Langalibalele (isiHlubi: meaning 'The scorching sun', also known as Mthethwa, Mdingi (c 1814 – 1889), was king of the amaHlubi, a Bantu tribe in what is the modern-day province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
He was born on the eve of the arrival of European settlers in the province. After conflict with the Zulu king Mpande, he fled with his people to the Colony of Natal in 1848. During the diamond rush of the 1870s, many of his young men worked on the mines in Kimberley, where they acquired guns. In 1873 the colonial authorities of Natal demanded that the guns be registered, Langalibalele refused and a stand-off ensued, resulting in a violent skirmish in which British troops were killed. Langalibalele fled across the mountains into Basutoland, but was captured, tried and banished to Robben Island. He eventually returned to his home, but remained under house arrest.
His imprisonment was a watershed in South African political history that split the colonial population of the Colony of Natal.
Context
The Bushmen, a hunter-gatherer people, were the original inhabitants of the modern-day province of KwaZulu-Natal. Historians are divided as to when the Bantu, a pastoral people, first migrated southward into the province, although most think it was well before 1200. By the end of the 17th century, they had certainly settled there and displaced the Bushmen, who migrated into the foothills of the Drakensberg. The amaHlubi, a Bantu tribe speaking a Tekela dialect, had settled in the northern part of the province between the Buffalo and Blood Rivers.
During the first decade of the nineteenth century the AbaThethwa King Dingiswayo, a neighbour of the AmaHlubi, set about consolidating the various Nguni people under his leadership. In 1818 he was killed in battle and after a civil war, power passed into the hands of one of his lieutenants, Shaka, King of the Zulu clan. King Shaka expanded the Zulu clan into a kingdom for the first time since King Malandela KaLuzumana died way back in the year 1551, where he divided the kingdom into two clans, AmaZulu and AmaQwabe, thus they were no longer a united nation until King Shaka kaSenzangakhona united them once again in over 350 years, by attacking neighbouring clans and assimilating the survivors; his actions led to The Great Scattering.
At the time of King Langalibalele I's birth, European settlements in Southern Africa were confined to the British controlled Cape Colony and to the Portuguese fortress of Lourenço Marques. In 1824 Fynn established a small British settlement at Port Natal (later to become Durban) but the British Government declined to take possession of the port. From 1834 onwards, the Voortrekkers (Dutch-speaking farmers) started to migrate from the Cape Colony in large numbers and in 1837 crossed the Drakensberg into KwaZulu-Natal where, after the murder of one of their leaders, Piet Retief, in the massacre at Weenen they defeated King Shaka's successor King Dingane at the Battle of Blood River, and they put his youngest brother King Mpanda on the AmaZulu throne and established the republic of Natalia. Friction between the Voortrekkers and the AmaPondo nation, a kingdom whose territory lay between Natalia and the Cape Colony, led to the British occupying Port Natal, the subsequent Battle of Congella followed by the siege and relief of the port. After the port had been relieved, the Voortrekkers withdrew from KwaZulu-Natal into the interior and the British established the Colony of Natal.
The following decades saw the rise of the British industrial base – emigration was used to control unemployment and thereby boost the British economy. The Colony of Natal was one destination of such emigrants. In 1856 the colony was granted representative government by the British Government with responsible government following in 1895. The British government appointed a "diplomatic agent" who was to act on behalf of the native people who were subject to "native law" rather than "colonial law", "in so far as it was not repugnant to the dictates of humanity". From 1856 until 1877, the post of diplomatic agent was held by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, son of a missionary and who had been brought up at the mission station.
King of the AmaHlubi
Early years
King Langalibalele I (literally "the sun is shining"), He was the second son of King Mthimkhulu II who was born in 1818 and was originally known as Prince Midinga.