TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 519 
and allied tribes extend as far as the Zambezi; indeed, it may be said that a com- 
plete chain of Zulu peoples stretches up to the neighbourhood of the equator, the 
more open country in which they live giving greater opportunities for expansion. 
The wonderful rise to power of Chaka (1783-1828) caused great movements of 
peoples to take place. The Ama-Ngwana (who drove the Ama-Hlubi before them) 
and other groups fled southward to esvape from the tyranny of this great warrior. 
The conquerors applied to these scattered remnants of tribes the contemptuous 
term ‘ Fingu,’ or homeless fugitives, and turned them into slaves and cattle-tenders. 
The Ama-Ndabili (Matabele), to the number of some 60,000 individuals, separated 
from the parent stock about 1817, under the leadership of the terrible Moselekatze 
(Umsilikazi), whose fame as an exterminator of men ranks second only to that of 
Chaka ; they crossed the Drakensberg and went north-west through the Transvaal, 
scattering the settled Be-Chuana peoples. They were attacked by the Boers, who 
defeated them with terrible slaughter, and withdrew to the Zambezi, but were 
driven south by the tsetse fly. They encountered the Ma-Kalanga (Ma-Kalaka) 
and destroyed their villages, drove out the Ma-Shona to the north-east, and settled 
in Mashonaland. 
(2) The great central region of the South African plateau, roughly known as 
Bechuanaland, was very early occupied by Bantu peoples coming from the north, 
who displaced or reduced to servitude the indigenous Bushmen. As Professor 
Keane points out, the Be-Chuana (Ba-Choana) must have crossed the Zambezi from 
the north at a very early date, because of all the South Bantu groups they alone 
have preserved the totemic system. Among the first to arrive, according to him, 
appear to have been the industrious Ma-Shona and Ma-Kalanga. For three hun- 
dred years, according to native tradition, the Ma-Kalanga owned the land between 
the Limpopo and the Zambezi, and then came the Ba-Rotse (who appear to be 
allied to the Congo Bantu) and conquered them. A section of the latter founded a 
powerful so-called Ba-Rotse (Ma-Rotse) empire on the Middle Zambezi above the 
Victoria Falls, At the beginning of the nineteenth century a Ba-Hurutse dynasty 
ruled over the Be-Chuana; as these people expanded they broke off into clans, and 
extended between the Orange River and the Zambezi, and from the Kathiamba, or 
Drakensberg chain, to the Kalahari Desert. 
‘The densely populated country west of the Drakensberg now_known as Basuto- 
land was subjected to great devastation as a result of Chaka’s tyranny. In 1822 
a tribe fleeing from the Zulus set up the first of these disturbances, and the 
attacked became the attackers in their turn. One horde, the Mantati (Mantiti), 
under the amazon Ma-Ntatesi, are credited with having wiped out twenty-eight 
tribes: they were eventually defeated by the Ba-Ngwaketsi and scattered by the 
Griqua. The Ma-Kololo, a group allied to the Mantati, led by Sebituane, in 1823 
aimed at reaching the district of the Chobe and Zambezi, where he had heard that 
it was always spring. After conquering the Ba-Kuena, Ba-Hurutse, and other 
kindred tribes and increasing their forces from the conquered peoples, they crossed 
the Zambezi and the uplands stretching to the Kafukwe, and settled in those 
fertile pasture lands about 1835. Disturbed by the Matabele, Sebituane passed 
through the Barotse Valley, followed by the Matabele and the Ba-Toka, a tribe of 
the Ba-Rotse. He put the former to flight and subjugated the latter. Thus 
Sebituane led his people a journey of over 2,000 miles to reach their Promised 
Land. Under Sekeletu, Sebituane'’s successor, the state began to fall to pieces, 
and after his death the Ba-Rotse revolted, and practically exterminated the Ma- 
Kololo. The rehabilitated Ba-Rotse empire comprises an area of some 250,000 
square miles between the Chobe and Kafukwe aftluents of the Zambezi. Professor 
Keane draws attention to the instructive fact that though the Ma-Kololo have 
perished from among the number of South African tribes, their short rule (1835- 
1870) was long enough to impose their language upon the Ba-Rotse, and to this 
day, about the Middle Zambezi, where the Ma-Kololo have disappeared, their 
speech remains the common medium of intercourse throughout the Ba-Rotse 
empire. The consolidation of the Ba-Suto under the astute Moshesh is an instruc- 
tive episode in the history of the South African races. The Ba-Mangwato are the 
most important branch of the independent Be-Chuana peoples, and have made 
