AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
Indian Ocean, the Zulu kingdom had incorporated all the northern Nguni
chiefdoms. The royal family and its Ntungwa clan constituted a new
ruling class. They controlled a standing army of conscripted warriors and
exacted tribute from the commoners. Moreover, in a process known as the
Mfecane(Zulu) or Difaqane(Sesotho),meaning time of troubles, emigrant
bands from modern KwaZulu had created new kingdoms as far north as
modern Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania. The Mfengu, who arrived among
the Xhosa and became allied with the Cape Colony, were among the
refugees displaced by these events (map 4).25
This transformation was in essence an internal process within the mixed
farming society in southeastern Africa. Bythe last quarter of the eighteenth
century, the relation between the population leveland the environment was
changing. Previously,the society had been expansive and the scale of politi-
cal organization had remained small in spite of the tendency of the popula-
tion to increase, because members of ruling families had frequently split
from their chiefdoms with their followers and founded new chiefdoms
between or beyond existing settlements. Gradually, however, the popula-
tion of the region had been increasing to a level where that expansive