Zulu Queen Mkabayi kaJama — a timeline of a real-life Cersei
I. Born with twin sister Mmama kaJama, their father fief Jama kaNdaba (c. 1727–1781) the 12th hereditary tribal chieftain of the Zulu nation of the Bantu people of south-central Africa spares one of the two girls from mandatory death by cultural standard which deemed twins to be an anomaly (c. 1750).
II. After the death of their mother, Mkabayi who is already an astute teen well aware of the clan’s resentment of their existence grows up knowing that the confederacy yearns for a male heir and arranges a new wife, Mthaniya kaSibiya, for her own father. Jama is so pleased when his son Senzangakhona — we have done accordingly — (c. 1762–1816) is born.
III. Jama dies and Mkabayi motions to have herself installed as queen-regent instead of her step-mother as Senzangakhona is not yet of age. The nation approves appreciating how she won public favour despite a female ruler being unheard of and thereby beginning the Nguni Golden Age (1781–1921) of influential Nguni women.
IV. While fielding off assassination attempts on her prized spoiled-brat Crown Prince half-brother by killing their other legitimate half-brother Sojiyisa kaJama and arranging the prince’s first marriage to Mpikase kaMlilela Ngobese, he is enjoying umadlala ngendlela/ukuhlobonga — no strings attached dry humping/coitus interruptus which was customary for single young people — with another maiden Nandi kaBhebhe (c. 1760 — October 10, 1827) during youth hunting and gathering. As a nosey intelligence supremo who has installed guards around the boy, she doesn’t count on the royal lovers unculturally going all the way out of betrothal and no sooner, Nandi is rumoured as being with child.
V. At the inter-tribal hearings, Nandi famously hijacks the elders negotiating lobola — bride price — for herself which is also unheard of for a woman and doesn’t budge on wanting 55 beasts instead of the usual 10–15 for aristocracy sparking a row with Mkabayi as she is already called “a Zulu whore” topped with the fact that she is older than Senzangakhona and is his Langeni fiefdom second cousin where the now King of the Zulu’s mother came from.
VI. In order to continue carrying favour for her smooth handover of power (1781–1787), the mother and illegitimate baby boy Sigidi “Shaka” kaSenzangakhona (c. 1787 — September 22, 1828) — Shaka being the name of an intestinal beetle disease that causes abdominal bloating and menstrual irregularities since Senzangakhona initially denied paternity and infamously claimed Nandi “had itshaka disease”— are begrudgingly welcomed into the kingdom to avert war with the Langeni.
VII. Mkabayi continues to refuse suitors proposing marriage to her opting to retreat into her ruthless military commander duty which was a customary role for unmarried feudal queen sisters with her twin Mmama and their half-sister, the king’s sister Mawa kaJama (d. c. 1851). Mkabayi is also the de facto hand of the king even though a male prime minister is installed while a delusional and highly volatile Nandi expecting to be queen consort survives death threats and wallows in the misery of Senzangakhona still not believing that Shaka is his son and him never using the name Shaka but calling him Sigidi — isigidi, millions [of Zulu people] or isigidi, the element mercury (Hg)[rising] in reference to Shaka and his mother’s incredible tempers. Nandi also reels from Langeni praise poetry spreading like wildfire “Usontanti, omathanga kahlangani ngokubona umyeni” — the floating man**, whose thighs never close at the sight of a man — but bears Senzangakhona a daughter, Nomcoba kaSenzangakhona (c. 1789 — unknown) which doesn’t help their sour marriage or his need for a legitimate male heir.
VIII. She begins to warm up to the idea of Shaka being heir apparent as the king’s first wife and queen consort Mpikase who had a still birth the same time Shaka was born is years away from conceiving Dingane kaSenzangakhona Zulu (c. 1795–1840) and with the restless king marrying wife after wife with no child in sight and ultimately there being a plot to kill pre-teen Shaka who is believed by the nation to be a curse, Mkabayi blindsides the king in helping Nandi and her children escape Zululand in the process sacrificing the king’s close friend who knew about the maiden Nandi to act as the collaborator to take the fall.
IX. Much to her delight, Mkabayi’s spies inform her that Shaka despite being raised by an outcast and fatherless single mother back at their maternal Langeni home is indeed growing up to be a formidable warrior she envisioned him to be and him ending up being mentored in another clan of Gendeyana, who once courted maiden Nandi and now has a half-brother [or is it brother?] Ngwadi kaGendeyana. News that Shaka is being courted by various nations as a trooper is enough to give Mkabayi shivers and she hastens to convince the king to bring the boy back for Zulu initiation which did not include circumcision, a tradition which had been abandoned by Senzangakhona who however had ended up being circumcised to be king.
X. An angry Shaka stunningly rebukes his prodigal father at the ceremony and is banished yet again with the threat of death following him as he runs off to Godongwana kaJobe of the Mthethwa who has rebranded as fief Dingiswayo after usurping power of that clan and Mkabayi ordering the death of Gendeyana. She is on overdrive as Shaka has become a rock star with unheard of full control of Dingiswayo’s new feared army and publicly sneers at the idea of either one of Shaka’s half-brothers by-other-mothers Dingane and Sigujana kaSenzangakhona Zulu (c. 1799–1816) taking over the throne whom she decimates as being too weak for the empire and finally blaming Nandi for the phenomenon that is Shaka that they cannot control and wanting her dead.
XI. She again retreats into Zulu military with her sisters and niece Nomcoba reminding King Shaka that she saved him, his mother and sister’s lives as he rolls into Zulu nation with a hero’s welcome to kill teenage King Sigujana who briefly succeeded their deceased father Senzangakhona after initially offering the Crown to Dingiswayo who turned it down. She also bows to Nandi who is appointed queen of queens consort as the new delusional king of the united Zululand polity area between Mpondoland (KwaNguni weNdlovu uMpondo The Great Elephant, c. 400 AD; KwaFaku, c.1800; [British annexation] Cape Colony, September 1894; [South Africa province] Cape of Good Hope, May 31, 1910; [Self-governing apartheid Bantustans] Transkei, May 30, 1963 & Ciskei, August 1, 1972; [South Africa province] iMpuma Koloni/Eastern Cape, April 27, 1994) and Delagoa Bay (KwaNguni weNdlovu uThonga The Great Elephant, c. 400 AD; KwaPhumo, c. 1500 & KwaThembe in Nongoma, c. 1500; Portuguese port, 1502; [Portuguese port] Delagoa Bay, 1544; [Dutch] Port of Lijdzaamheid, 1720; [Portuguese port] Lourenço Marques, 1781; [Austrian] Forts of St. Joseph & St. Maria, 1799; Mfecane War no-man’s land, 1823; KwaSoshangane ePhumo, c. 1825; [Portuguese city] Lourenço Marques, December 9, 1876; [Mozambique city] Cam Phumo, June 25, 1975; [Mozambique city] Maputo, February 3, 1976) is obsessed with his immortality and not interested in having a wife or an heir. She tips Nandi that the furious king has found out about the pregnancy they are hiding after having been the one who sent young Zulu maiden Mbuzikazi kaCele to seduce the him while at the same time plotting the king’s assassination covering her tracks as if it was Dingane’s doing and prodding Henry Francis Mbuyazwe (umabuya evela emazweni/one who comes from overseas) Fynn (March 9, 1803 — September 20, 1861) and Francis Farewell (1784–1829) to nurse him to test the British guests’ “doctoring/magic” whom she has been spying on for years since they set foot in eThekwini/Durban, “the bay” (KwaNguni weNdlovu uZulu The Great Elephant, c. 400 AD; Terra Natal/“Christmas land” by Vasco Da Gama, December 25, 1457; KwaZulu in Nongoma, c. 1500; KwaZulu in Mgungundlovu (1627–1709); KwaZulu in KwaBulawayo, 1820; [Private] Port Natal in Durban, August 7, 1824; [South African Dutch state] Natalia Republic in Pietermaritzburg, October 12, 1839; [British] Colony of Natal, May 4, 1843; [South African Dutch state] Nieuwe Republiek/“New Republic” in Vryheid, August 5, 1884; [British annexation] Natal Colony from Ulundi July 4, 1879; [South Africa province] Natal, May 31, 1910); [Self-governing apartheid Bantustan] KwaZulu in Nongoma, 1980 & later in Ulundi, 1981; [South Africa province] KwaZulu-Natal, April 27, 1994).
XII. As Shaka’s Divine Right of Kings becomes increasingly unconstitutional with him banning his troops from sex and marriage, trusting his British guests more and more and intrigued by their political king George IV (August 12, 1762 — June 26, 1830) and their religious king Jesus Christ (6 BC — 33 AD), Mkabayi and the matrilineal Zulu military leadership are not impressed at all. Shaka with his newly promoted lieutenant, the Ndwandwe refugee fief Mzilikazi kaMatshobane Khumalo (c. 1790 — September 9, 1868), annihilates the rival Ndwandwe army’s prisoners of war as punishment for the double assassinations of his mentor Dingiswayo and Mzilikazi’s fief father Mashobane kaMangethe Khumalo (c. late 18th century — c. 1820s) whose heads had been severed for display by Mzilikazi’s grandfather and rival fief Zwide kaLanga Nxumalo (1758–1825) whose mother Ntombazi was trying to “break the spell” of what had long been called the Shaka Curse.
XIII. Less than a year into grieving the loss of The Great Queen Mother Nandi, bitter Shaka like all dictators of human history does not see it coming, does not think it will ever happen to him and makes a passionate dying speech to his assassins to no avail as it becomes clear that young King Sigujana had been a decoy installation by his sly aunt Mkabayi to prevent him from wiping out his half-brother heir Dingane and the line of succession of the House of Zulu.
XIV. Mkabayi ensures that all collaborators in killing Shaka including next-in-line half-brother Mhlangane kaSenzangakhona Zulu (d. November, 1828) are also killed for King Dingane to have a smooth transition but the king is exactly what she thought of him years ago, even though he pushes 12 years in power.
XV. With King Dingane struggling to maintain control of the empire as Mfecane “the great scattering” War (1815–1843) rages in Southern Africa sucking in the Sotho-Tswana, the Langa/Ba kaLanga, the Rozvi, the South African Dutch/Afrikaner who were disconnected from Europe and the Enlightenment, the British and the Portuguese all because the Portuguese had brought in the hunger-crop maize to Africa (1750) from the Americas, politically reluctant half-brother Mpande kaSenzangakhona Zulu (1798 — October, 1872) with help from Afrikaner leader Andries Pretorius (November 27, 1798 — July 23, 1853) slays the king forcing Mkabayi to flee.
XVI. In 1843, the exiled militant kitchen cabinet trio of Mkabayi, her twin sister Mmama and half-sister Mawa who has married self-styled Ndwandwe/Shangane claimant Mkhatshwa Nxumalo II (not to be confused with fief Mkhatshwa kaNdwandwe Nxumalo, c. 1753) and is commanding a renegade Ndwandwe army, are part of a hit list by Longest absolute Zulu monarch reign King Mpande who kill’s his next-in-line brother Gqugqu kaSenzangakhona (d. 1843) who had been the second of last surviving son of Senzangakhona and was threatening to attack. Mawa who narrowly escapes the chop flees to the British Natal triggering decades of mass exodus from KwaZulu to Durban before the British were defeated in Isandlwana (January 22, 1879) and Zululand was captured in Ulundi (July 4, 1879).
Had subsequent brother princes by Mpande stopped the bloody game of thrones? Oh no.
* As the king walked by, the drunk praise poet said, “Bu-ngakanani? Bu-ngaka! (How big is the king’s penis? It is enormous!)” and it became a Zulu slogan. The shipwrecked and stranded-in-Africa British sailors incorrectly heard it as ‘Ku-ngakanani? Ku-ngaka!’ which conveniently stuck to date because when King Shaka was deposed, the Zulu abandoned use of the word ubolo (penis) in favour of Germanic slang, pee-pee spelled as pipi, to forget the rather unpleasant memory of the popular poem about the king’s privates. The Zulu also abandoned the word igolo (vagina) because anti-marriage Shaka who had long been alleged to be gay, himself alleged that women used pussy power “to bewitch” men (gola). Also abandoned was zeka (to fuck) because the South African Dutch (Afrikaans) often used the similar sounding seker [zeker; New Dutch] which means ‘sure’ and the baffled Zulu misheard it as… zeka.
The Zimbabwe Zulu (Ndebele/Old Zulu) who had long left Zululand (and much of Bantu Africa), still happily use bolo, golo and zeka unlike the New Zulu of South Africa.
**Usontanti instead of unontanti — gender-bending political women like Mkabayi and Nandi were deified to be men. “Buzani kuMkabayi (Let’s defer to Mkabayi),” because she had prominent casting votes on all of her reigning kings’ decisions.
Sonny Jermain is a verbalist (verb-a-list: one who heals people with words) and a Mutwa-Bantu custodian. He is author of I Deserve to Be: Self-worth Is a Silent Killer.
