Since the first establishment of the colony of Natal, and of the Transvaal Republic, the Governments of these countries had the Zulu military power suspended, like the sword of Damocles, as a perpetual threat over their heads. Of course, by the annexation of the latter State in 1877, all its responsibilities devolved upon her Majesty's Government. Cetywayo, the son of Panda, succeeded his father in the year 1872, and it formed part of Sir T. Shepstone's policy to conciliate and please him in every possible manner. That officer went so far as to attend his coronation, which was celebrated with the grandest forms of savage ceremonial.[17] At the same time a number of promises and engagements were received from the king. All this was, of course, merely a solemn farce. The descendant of Dingaan, who first signed a deed giving Natal to the Dutch, and then murdered in cold blood the men who had trusted to his honour, was not likely to depart from the traditions and policy of his race. Dissimulation, fraud, and cunning are characteristic qualities of every Zulu ruler, and Cetywayo excelled in them all. The Government of Natal was lulled into security, while Bishop Colenso and the well-meaning but profoundly ignorant men who form the self-styled philanthropical societies in England have, even up to the present moment, been completely hoodwinked and deceived. Sir Bartle Frere, writing of Cetywayo's solemn promises, says, "None of these promises have been since fulfilled; the cruelties and barbarisms which deformed the internal administration of Zululand in Panda's reign have been aggravated during the reign of Cetywayo, and his relations with his neighbours have been conducted in a spirit fatal to peace and security beyond the Zulu border."[18]
The well-organized and peculiarly formidable military power of the Zulus was still further consolidated and strengthened by Cetywayo, so that a standing menace and threat of a very serious nature existed against both Natal and the Transvaal. Nothing can better prove the danger than the fact that the Zulu monarch formally and repeatedly requested the consent of the British Government to wars of aggression, which he proposed for the ostensible purpose of initiating his young soldiers in bloodshed, and reviving the system of unprovoked territorial aggression which had been so successfully carried out by the model and demi-god of the nation--Chaka.