The Ghost Kings: Extract

Extract

FROM LETTER HEADED "THE KING'S KRAAL, ZULULAND, 12TH MAY, 1855."

"The Zulus about here have a strange story of a white girl who in
Dingaan's day was supposed to 'hold the spirit' of some legendary goddess
of theirs who is also white. This girl, they say, was very beautiful and
brave, and had great power in the land before the battle of the Blood
River, which they fought with the emigrant Boers. Her title was Lady of
the Zulus, or more shortly, Zoola, which means Heaven.

"She seems to have been the daughter of a wandering, pioneer missionary,
but the king, I mean Dingaan, murdered her parents, of whom he was
jealous, after which she went mad and cursed the nation, and it is to this
curse that they still attribute the death of Dingaan, and their defeats
and other misfortunes of that time.

"Ultimately, it appears, in order to be rid of this girl and her evil eye,
they sold her to the doctors of a dwarf people, who lived far away in a
forest and worshipped trees, since when nothing more has been heard of
her. But according to them the curse stopped behind.

"If I can find out anything more of this curious story I will let you
know, but I doubt if I shall be able to do so. Although fifteen years or
so have passed since Dingaan's death in 1840 the Kaffirs are very shy of
talking about this poor lady, and, I think, only did so to me because I am
neither an official nor a missionary, but one whom they look upon as a
friend because I have doctored so many of them. When I asked the Indunas
about her at first they pretended total ignorance, but on my pressing the
question, one of them said that 'all that tale was unlucky and "went
beyond" with Mopo.' Now Mopo, as I think I wrote to you, was the man who
stabbed King Chaka, Dingaan's brother. He is supposed to have been mixed
up in the death of Dingaan also, and to be dead himself. At any rate he
vanished away after Panda came to the throne."

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