DIAMONDS.GOLD.AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
Natal in the south. John Dunn attached himself to Cetshwayo, the victor in
the civil war, and became the most powerful and wealthy man along the
Natal border in the southern part of the kingdom, where he accumulated
forty-six Zulu wives, ten thousand followers, and vast herds of cattle.
After the death of Dingane's successor, Mpande, in 1872, Cetshwayo
strengthened the central government of the kingdom and based his foreign
policy on an alliance with Natal, represented by the powerful secretary of
native affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, as a safeguard against Afrikaner ex-
pansion from the Transvaal. Dunn supplied Cetshwayo with firearms,
helped him to funnel African labor from the Tsonga chiefdoms in Mozam-
bique to Natal, and served as his de facto foreign minister and private
secretary.
In 1877, the foundations of Zulu security began to crumble. Acting as
an agent of the British government, Shepstone annexed the Transvaal as a
British colony and became its administrator.
Then, seeking to win the
support of the Afrikaner population by assuaging their hunger for land and
to satisfy the ambitions of Natal traders and British missionaries and
imperialists, Shepstone threw his erstwhile Zulu allies to the wind. He