KAWADHI, Shona corrupted from ‘coward’, was a word we frequently used during child play.
Hitting an unsuspecting opponent, that is starting a fight by surprise, was kawadhi.
Hitting your opponent who is lying down was kawadhi.
Fighting with a girl was kawadhi.
Group attack on an individual was kawadhi.
Not following the rules in board games, like refusing to crown (kubuda bhobho) when opportunity presented, was kawadhi.
Getting unfair advantage was kawadhi.
We believed in fair fights where like fought like.
Like the day Babamunini Stewart got battered on our way from Unyetu to Nyahoni.
We were intercepted by a group who provoked us.
It was then agreed that the two group leaders should have a fist fight.
The fight lasted only a few minutes, a quick combination sending Babamunini Stewart to the ground.
He conceded defeat rose up, dusted self and we proceeded with the journey neither worried about Babamunini Stewart’s bleeding nor a kawadhi attack from the other group.
The rules were clear, no taking advantage of vulnerability, for that amounted to kawadhi.
This Unyetu and its environs ethic is a lesson a King and his thugs from Zululand could do with.
As children we abhorred acts of cowardice.
Our parents taught us the virtues of peace and vices of kawadhi game.
I therefore got sick listening to the King boasting that if he had issued an order for xenophobic attacks, then South Africa would have been reduced to ashes, umlotha.
Your Highness, iiiiiii, your language was frightening to an already traumatised Africa.
We had seen a video of some of your thuggish subjects attempting to reduce to ashes two innocent children.
The only ashes we wanted to hear were in “ukukhumelana umlotha” peace initiative context, not in warlike boasting.
Yours was the speech of a coward abetting the acts of cowards.
Kawadhi game chaiyo.
History is replete with examples of Zulu gallantry.
Zwangendaba and Mzilikazi got ‘safe’ passage out of Zululand.
Tshaka built an army and legacy which later was the basis for heroic Zulu resistance to British imperialism, albeit in a losing cause.
In 1879 the Zulu army had matched British army pound for pound, registering an early victory during the battle of Isandlwana.
Eventually the gun prevailed over the assegai and the Zulus lost the war.
King Cetshwayo’s defeat at the hands of the British worried King Lobengula in Bulawayo as he faced similar imperialistic threats.
Despite losing the war, the Zulus retained their dignity and pride, much the same way like my Babamunini Stewart.
Only that they lost a kawadhi game.
The Zulus remained alive to the fact that the British were the enemy.
In 1906 Zulu gallantry came to the fore again.
The British, having won in 1879, imposed their rule and hut tax over the Zulus.
As if that was not enough, in 1905 they imposed poll tax as additional tax burden.
Chief Bambatha kaMancinza, of the amaZondi clan of the Zulu, objected and had tax collectors attacked.
Two British officers were killed in the ensuing resistance.
Chief Bambatha, fearing reprisals, fled.
On return he found he had been deposed.
From the Nkandla forest, he launched a guerilla war against the British.
Yes Chief Bambatha fought gallantry from Nkandla.
It was from this Nkandla that President Jacob Zuma, revolutionary and peace maker of the 1980s and 1990s was born.
It is here in Nkandla that President Zuma’s controversial home, for self and family, was built.
That family includes the President’s son of ‘bulala amaAfricans’ infamy, defying Bambatha’s ghostly heroic cry of ‘bulala abathakathi’ against British imperialists.
Owing to superior fire power, the British managed to defeat Chief Bambatha.
Three thousand Zulus were killed, seven thousand were imprisoned and four thousand were flogged, all by the British, today’s white South Africans and friends of the Zulu.
King Dinizulu was arrested and imprisoned for assisting Bambatha.
Bambatha was killed and beheaded as per British imperial tradition.
Some accounts say he escaped to Mozambique and lived among the Shangaan locals.
That was way before Zulus started attacking vulnerable Shangaans from Mozambique in Durban.
Sure Chief Bambatha must be turning in his grave as the Zulu army takes its mighty on defenseless African women and children and threaten to reduce own country into ashes.
Your highness why bring to shame a nation’s proud history by dining with your historic enemies and killing your own children in cold blood?