of thirty white men and some three thousand Zulu; and in the following
year the Natal government remobilized the militia and arrested Dinuzulu,
the head of the Zulu royal house, on the grounds that he had been behind
the rebellion and was plotting further resistance. By 1908, a government
commission had revealed that the Natal Africans had substantial griev-
ances, including insensitive administration and economic hardship. Later,
-when Dinuzulu's trial for treason was completed, the presiding judge con-
cluded that there was no evidence that he had formented rebellion before or
after 1906. The result was that Whites in Natal were unsure of their capaci-
ty to control a distinct state, whereas Whites in the other colonies feared the
consequences if Natal was left to its own devices.59
The idea of South African federation or unification was not new. It was
central to the imperialist philosophy. As we have seen, Lord Carnarvon and
his officials bungled an attempt to give effect to it in the 1870S. Subse-
quently, Rhodes and Milner regarded it as their mission to create a vast
British state extending northward from the Cape to the Zambezi or even
further. After Milner left Southern Africa, a group of bright young men