✉️ I beg to write, for the information of your honourable society, and state that I am an Englishman by birth, and have been a resident of the Zulu country, and living amongst the Zulus, for the last 20 years, and I can confidently say that there is no white man in this part of Africa so fitted to judge of their feelings towards the English race as I am.
I would not now address your honourable Society if it were not that I have noticed a very strong, wrong, and arbitrary feeling gaining ground against the Zulu nation on the side of the white population in this part of South Africa.
A strong feeling of colour and jealousy I cannot understand, unless it is on account of the independency of the Zulu race, a feeling taken up without any just cause, and that feeling is now on the verge of breaking out on the pretext of a false claim of land boundary, a claim pretended to being upheld for the Dutch Boers, who are no friends of the English race, and are well known in this part of South Africa for their encroaching propensities, on any land belonging to the natives of this country, to evade English laws, on the pretext of getting permission to graze cattle, on the grass becoming scarce upon their own farms, and afterwards claiming the land. A claim in which the Natal Government have always upheld the Zulus, and now, since the annexation of the Transvaal (in 1877), the head of the Government there, who professed to side with the Zulus while he was in Natal, has now turned round and claimed for the Dutch a country thickly inhabited by the Zulus.
I write this for the information of your honourable Society, in the hope that you will try and put a stop to proceedings which will, if carried out, be the cause of bloodshed in an unjust case, as I can assure you that nothing but the grossest acts of encroachment and oppression will cause the Zulus to take up arms against the English race, who wish to live at peace with them, not being ripe enough for civilisation or civilised laws.
The standard rule that is gone by against the black races in this part of South Africa is the AmaXhosa, or Cape Frontier Native [original word redacted], who is not to be compared to the Zulu, nothing but forced Christianity or civilisation will spoil the Zulus, and the class of foreign Missionaries we have in the country does more injury than good to them. Let them say what they like in their reports to the Societies, they make no convert to their faith, besides the pretended ones or vagabonds, who imagine that by being clothed and under the garb of Christianity they will be exempt from all King’s service and laws of the country and be allowed to roam about and do as they please.
The Zulu nation, judiciously dealt with, would remain a firm ally and friend to the English, and it would be a shame for any false notions of power on the English side to take advantage of such power, and destroy the Zulu race, which would undoubtedly be the case if they were overthrown, they would then become a lot of bold rogues, and eventually give much trouble.
One of the most unfair features in the case is this, that the head of the Transvaal Government (Sir T. Shepstone) has always advised Cetywayo to remain quiet, and not to go to war with the Boers in disputing the boundary, promising to see him righted, when, if it had been left to the Zulus and Boers themselves, I am sure the Boers would have got the worst of it. He now turns round, and is prepared to fight himself, when he knows he is only too well backed up by England for the Dutch, England not knowing the real facts.
The Zulu acknowledge no individual title to land, permission only being given to squat, the land being looked on as belonging to the squatter only so long as he occupies it.
