Zulu (redirected from Zulus)

Zulu

Nguni-speaking people living in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. Numbering about 9.5 million, they are South Africa's largest ethnic group. Traditionally grain farmers, they also kept large herds of cattle. European settlers wrested grazing and water resources from the Zulu in prolonged warfare during the 19th century; with much of their wealth lost, modern Zulu depend largely on wage labour on farms owned by whites or work in the cities. The Zulu provide the main support for the Inkatha Freedom Party. Many Zulu belong to independent or separatist African churches, though the traditional religion, based on ancestor worship and belief in a creator-god, witches, and sorcerers, remains strong. See also Shaka.

---

Zulu

1. a member of a tall Negroid people of SE Africa, living chiefly in South Africa, who became dominant during the 19th century due to a warrior-clan system organized by the powerful leader, Shaka

2. the language of this people, belonging to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo family, closely related to Swazi and Xhosa

---

Zulu 

(Amazulu), a people living mainly in Natal Province of the Republic of South Africa, where they constitute the majority of the African population. Their total population is approximately 3.8 million (1970, estimate). They speak the Zulu language. Most Zulus worship the powers of nature and their ancestors; some belong to a syncretistic Christian-African religious group known as the Nazareth Baptist Sect.

In the early 19th century, in view of the threat of Anglo-Boer conquest, the Zulu tribes formed a common alliance under the leadership of the Zulu chieftain Shaka (and after him Dingaan). The Zulus created an army that resisted the conquerors. However, the English managed to defeat the Zulu army in 1879. Three-quarters of their lands were taken from them, and in 1887 the remaining territory became part of the colony of Natal under the name of Zululand. The Zulus’ last major rebellion in the struggle for independence occurred in 1906.

The chief occupations of the Zulu are farming and cattle raising, although some work as hired laborers on the farms, ranches, and plantations of Europeans and as workers in mines and industrial enterprises.

REFERENCES

Bryant, A. T. Zulusskii narod do prikhoda evropeitsev. Moscow, 1953. (Translated from English.)
Potekhin, I. I. Formirovanie natsional’noi obshchnosti iuzhnoafrikanskikh bantu. Moscow, 1955.
Gluckman, M. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand. Manchester, 1958.

---

Zulu 

(Isizulu), the language of the Zulu (Amazulu); spoken in areas of the Transvaal, in Natal Province in the Republic of South Africa, by approximately 3.8 million people (1970, estimate). The main dialects are Kwabe, Lala, Ndebele, and Ngoni.

According to the classification of C. M. Doke (South Africa), Zulu belongs to the Nguni group of the southeastern Bantu language zone. The phonetic structure of Zulu is complicated by the presence of predental lateral fricatives, such as the voiceless [hi] and voiced [dl]; also reported for Zulu, because of the Hottentot-Bushmen substrate, are the dental [c], alveolar [q], and lateral [x] click sounds, each of which has aspirated and nasalized variants. Consonant and vowel alternation laws operate on the morphophonological level: under specific phonetic conditions, labial consonants become predental consonants at morpheme boundaries, and vowel contact is accompanied by fusion or prolapsus. There is vowel harmony in the verb system. In grammatical structure, Zulu has a system of class agreement (13 classes), but spatial relations are indicated by a locative form with the confix e-…-ini. Syntax is characterized by direct word order: subject-predicate-object. There is subject and object agreement of the predicate. Zulu has a well-developed literature, and periodicals are published in the Zulu language, among them the newspaper Ilanga lase Natal.

REFERENCES

Okhotina, N. V.Iazyk zulu. Moscow, 1961.
Doke, C. M. Text-book of Zulu Grammar, 5th ed. Cape Town, 1954.
Eeden, B. J. C.Zoeloe-grammatika. Stellenbosh-Grahamstad, 1956.
Doke, C. M., and B. W. Vilakazi. Zulu-English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Johannesburg, 1953.

N. V. OKHOTINA