African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 1 August, 1994In the late 1970s and the 1980s scholarship on the Zulu kingdom under Shaka changed significantly as scholars began for the first time to draw heavily on recorded African oral tradition as an historical source, and to use local and regional histories as counterweights
to official accounts emanating from royal houses and associated senior royal clans.(1) The
major source of such oral traditions pertinent to the area including and adjacent to the Zulu
kingdom is the papers of the Natal colonial official, James Stuart (1868-1942