South Africa - The Battlefields
KwaZulu Natal - Blood River, Tlana, Isandlwana, Rorke's Drift
The Battlefields Route covers all of the major battle sites as well as the siege of Ladysmith and the spectacular Drakensberg Mountains.
Drive north out of Durban along the coast road to Zululand, through rolling hills, lush and green and covered in sugar cane - the “green gold of Natal”. Zulu kraals dot the landscape, surrounded by fences or hedges draped with yards of washing. Makeshift stalls are piled with pyramids of pineapples and stacks of small, sweet bananas.
South Africa - Battlefields Route
You are heading for the Battlefields Route, an area of wide savannah grasslands set against the sharp peaks of the spectacular Drakensberg Mountains. South Africa’s history is studded with clashes between races and cultures and part of its legacy is the great battlefields which remain much as they were a hundred years ago. For a long time forgotten, neglected, and largely unvisited, they are now being promoted as a tourist attraction. A map of the region shows more than fifty battle sites, with the main battles, such as Blood River, Talana, Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift, and the Siege of Ladysmith marked with monuments and museums.
Leaving the coastal region the lush vegetation gradually changes to bare, scrubby grassland and the the trees disappear from the hills. It seems an appropriate landscape for some of the most devastating battles in Imperial history.
South Africa - History
The South African War against the Boers broke out in October 1879 and the killing began with the battle of Talana. It was here that the British army relinquished their traditional red coats and wore khaki for the first time. Whether or not this was supposed to make them less conspicuous I don't know but it didn't help those whose bodies lay in the sun for four days before the Boers gave permission for burial. At Spionkop Hill the British were killed in their trenches, buried where they lay, and where they remain today with stones piled on top of the trenches with only a few lonely crosses to mark their graves. It's a melancholy but very moving spot, as are most of the battlefields.
It wasn't only white men who died; in the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879 black and white alike were massacred in their thousands. This was the result of the staunch resistance of the Zulu people to colonisation. It took six months of fierce fighting by the world’s greatest military power to bring a small African kingdom to heel.
South Africa - Defeat of the British Army
At Isandlwana some 15,000 British soldiers met their death at the hands of 20,000 Zulus armed only with spears, clubs and rawhide shields - this was the worst defeat the British Army had ever known. They were wiped out here but they got their own back later the same day a few miles away at Rorke's Drift mission station (where Michael Caine achieved his finest hour in the film 'Zulu'.). A hundred British soldiers fought off twelve hours of repeated attacks by 4,000 Zulus, earning themselves eleven Victoria Crosses, the largest number ever awarded for a single engagement.
When War broke out between Britain and the South Africa Republic in 1879. It signalled the end of the independent Zulu nation.
Outspan Treetops Adventure - Kenya
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