Today marks the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Isandlwana, fought from late morning to mid-afternoon on 22 January 1879 in the Anglo-Zulu War between the invading British Forces under Lord Chelmsford and the Zulu Army of King Cetshwayo.
In the battle, a force of about 20 000 Zulu warriors attacked and then wiped out a portion of the main British invasion force, and over 1 300 soldiers of the British crown were killed, including seven colonial volunteers educated at the old Pietermaritzburg High School (later Maritzburg College).
The sacrifice of our seven Old Boys was immortalised at this school when the great headmaster of College, Mr RD Clark, chose the words PRO ARIS ET FOCIS as the school’s motto – from the very war memorial in Clark’s that he had erected to honour their deaths protecting “Hearth & Home”.
But today, inspired by the school’s sacred symbolism of carbine and assegai and red-black-white, we also honour the memory of the thousands of brave Zulu warriors, who also died on that bloody day.
After all, let us be mindful that these Zulu warriors died defending the sacred soil of Zululand from an invading force – they died defending their homesteads, their farms and their kraals – they too died defending their “hearths and homes”.
One wonders what the final moments were like, for all the men who died that day. For the warriors of the Amabutho, armed only with assegais, they rose up and charged the British camp, in the face of withering fire from 1 000 Martini-Henry rifles. What courage it must have taken, to keep moving forward, as their comrades around them were shot. And what of the ‘redcoats’, as the British line collapsed under the Zulu onslaught, and in a matter of only a few minutes the camp was overrun by the warriors of Cetshwayo? Within those few minutes, they would have realised that all was lost, that there was no hope of escape, and the only end for them was going to be at the tip of an assegai. We know that many of our Old Boys banded together in a tight square, back to back, and fought to the end, until they were overrun and killed. Not a single soldier of the British line survived.
We salute the memory of ALL the men who gave their lives on that bloody battlefield in Zululand, and, on its traditional birthday, specifically chosen by Mr Clark in honour of that momentous and bloody day, we also honour the 127th birthday today of the Maritzburg College Old Boys’ Association.
Let us remember the thousands of men from both sides who lost their lives in that great battle.
PRO ARIS ET FOCIS
FOR HEARTH & HOME
OKWESIBAYA NOMSAMO