We know nothing for certain of Swaziland's past before the 1700's - and even after that it is sketchy. In about 450 A.D. the first wave of black farmer iron users arrived in Swaziland. Their culture is virtually unknown, as is their language. They have been given the arbitrary name "silverleaves" from their pottery. They had sheep and or goats, but no cattle.

The cattle mania came in the next wave of conquest, around 800 A.D. or so the Bantu speaking peoples came down from west Africa - but again in a time and place with no writing, they too are a mystery. Successive waves up until 1700 became ever more mysterious - silverleaves is at least found in other places in Southern Africa. Most of the pottery from periods after silverleaves is known as the "enigma culture". This pottery does not co-incide with anything known in Southern Africa.

The colonists, which is what they were, displaced the existing Khoi-San peoples who had lived in the area for tens of thousands of years - perhaps even evolving in the region from when humans first became fully modern humans some 100 000 years ago. There were clashes between the black iron technology people and the Khoi-San peoples.

The clashes were over land and over property. The reasons for this were those of different preceptions, different ways of ordering the world, different ways of giving it value.

The Bushmen for instance hunted animals and gathered vegetables and roots from the wild. They grew a little marijuana to smoke but otherwise did not bother with agriculture. They did not see it as being worth the effort. This sort of economy allowed them to live in small mobile bands, allowed them the freedom to follow the animals and the seasons in a largely empty and fertile land.

It was a generally peaceful existence with few possessions, as everything had to be carried. Few possessions meant that there was little reason to argue or fight over them. The world was open for the picking. Whoever found something owned it. Whoever killed something ate it.

Into this world came the black agriculturalists with a very different world view, a far more rigid and less easy going view for they believed that people could own things, that a landscape could be for the exclusive use of one man, or one family, or one tribe. And that nobody else was allowed to use their land. They also believed that the animals that they had tamed (cattle) belonged to them. They had put in the effort of raising them and so the animals were for their exclusive use. This was quite unlike the Bushmen's view who had trouble conceiving that an animal could belong to anyone. Do people own the clouds? How can you say that this stretch of river is yours when it is an endless flow?

Inevitably there were clashes and equally inevitably the black colonists were the victors for they had two factors on their side - the superior technology of iron weapons and the driven greed of people defending their possessions.

Over time the bushmen were gradually pushed from the fertile parts of Southern Africa into areas that nobody else wanted. Once Khoi-San used to fish in the seas from canoes off the coasts of Natal. Once they had the rich mountains and valleys but they were gradually squeezed and squeezed, bit by bit into the only space left - the area where cattle could not easily survive - the deserts of the Namib and Kalahari.

The black colonists of course had a justification for this. Just like any conquering master race they did not wish to seem unjust or unfair. Their justification was that the Khoi-San were not fully human, that although clever they lacked the attributes of all humanity. In a chilling precursor to what was to happen to the blacks themselves later, the black colonists thought that people without cattle or iron or settlements were little better than animals. Subhuman really. And animals can be hunted - and so the Khoi-San were in constant decline. There was no single annihilation, but century by century they grew fewer and fewer. Some tribes (like the Xhosa) absorbed the Bushmen - the Xhosa are genetically about one third Khoi-San. Look at the face of Nelson Mandela. Other tribes like the Swazi and the Zulu absorbed far less - although the clicks in their languages are a remnant of this encounter.

We don't know the dates for these encounters for they lie in the haze of prehistory. When the historical era started (which is basically the arrival of literate people) the stage in what is now Swaziland had already been set. Sotho speaking black colonists had been in Swaziland for an unknown length of time - in the 1820's and afterwards they were overun by the Swazis - there were battles and sieges, for both sides were iron age agriculturalists. They needed to own and control the land upon which their cattle grazed. They not only needed to control the land that they used but also the valleys next to it, and the ones after that.

For this is the curse of owning things: other people always want to take them away and you have to spend a lot of time making sure that they don't. This is why hunter-gatherers lived in peace - their few possessions weren't worth the risk of injury in serious fighting. People often judge that the risk of injury or even death is worth the risk of fighting when the prize is a herd of cattle that can be swapped for political power, or women or land. Crop growers and cattle owners always fight, all over the world. Hunter-gatherers seldom do and when they do more often than not it is a ritual affair.

The Sotho who had been in Swaziland for some time and the new wave of colonists, the Swazi were both cattle owning, crop growers. And so they fought. There were a number of battles and at least one memorable siege. This was not a slow languid affair, it was quick and decisive military action by an aggressive invader, the Swazis. The Swazis won control over the land and over the people. Once they had crushed the farmers they set about colonising the country and assimilating the Sotho into Swazi culture. They understood the importance of giving the conquered clans a piece of the cake. Every year the King took at least one new wife, bonding the clans through blood into the dominant Swazi clan, the Dlamini.

The Dlamini were apparently deliberately trying to forge a nation, for the first time ever in their history. Whether or not this was co-incidental with the rise of Zulu power to the south, or a deliberate defence policy, is a matter of personal opinion. Shaka Zulu was born the illegitimate son of a chief into an obscure clan of a few hundred known as the Zulu. Through personal genius he forged a nation of conquering warriors who were definately the dominant force in the region.

In about 1820 Sobhuza I was leader of a clan, the Dlamini, who moved into the Zulwini valley - the area was ideal for his group - the large valley had sloping hillsides suitable for homesteads. The valley floor had good grazing. There were extensive caves in the nearby Mdzimba hils that were large enough to hide cattle and people during the periodic raids of the militant Zulu. The Ngwenyama (leaders) position was not secure, there were many other clans all struggling with one another, but all under direct threat from the Zulu, who had escalated war from a largely haphazard exercise to an organised form of permanent conquest and submission. Sobhuza I was the first of the Dlamini to develop bokhosi - kingship, rather than leadership. He probably did this as an attempt to unify the clans such as Ndwandwe, Zwane, Fakudze, Mnisi, Nkambule and Magagula - those that were Sotho speaking were tolerated. Only united clans had any chance against the Zulu.

Into this state of flux came western colonisation. Sobhuza set up relationships with the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay - in return for iron hoes he got beads and dungaree - he also paid for Portuguese mercenaries in cattle.

He met with the Trek Boers (Afrikaners) and with the British. His relatively long life in those days allowed him to consolidate the position of the Dlamini clan at a period when the centuries old state of flux was becoming far more solid.

After Sobhuza I's death, his son Mswati became Ngwenyama. He was quick to enlist the help of the outsiders (in this case Boers) against his brothers in return for land. By the early 1850's Mswati felt his position to be secure and he went about extending Dlamini power - he conquered the Tsabedze and Gamedze and later the Sifundza. This was the period of Swaziland's greatest influence - raiding parties were sent to Delagoa Bay (Maputo) - the Swazi at this period developed a well established reputation for slave raiding - young children are reported to have been sold to the Boers who were settling on the largely unpopulated platteland to the west of Swaziland and were short of farm labour. Mswati traded land between himself and the Zulu to the Boers, hoping to use them as a buffer from further Zulu attacks.

After Mswati's death there was a Regency which was not able to exert strong central control - the most prominent son Mbilini defected first to the Boers and then to the Zulu. The British had also made an appearance and by the 1870's were trying to find a route from the Witwatersrand to the harbour at Delagoa Bay (Maputo). All the major players for the next century were in place by the 1870's.

Suddenly the lethargy punctuated by periods of terror that had always existed was dispelled when gold was discovered in 1873 at Pilgrim's Rest and later at Barberton and then Piggs Peak.

The young heir to the throne Ludvonga died suddenly (probably from poisoning) and Mbandzeni became ruler. Boer farmers were increasingly looking for winter grazing for their sheep and Mbandzeni gave permission readily enough for limited term grazing leases. The Boers however were soon partitioning these lands for permanent white settlement. In 1880 the boundaries of Swaziland began to become fixed and permanent, with beacons being erected and the fluidity that had existed for one and a half thousand years of iron age settlement drew to a close.

Pre 1880 photos

1880's