brothers, Dingane, eliminated his rivals and succeeded to the kingship,
maintaining Shaka's domestic and external policies, though he lacked
Shaka's originality and panache.t"
Meanwhile, militant bands of people who had been driven from their
homes by the Ndwandwe, the Mthethwa, and the Zulu created the wide-
spread havoc throughout southeastern Africa that became known as the
Mfecane. Bythe early 183os, organized community lifehad virtually end-
ed in some areas-notably,
in modern Natal, south of the Zulu kingdom,
and in much of the modern Orange Free State between the Vaal and the
Caledon river valleys, where the only human beings were small groups of
survivors trying to eke out a living on mountaintops or in bush country.
Settlements were abandoned, livestock were destroyed, fields ceased to be
cultivated, and in several places the landscape was littered with human
bones. Demoralized survivors wandered/round singly or in small groups,
contriving to live on game or veld plants. Some even resorted to can-
nibalism-the
final sign of society's collapse. A self-proclaimed former
cannibal later told a missionary: "Many preferred to die of hunger; but
others were deceived by the more intrepid ones, who would say to their