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(Printed for the use of the Cabinet.)

CONFIDENTIAL.

African

No. 307.

GENERAL VIEW OF ZULU AFFAIRS, 1879-1885.

THE SETTLEMENT OF 1879.

From a period closely following the conclusion of the Zulu War in August 1879, the state of Zululand has given rise to anxiety both on the part of Her Majesty's Government and on that of the Natal Government. But the conditions of the problem have been continuously changing, and whilst some causes of anxiety have disappeared, others have arisen in their stead, and it therefore remains to discover and adopt a policy towards Zululand which may be consistent with justice towards the local interests concerned, as well as to those of an Imperial nature.

As the phases of the difficulty have changed so often and so materially, it will suffice to run over the earlier history of Zululand since the war, very rapidly.

The settlement of Zululand, effected by Lord Wolseley, under the authority of Lord Beacons field's Government, was one of those arrange- ments which would have worked well if everybody concerned had been anxious that it should work, and determined that he himself would behave properly; but this was not the case. Powerful combinations, inside and outside Zululand, arose which ignored the settlement, or worked for its overthrow. The thirteen chiefs amongst whom the country was divided, proved unable to main- tain a stable peace: some of them were neither powerful nor popular, and it is only a powerful or popular chief who can command obedience among Zulus. The settlement itself made no provision for the vindication of authority in the contingencies which arose.

The Government of Mr. Gladstone was unwilling to take the responsibility of de- parting from the scheme of Lord Beaconsfield's Government and interfering directly to preserve order-a policy recommended by Sir Evelyn Wood, then acting as Governor of Natal. In these circumstances the idea was propounded of setting Cetywayo again upon the throne, in the hope that he might keep the peace, which the thirteen "appointed chiefs" were unable, and the British Government unwilling, to keep. Cetywayo's continued imprisonment was extremely distasteful to a large proportion of the supporters of Mr. Gladstone's Government, and sympathy for him existed and was strongly expressed in many quarters uninfluenced by party considerations, especially after it was discovered by a visitor who afterwards published the fact in a magazine, that the King

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