Langalibalele

Who is Langalibalele?

Langalibalele, also known as Mtetwa, was king of the amaHlubi, a Bantu tribe in what is the modern-day province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

He was born on the eve of the arrival of European settlers in the province. After conflict with the Zulu king Mpande, he fled with his people to the Colony of Natal in 1848. During the diamond rush of the 1870s, many of his young men worked on the mines in Kimberley where they acquired guns. In 1873 the colonial authorities of Natal demanded that the guns be registered, Langalibalele refused and a stand-off ensued, resulting in a violent skirmish in which European troopers were killed. Langalibalele fled across the mountains into Basutoland, but was captured, tried and banished to Robben Island. He eventually returned to his home, but remained under house arrest.

His imprisonment split the colonial population of Natal and was a watershed in South African political history.