Fighting for the News by Best Brian;

Author:Best, Brian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / General
ISBN: 4751519
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2016-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Zulu War

Melton Prior, who had missed the Afghan War, had spent much of 1878 covering what has become known as the Ninth Frontier War against the Gaika and Galeka tribes in the eastern Cape Colony. In all ways it was an unsatisfactory campaign for a Special to cover. The distances were great, the imperial forces and their enemy were scattered and any fighting that occurred was little more than skirmishes. Prior’s only moment of excitement was when he was relaxing with a friend in a house up-country. It was an uncomfortably hot evening and all the windows were wide open to catch any breeze. He later wrote, ‘Suddenly, with a swish, an assegai came through the window and stuck straight upright in the middle of our table’. The guard was called out, but the culprit disappeared into the night.

Prior learned enough about the local situation and from rumours to know that there was going to be war with the neighbouring Zulus and the prospect filled him with foreboding. When he returned to London, he prophetically said to William Ingram, the editor of the Illustrated London News, ‘You take my word for it, if we do have a war with the Zulus, the first news we shall get will be that of disaster’.1

Sir Bartle Frere, the High Commissioner, felt that the Zulu nation, under the military rule of King Cetewayo, was a threat to the stability of the region. After the easy subjugation of the tribes in the recent Frontier War, he and the army commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Thesiger, later elevated to Lord Chelmsford, were determined to neutralise the Zulu army. Frederick Thesiger (1827-1905) had steadily and unspectacularly climbed the promotion ladder by being a diligent staff officer. In his first active service command in thirty-four years, he was sent to South Africa where he will always be remembered for the loss of 1,300 men at Isandlwana. Personally charming, he lacked leadership skills and surrounded himself with an inadequate staff. Archibald Forbes disliked him and was merciless in his criticism after the war. Thesiger lived out his life quite unable to live down the Isandlwana disaster and died of a seizure while playing billiards at his club.

Ignoring advice from the Boers and the local residents, the British were over-confident and contemptuous of this proud nation. In order to provoke an excuse to invade, Frere prepared an ultimatum, the terms of which he knew would be unacceptable to Cetewayo. When this was rejected, Chelmsford was ordered to cross the border and destroy the Zulu army and its capital at Ulundi. The invasion force was divided into three columns, one in the north near the Transvaal border, one in the south where the Tugela River met the Indian Ocean and the main centre column, which crossed the Buffalo River at Rorke’s Drift.

The only British newspaper correspondent present attached himself to this main column as it laboriously crossed the rainswollen river which divided Zululand from Natal. He was Charles Norris-Newman, employed

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