HLUHLUWE GAME RESERVE - CULTURE

 
Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park lies in the heart of rural Zululand where its neighbors, the abaKwaZulu (the people of Heaven) and Nguni people reside.
According to Bryant the southern Bantu had by AD900 become separated into three branches in Central Africa - the Nguni, the Venda-Karanga, and the Thonga.

For 300 years from their founding by Zulu, son of Malandela, until Shaka’s chieftaincy in 1804 they had experienced an agrarian existence a few kilometres south of the White Mfolozi River. On these fertile wild pastures they grazed their valuable herds of cattle and constructed comfortable villages of hive shaped huts. They and their neighbors lived much as their common ancestors had during the thousands of years the drifting southward migration took to bring them from Central Africa to their present destination.
 
The Zulus were an undistinguished Nguni clan among many. One man's genius was to change all that. The Zulus were to become famous amongst South African Bantu Tribes, when Shaka, the Black Napoleon, became their ruler and began a career of conquest and destruction , which made itself felt over half a continent. The Zulu Empire was forged on the anvil of Shaka’s ambition and fuelled by his vengeful anger stemming from childhood taunts regarding his illegitimate birth. The embittered boy developed into a physical and mental giant with a breadth of concept and single-mindedness unprecedented in contemporary African affairs.

Unlike the inconclusive posturing that until then passed as battles, Shaka waged war in the grand manner, remorseless and total. From chief of a tiny Zulu clan of 1500 people, he expanded his power base through conquest and assimilation until his assassination 12 years later at the age of 41. By that time he controlled two million subjects, maintained a superbly disciplined army of 50 000 warriors and controlled an area ten times greater than present day Zululand, while his shadow hovered over territory 12 times greater. Shaka’s legacy lives on. Clans adjacent to HIP whose ancestors amongst the Mthethwa, Ngwane and Ndwandwe people consider themselves to be Zulu, loyal to a "Zulu" King and living on land (Ngonyama Trust Land ) held in trust for the King. 

Modern settlement patterns that have affected and influenced these communities include forced removals during the apartheid era, the villagization concept (mostly affecting people in the Mthethwa, Mthembu, Biyela and Mlaba Tribal Authorities), the tenant farmers settling in land adjacent to HUP, refugee settlement from the internecine faction fighting in Tugela Ferry area and the migrant labour system which has resulted in many house-holds being without their main breadwinners for most part of the year.