170 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP
established a large number of military settlements that served as centers
of administration.
The only threat to Shaka ’ s absolute power came early in his regime,
from the so - called diviners, go - betweens between the world of the
living and the dead. Unable to oppose him directly, a number of diviners
accused some of his closest military offi cers and counselors of witchcraft,
an offense punishable by impalement. Shaka did not take this challenge
to his power lightly, but he had to move carefully to prove that the
diviners were frauds and extinguish their power. The story of how he
did it has passed down through generations of oral history.
One night Shaka splattered the outer walls and grounds of the royal
kraal with ox blood. The next morning, his subjects were horrifi ed by
what they perceived as a blasphemous act. A huge ‘ smelling out ’ cere-
mony was convened to fi nd out who was responsible. More than 150
diviners were invited by Shaka to identify the guilty, and they obliged.
Working as teams, they accused more than 300 people of witchcraft.
However, three of the diviners deduced that Shaka himself was respon-
sible and with great astuteness pronounced that the blasphemy had been
‘ done by the heavens above ’ (Stuart, 2001 , p. 45). They were the only
diviners whose life was spared. All the others were slowly tortured to
death by the people they had falsely accused.
As the combined effects of unbroken victories, unparalleled wealth,
absolute and unchallenged power, and extraordinary physical strain
began to take their toll, Shaka became increasingly domineering and
grandiose. His temper became more and more volatile: he would erupt
in rage at the slightest provocation. If someone angered Shaka for any
reason, he or she was ordered to be killed, generally by impalement.
Executions were capricious and frequent.
As time went on Shaka ’ s isolation and loneliness increased with his
growing power — and so did his paranoia. His reality - testing became
seriously defective. After the death of his mother, he ordered an orgy of
killing for those who did not show suffi cient grief and issued a series of
bizarre edicts, including the imposition of a year ’ s sexual abstinence on
his increasingly bewildered population. Women found pregnant were
killed with their husbands, as were thousands of cows in calf. These
bizarre acts suggest that he may have suffered a full - fl edged psychotic
episode.
Toward the end of his reign, Shaka ’ s destructiveness increased. He
chased his army from one battle to the next, and his treatment of his
enemies became increasingly outrageous. In 1828, at the age of 41, Shaka
was murdered, the victim of a palace coup by his half - brothers and chief
counselor. He had no children. He had never married, and any women