Ulundi and the Zulu Royal Heritage

The Royal Homestead Cetshwayo Built In 1873 As The Capital Of The Zulu Kingdom And The British Burned In July 1879, Reconstructed On Its Own Excavated Foundations With A Museum Beside It And Thirty Kilometres Away The EMakhosini Valley, Where The Kings Before Shaka Are Buried And Which Zulu Tradition Holds As The Origin Place Of The Nation · Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal

The Zulu kingdom is shown to visitors almost entirely through the British who fought it. Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift are on every itinerary; the capital the kingdom was actually governed from is on almost none. Cetshwayo built Ondini on the Mahlabathini plain in 1873 - a royal homestead of around a thousand dwellings in rings around a great central cattle enclosure - and in July 1879 a British column burned it to the ground after the battle of Ulundi ended the war. It has since been excavated and part of it rebuilt on its own foundations, with a museum beside it that holds the kingdom's own material culture rather than somebody else's regimental silver. Thirty kilometres south-west, the eMakhosini valley holds the graves of the kings before Shaka, Senzangakhona among them, and Zulu tradition treats that valley as the place the nation began. Come here for a state rather than a battlefield. It is malaria-free, the roads in are good, and almost nobody makes the detour.

In the Mahlabathini plain of central KwaZulu-Natal, with Ondini on the town's edge and the eMakhosini valley 30 km south-west, Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

THE ONDINI SITE AND THE KWAZULU CULTURAL MUSEUM keep daylight hours with a modest charge and have had periods of closure and uncertain funding, so CONFIRM BEFORE DRIVING OUT rather than arriving on spec - this is not a site with a call centre. What you see is a RECONSTRUCTION ON THE EXCAVATED FOOTPRINT of the royal enclosure, because the original was burned in July 1879, and the row says so because the word reconstruction matters here. THE EMAKHOSINI VALLEY thirty kilometres south-west is open land with the Spirit of eMakhosini monument above it, and THE ROYAL GRAVES WITHIN IT ARE SACRED AND ACTIVE - some are not open to visitors at all, some need permission, and that is not a tourist's decision to make. Ulundi town has fuel, basic shops and a small airport. It is about two and a half hours from Durban, an hour from the battlefields, and MALARIA-FREE.

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