Battlefields Tours

In 2008, I visited Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. In the museum at Isandlwana, amongst the various things on display, I found this text from an interview with a warrior who had fought at Isandlwana.

“The fighting was so fierce that only a very small handful of white men got away from us over the Buffalo River. We spared no lives and did not ask for mercy ourselves. We killed every white man left in the camp and the horses and cattle too. After killed them we used to split them up the stomach so their bodies would not swell.

We took the white men’s rifles and tents, after cutting them up into convenient lengths….We left the wagons…Among our people who had been killed was out leader (Mkhosana – Inkosi of the Buyela and induna of the uMcijo), whose face we covered with a shield until the relations of the dead came and took the bodies away after the battle and also took the wounded home. The dead of the white people we left where they had fallen and some time afterwards they were buried.

…I myself only killed one man. Dum Dum went his revolver as he was firing from right to left, and I came along side him and stuck my assegai under his right arm, pushing it through his body until it came out between his ribs on the left side. As soon as he fell I pulled the assegai out and slit his stomach so that I knew he would not shoot any more of my people.”

Kumbeka Qwabe, uMcijo Regiment

Interviewed in 1929

For more information about visiting the battlefields in KwaZulu Natal, visit the Explorer Travel website>>