CHAPTER 2
The Transvaal.
In 1876 Rider Haggard had joined Sir Theophilis Shepstone as a junior member of his staff. He soon put his talents to use and produced a pencil sketch of Shepstone which was subsequently published in the English journal “The World”. It was here that he encountered ‘Umslopogas’, or more exactly, Mr M’hlopekazi, a Swazi who was on the staff of the Residency. He used the character of Umslopogas, whom he featured in Allan Quatermain and other romances.
In King Solomon’s Mines he is the character, Umbopa, one of the local African chiefs duped by the three Englishmen, as discussed above. Captain Good is probably his brother, Jack, Sir Henry Curtis the archetypal Anglo-Saxon- Berserker hero, and Allan Quatermain could be taken, with only a pinch of salt, to be Haggard himself, as his granddaughter agreed with the present author.[1] Again, in King Solomon’s Mines he is known as Ignosi, a great Zulu head of a regiment of fierce warriors who comes into conflict with Twala, the king. In his autobiography Haggard reports how Umslopogas had reputedly killed ten men in mortal combat. He was “a tall, thin, fierce-faced” man who had “a great hole above the left temple over which the skin pulsated”,[2] which injury Haggard recounts was received in battle.
On hearing that Haggard was using his name in his novels, Mr M’hlopekazi claimed that he should be paid for his inclusion in the romance. Haggard offered him a hunting knife as a means of paying him his royalties. However, when questioned whether he minded being featured in Haggard’s books, Mr M’hlopekazi stated that he was pleased to receive the chance of being remembered by posterity.[3]
The trek with Osborn, Fynney and Shepstone (Sompseu to the Zulus) from Pietermaritzburg to Pretoria took place on 20th December, 1876 when Haggard was 22, the journey lasting into the New Year of 1877. In the heat of the day, he still enjoyed the opportunity to explore the wilderness of the high veldt of the Transvaal with its varied climate and vegetation. On the journey, Osborn recounted some of his adventures. Osborn had witnessed the battles of Tugela, and Haggard went on to describe the tremendous loss of life in that conflict in his story “Child of Storm”. (1913)[4]
In Child of Storm where he encounters a group of impis, a unit of Zulu warriors, engaged in battle, his character, Macumazana experiences terror as the party turns on the Englishman and threatens to kill him:
I became aware of two great fellows rushing at me with their eyes starting out of their heads and shouting as they came:
“Kill Umbelazi’s white man! Kill! Kill!
Then, seeing that the matter was urgent and that it was a question of my life or theirs, I came into action.
In my hand I held a double-barrelled shot gun loaded with what we used to call “loopers” or B.B. shot, of which but a few went to each charge, for I had hoped to meet with a small buck on my way to camp. So as these soldiers came, I lifted the gun and fired, the right barrel at one of them and the left barrel at the other, aiming in each case at the centre of the small dancing shields, which from force of habit they held stretched out to protect their throats and breasts. At that distance, of course, the loopers sank through the soft hide of the shields and deep into the bodies o