Ian Knight, author and historian writes:

On the afternoon of 19 January 1879,  the British Centre Column was still camped on the Zulu bank at Rorke’s Drift. The lingering drought had broken, and the road ahead was not sufficient to take the Column’s transport so outlying picquets had been posted while work had been carried out improving the approaches to the drift on the Batshe river.

That afternoon an officer commanding a picquet of the NNC reported to his senior, George Hamilton Browne, that a large number of cattle could be seen apparently hidden in the corrugated country downstream of the Mzinyathi. Browne went forward and saw them himself; they were a tempting prize but he suspected a trap and his induna, Mvubi, agreed with him.

Leaving a few men to watch for any movements Browne reported to Lord Chelmsford but Chelmsford, who had recently received a report that the main Zulu army was gathered at oNdini, did not appear to react. In fact Chelmsford was pondering the significance of these reports; he was close to resuming his advance and about to enter an uncertain political landscape.

His attack on kwaSogekle on the 12th had neutralised the powerful border inkosi Sihayo, but the country off to his right – where Browne’s men had spotted the cattle – was the territory of a different inkosi, Matshana kaMondise of the Sithole people.

Matshana is an underrated figure in what happened next – he had been born in Natal and was what the Zulu elite rather disparagingly referred to as a khafula, an African ‘spat out’ by the Zulu kingdom, but he had incurred the wrath of the powerful Shepstone family in Natal and had been attacked and deposed. He had fled to Zululand to seek sanctuary where he was welcomed as proof of the humiliations endured under the Colonial system in contrast to the virtues of independent life in Zululand.

He was a favourite of King Cetshwayo but Chelmsford still hoped that Matshana could be won back to the colonial fold and persuaded to defect. Yet it was difficult to interpret the movements seen by Hamilton Browne in the country around Matshana’s homestead at Nsingabantu – was Matshana preparing to flee, or to fight? In fact, the inkosi’s position was by no means enviable – with the British on his doorstep and with the recent example of the attack on Sihayo before him, he nonetheless found himself held in some suspicion by the Zulu high command who, ironically, shared Chelmsford’s doubts about his allegiance.

Only later did it become clear that Matshana had hidden his cattle and his non-combatants in the sheltered country downstream from Rorke’s Drift – whilst he and his warriors prepared to move to join the great Zulu army that was approaching their territory from oNdini.