Zulus Went to War While Tripping on Magic Mushrooms
In 1878, Britain sent a High Commissioner to South Africa, with an eye towards transforming that British possession into a federation like Canada. The High Commissioner, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, was tasked with uniting British colonists, Boer settlers, and African tribes, into a single entity. A major hiccup, however, was the presence of independent states: the Boers of the South African Republic, and the Zulu kingdom. Those entities would have to be destroyed before South Africa could be united under British control.
To deal with the Zulus, Frere went rogue and decided to instigate a war without the British government’s approval. So in December of 1878, he sent the Zulus an ultimatum he knew they could not and would not comply with, that included disbanding their army and instituting radical cultural changes. When the ultimatum was not met, Frere sent in British forces to invade Zululand, initiating the Anglo-Zulu War.
The invasion did not go as smoothly as expected. Early on, in January of 1879, a British column of 1800 troops was virtually annihilated by a fierce and fearless Zulu charge at the Battle of Isandlwana. The Zulus’ ferocity and fearlessness were due to native courage, which was instilled in Zulu warriors from early on. But it was also helped by taking some serious drugs.
Zulu shamans gave their warriors powerful drugs that enhanced their endurance and chased away their fears. They included a cannabis snuff that was very high on THC, but very low in the sedative content that makes people on weed so relaxed and chill. So it made Zulu warriors high and hallucinating but did not leave them lethargic as usually happens with cannabis use.
Zulu warriors were also given an extract from a tumbleweed-type plant called Boophone disticha, with properties similar to codeine and morphine. It had both hallucinogenic and pain-deadening effects, further reducing the warriors’ fears of known dangers, and making them that much harder to bring down. The drug concoction was then rounded off by psychedelic mushrooms that contained muscimol, whose effects included enhanced perception.
The combined effect of all those drugs was to make the Zulu warriors highly alert and focused, with a tunnel vision on the task of charging their enemy no matter what, without the typical distractions of fear holding them back. No wonder the British were repeatedly astonished by the extraordinary courage, ferocity, and fearlessness of their Zulu foes.
However, as things turned out in the end, courage and ferocity, whether natural or drug-induced, were not enough for the spear-armed Zulus to overcome British advantages in modern weaponry. After getting over the shock of their defeat at Isandlwana, the British regrouped for another go, in which they put their modern firearms and artillery to devastating use. The Zulus were crushed at the Battle of Ulundi in July of 1879, their kingdom was abolished, and its territory was divided amongst 13 compliant chieftains.
