BOOK EXTRACT: John Laband examines the ongoing emotional significance of the Battle of Blood River

The battle of Blood River, or Ncome, on 16 December 1838, has long been regarded as a critical moment in the history of South Africa. It is the culminating victory by the land-hungry Boers who had migrated out of the British-ruled Cape and invaded the Zulu kingdom in 1837.

Laband is a Professor Emeritus of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He has authored, co-authored and edited over 20 books on warfare and military culture in Africa, specialising in the Zulu kingdom and in nineteenth-century colonial conflicts in southern Africa. Read the excerpt below.Not all battlefields retain their disturbing aura of long-past bloodlust and grim exaltation, of courage and fortitude, unmanning dread and panic, anguish, pain, and violent death.

With the Union of South Africa in 1910 that brought the British colonies and Boer republics of the subcontinent together in one country, 16 December was proclaimed a public holiday. It remained one until the eventual fall of apartheid 84 years later, and during these years it was annually celebrated with increasing fervour.

And certainly, there was no disguising that the Blood River monuments echoed the situation in 1994 where 97 per cent of all existing monuments in South Africa reflected the values and interests of the colonial and apartheid eras, and were viewed by blacks as symbols of their past alienation and disempowerment.

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