle (Luhlelo) River, as a reward for our difficult journey and labour.
The Swazi administration did not react to what was encroachment because they considered land an internal matter and their concept of land tenure is a communal one, so what did it matter to them if whites made use of more land than was strictly allotted to them, after all, for the Swazis, all land is ultimately held by the King (in trust for the people). This would prove to be a fatal error.
This pattern of encroachment and Swazi complacency would repeat itself, with commission after commission engaging in the same tactics.
Even as this mischief was afoot, Ludvonga died in 1872 under mysterious circumstances, with rumors indicating he was poisoned. Mbandzeni, who around this time had married Labotsibeni, was selected in his stead. It was not long after his designation that he formally became king and the regency was terminated. Though Tsandzile had done her best in governing the country, it was under her regency that the royal court had descended into a den of intrigue, and the whites, with the connivance of the Transvaal government, expanded their bridgehead, securing more land concessions.
As this process of ever-expanding concessions was playing itself out, larger forces were making themselves known. The Boers, constrained by British territories on all sides, had long viewed Swaziland as a strategic lifeline to the sea - Portuguese Mozambique was off the table because at the time Portugal was for all practical purposes a vassal of the British. Access to the Indian Ocean would not only grant them control over vital trade routes but also free them from dependence on British-controlled ports in the event of hostilities. This desire to secure a path to the coast made Swaziland a key element in their broader strategy of independence and self-reliance.
For the British, Swaziland was equally significant, but for different reasons. Their overarching aim was to encircle and contain the Boer republics, cutting off their ambitions and securing British hegemony in southern Africa. Swaziland, positioned between the Boer heartlands and the Indian Ocean, became a focal point in this struggle for supremacy.
The competition between the two intensified after the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. Although this annexation was short-lived - the Boers regained their independence after their victory in the First Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881) - it marked a turning point. The Boer triumph emboldened their ambitions, while the British, keen to reassert dominance, began eyeing Swaziland as a buffer against further Boer expansion.
Events in Swaziland - Mbandzeni had formally taken up the throne in 1875 - were aiding Boer designs. Under the regency, concessions had flowed as if from a loosened spigot, but under Mbandzeni they exploded with all the force and fury of a storm the Swazis call ‘Zamcolo’ (The Deluge).
Leonard Thomson, in his A History of South Africa, describes it thus:
After the defeat of the Zulu in 1879, however, white stock-farmers, gold prospectors, and adventurers of all sorts pestered the Swazi king Mbandzeni and his councillors with gifts ranging from greyhounds to champagne, and promises of more to come, if the Swazi would only sign the documents they thrust at him; the Swazi got into the habit of putting their crosses to documents and enjoying the proceeds without understanding their significance. By the time of his death in 1889, Mbandzeni had signed away almost the entire resources of his kingdom, actual and potential: the land, the minerals, and the right to create and operate industries, customs duties, licenses, railroads, telegraphs, and postal services. Finally, a superconcession gave the holder the right to collect all the king’s revenues, including his concession revenues, for an income of twelve thousand pounds a year.
The scope and breadth of the concessions by Mbandzeni were so shocking and so often overlapped that when, in 1889, Mbandzeni, like his father before him, prematurely passed away, it led to a concession crisis where many fraudulent claims were put forward. Seizing this moment of crisis the British and Boer administrations decided to step in and set up a joint administration in Swaziland; the (in)famous triumvirate government.
Politically, for the Swazis, the greatest danger emanated from the Transvaal government which coveted Swaziland as a means of establishing a path to the Indian Ocean. The British, aware of this design, sought to forestall the Boer conquest of Swaziland.
It was in this context that Labotsibeni’s prowess as a politician and an orator came to the fore.
Labotsibeni: Bulwark of A Nation
Her career is long and eventful; we see her struggle mightily - if somewhat in vain - against the concessionaires, attempt and succeed in safeguarding the realm against the convulsions brought about by the Anglo-Boer War, and in her finest achievement, pass the reins of state to a young man she had educated to be a proud and capable ruler.
It is a testament to her ability that she would not only lead the charge against the British and Boers, but she would do so while maneuvering them into supporting her and her son’s claim to the throne. The irregularity of her installation demanded that she secure the backing of the preeminent regional powers and by 1890 the co-governors of the nation. Gillis captures the tension of this moment.
The late king had left a number of sons, none of whom was of age to assume the kingship, and the choice fell finally on the son of Labotsibeni Mdluli, the young boy Bhunu, still in his early teens. The choice was not acceptable to all Swazis. Reservations by some members of the royal household and among certain chiefs were no secret, and some of them never regarded Bhunu’s appointment as being in keeping with custom. The young king, it was said, had been named too soon, before the prescribed period of mourning for the late king had ended—an unacceptable break with tradition for many chiefs and elders. The criticism was probably valid. Shepstone had warned that there could be violence because the claims of other sons were being pushed. Claiming that Labotsibeni was favored, he urged Cape Town and Pretoria to press for an announcement of Bhunu’s appointment: ‘‘There is now no fear of anyone else being put forward in his place. After his installation his mother will be the chief person in the Nation, with the regent and old Queen as referees.
The custom of ‘‘crying’’ for a deceased king, that is, observing a period of public mourning, was an important symbol in Swazi culture. Its foundation was religious—paying homage to the ancestors as well as to the departed chief—and because it frequently gave rise to unreserved emotions, there was always a chance of violence stemming from it. The possibility of violence appeared to be very real during the early months of 1890, and the burden of keeping the peace fell to the new Government Committee. It had little to fall back on except moral suasion and Shepstone’s standing with the chiefs and regiments. During crowded gatherings—3,000 warriors reaped maize in the king’s fields during May; most of the headmen of the nation collected for the installation of young Bhunu in June; from 8,000 to 10,000 Swazi, many of them from outside the kingdom, came to ‘‘cry’’ for the departed king or to erect a kraal for the new king in August— Shepstone was present, his burly figure standing out among the warriors. He reported proudly to his colleagues on the Committee: ‘‘I have been present by day and night at all these ceremonies, and I deem it my duty on behalf of the Swazi nation, to record their peaceful conclusion, a result almost without parallel in the history of the South African tribes.
What was it, that a decisive quorum of the royal family and Shepstone (a British colonial administrator) sensed, that led them to alight on Labotsibeni as the most capable person to run Swazi affairs? This is the question that has most exercised my imagination while reading this period of our history.
I can not say I have settled on a definite answer, the historical material is too sparse, too fragmentary, to support any strong conclusions. Yet there is a thesis that I have been unable to shake. In Labotsibeni, the royal family, the chiefs, Shepstone and it would seem, the overwhelming majority of people that came into contact with her were overwhelmed by that same quality that Jonathan Steinberg attributes to Bismarck; Labotsibeni was simply put, that rare thing; a sovereign individual.
She seems to have exuded a tremendous amount of energy, power, and intelligence. Like the great Komati River, her nature was one that overflowed and overwhelmed.
The first inkling one gets of this is in the speed with which she established herself. Although Labotsibeni was now queen-mother, Tibati - Mbandzeni’s mother - had become regent on his passing and though she had backed Labotsibeni, Tibati still expected to remain supreme until her own death or until Bhunu reached his majority. She had not reckoned with Labotsibeni's native ability for dominance.
By October 1895, as Tibati crossed that threshold of life, she must have crossed over chagrined by the knowledge that Labotsibeni had, by 1894, already wrested supremacy from her.
This usurpation had not been accomplished with coercive force or indeed through the petty intrigues that so often infect royal courts. Labotsibeni had staked her claim to supreme national leadership by not only taking a line contrary to that adopted by Tibati and the royal court but by so eloquently advancing her position that she won over the regent, court, and nation.
Her campaign was against the revisions of the 1893 convention and the organic proclamation that (after the 1890 convention had set up the triumvirate government) sought to reorganize the government such that the South African Republic (Transvaal) would govern Swaziland as their protectorate. In 1890 the British had signed the Anglo-Portuguese treaty annexing the strip of Swazi territory that would have granted the Boers independent access to the sea by conquering the Swazis. This reduced British opposition to the Afrikaners dominating Swaziland.
The Swazis had not been represented at the 1893 convention transferring them to the Afrikaners and though they were clearly put out by this, Tibati and members of the royal council evinced no opposition to this agreement. Swazi quiescence was such that the British and the Afrikaners took the required Swazi approval for ratification for granted.
Labotsibeni would have none of this. Starting with the royal councils and expanding her campaign to the regiments, chiefs, British administrators, and all those that crossed her path, she inveighed against this fatal encroachment on Swazi sovereignty.
She whipped up such a storm of opposition, from every corner of the realm, that Tibati and the royal council were soon infected with the same spirit of opposition!
The British, caught flat-footed, resorted to recruiting Henriques Shepstone in a desperate attempt to mollify the two queens and council. Indeed, some of the British administrators seem to have lost their heads at this point and requested police protection in the event of an insurrection.
Gillis recounts an episode in which James Stuart, a British administrator, presented Labotsibeni with a letter from Queen Victoria, one she assumed would advise her to accept the organic proclamation. Her reaction to this gives us a flavor of her flair for the dramatic. Before the letter could be read she launched into her appeal.
If the Queen’s Government say that we are to be taken by the Boers, and if Tikuba, Mjokora, Queen Regent, Mgogo and others with them, including Mr. Shepstone, are in favour of going to the Boers, yes, even though all, even my own, forsake me and accept the Boers, I will still go on to England, a woman and alone, to lay my case before Her Majesty, and to seek her protection. You see I have on this skin, it is knotted across my chest here, you observe I am now undoing it, I take it off. There, it is off. Do you understand, my child, do you understand what I mean? I see you do not. Well, this skin is to me what this coat you have on is to you, it covers my body, it surrounds my heart, I love it because it protects me, it keeps me warm, just as you love your coat. Do you think I am going to throw this skin off and put on another that I do not care for. No, I cannot throw it off. This skin is the Queen [Victoria], the other skin is the Boers. But see here, I tie this skin over me again as it was before. There, it is tied up as it ought to be, and as it ought to remain.
Thus she conveyed, in that inimitable way of hers, her staunch opposition to the Boers. The convictions in this response, reiterated and recapitulated, in every council meeting, sibaya, and aside, carried the day. The queen-mother, with naught but her resolve and oratory, transformed a Swazi administration that had been inclined to accept the Boer administration into one stubbornly opposed.
This was a singular achievement, she had concentrated the energies of the royal administration in a way that had not been seen since the days of Mswati II.
However, it was not enough to check the combined force of the British Empire and the South African Republic. Finally, in a fit of pique, the British and the Boers drafted a new convention document that would not require Swazi consent. This new document provided stronger protections for the Swazis and granted the British consular representation in the country.
More importantly, the Kingdom would not be incorporated into the republic. This ensured the Swazis would not go the way of the Zulus. This small concession, seemingly little more than a formality at the time, would mean that when Boer and British interests diverged, the Swazi nation would emerge separate - from the SAR - and sovereign.