The life of John Dunn, with special reference to Zululand 1879-1897

Abstract

The lives of some men are so transmogrified after death as to represent them rather as their mothers believed them to be instead of the mortals that they really were. The opposite seems to be the fate of John Dunn, whose good has been interred with his bones; for those historians who have mentioned him have not done so in the most favourable light. The reason for this is, perhaps, because their reference to him has been the briefest, and just as a photograph of, say, Victoria Falls, can never adequately reveal the awe-inspiring object it represents, so a succinct phrase seldom, if ever, shows forth the man. To date, the following extracts sum up what is thought of John Dunn. Dr Uys regards him as “the renegade John Dunn who has become a Zulu, chief, and as who (sic) was in all but name a Zulu”; further, he was that “polygamous Anglo-Zulu” who, “it is almost certain.… inspired Cetywayo…. If the diplomatic Cetywayo had stood in need of inspiration … to move against Umbandine.” Professor de Kiewiet tells us that “he was that renegade Englishman and gun-runner who lived, in the euphemistic words of Walseley, a mormon-like mode of life, with the habits of a Zulu and yet able to take his place in an officer’s mess.” Mr. Gibson, spoke of who was appointed a magistrate in Zululand in 1889, six years before Dunn's death spoke of "John Dunn, of subsequent notoriety” who had ingratiated himself….with Cetywayo. Professor Walker coupled his name with that of the “traitor Hamu” and briefly refers to him as “the gun-runner who deserted Cetywayo in his hour of need. Bishop Colenso of Natal remarked “that he Cetywayo had obtained…. firearms chiefly by the lucrative agency of Mr. John Dunn who was up till the (Zulu) war began, Cetywayo’s chief adviser although receiving $300 per annum as “Immigration Agent” of the Natal Government. The final touch to this portrait is added by the Bishop's daughter, Miss Harriet Colenso, who, reiterating her father, says, "He was for many years Tonga Emigration Agent to the Natal Government while known to be supplying the Natives with the guns wholesale. The “notorious” is an epithet that might suit him. It is rather odd that I have not been able to procure a copy of Dunns’s Book in Natal. It is called "Cetshwayo and the Three Generals” or something of that sort but was edited, and no doubt, carefully by Mister Rider Haggard. Who then was this "notorious" person who has have been so denigrated. It is the object of this essay to show John Dunn as he really was, a human being with human failings, a wise chief among both cunning and stupid ones, a beneficent father to his tribe, and one who, although badly treated by the Imperial Government served that Government both faithfully and well. At the time we hope to show his place in the South African cosmos.