The word mfecane is derived from Xhosa terms: ukufaca to become thin from hunger and fetcani starving intruders. In Zulu, the word means crushing. Mfecane refers to a period of political disruption and population migration in Southern Africa which occurred during the 1820s and 1830s. It is also known by the Sotho name difaqane.

Euro-centric historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarded the mfecane as the result of aggressive nation building by the Zulu under the rule of Shaka and the Nbebele under Mzilikazi.

Such descriptions of devastation and depopulation of Africans gave white settlers an excuse for moving into the land which they thus considered empty.

Additionally, as the Europeans moved into new territory which was not theirs, it was a time of transition during which the Zulus took advantage. That said, the Zulu expansion and the defeat of rival Nguni kingdoms would not have been possible without Shakas dominant personality and demanding military discipline.

More destruction actually was initiated by those people that Shaka defeated, rather than by his own forces -- this was the case with the Hlubi and the Ngwane. Devoid of social order, the refugees pillaged and stole wherever they went.

The impact of the Mfecane extended far beyond South Africa. People fled from Shaka’s armies as far away as Barotseland, in Zambia, to the northwest and Tanzania and Malawi in the northeast.

Shaka created an army of 40,000 fighters, separated into age groups.

Cattle and grain were stolen from the communities that were defeated, but the attacks were booty for the Zulu soldiers to take what they wanted. All the property from the organized raids went to Shaka.

By the 1960s, the mfecane and Zulu nation building were being given a positive spin – considered more as a revolution in Bantu Africa, where Shaka played a leading role in the creation of a Zulu nation in Natal.

Moshoeshoe similarly created the Sotho kingdom in what is now Lesotho as a defense against Zulu incursions.

Modern historians