Qokli Hill


I had a query recently from Liezel about where Gqoki Hill was. I tried to locate it for her but couldn’t which I let her know. I more recently have come across it referenced as the Battle of Gqokli Hill.

She responded…

Anyone know the GPS co-ordinates for Qokli Hill aka Gqoki Hill, please send them to me.


I did happen to find that it has been referred to incorrectly from many sources and figured out that the name was in fact spelt wrong.  So if you ever get asked this question, here is some info. ;-)   Have a great day and thanks for responding to my mail.

There are other significant sites, for example, Qokli Hill and Mtonjaneni (Dingane’s Spring), which are significant in Zulu history but which are not marked for visitors.

From a text book:

Qokli hill is located at a point west of the Umfolozi game reserve, not inside it. And the Qokli hill battle is itself disputed. As Wylie points out, there are only a couple of references to this battle by informants who contributed to the James Stuart Archive, and it does not appear in other oral traditions (Wylie 2000:231). The historian whose work has focused on this period,

John Wright, agrees that if a battle did take place at Qokli hill, it was certainly not a clear victory for the Zulus. The battle appears in Bryant (1929:174), and Ritter (1955) devotes an entire chapter to it. But it seems clear that Ritter’s account is based ‘on little more than a hint and a name, and that it is essentially a fabrication of his (and possibly his father’s) fascination with matters military’ (Wylie 2000:231).

There is another candidate for the supposed battle of Nqabaneni, a later skirmish in which the Ndwandwe were convincingly routed by the Zulu and driven north of the Pongola River. This battle appears to have taken place near the Mandawe hill – a hill located not on the Mfolozi River, but on the Mthlatuze river, some distance south of the Umfolozi game reserve.

According to informants’ accounts in the James Stuart Archive, the decisive battle took place’ as the Ndwandwe were attempting to escape after a disastrous encounter with Shaka’s troops at kwaNomveve. The struggle actually took place in the river, very much as described by Magqubu with respect to the Nqabaneni battle. But it was not fought on the White Mfolozi.

It seems possible – and this point would require further detailed investigation – that this second battle’s location has been transposed, in the oral history tradition, from the Mhlatuze river north to the Mfolozi, into the time-space of the Umfolozi game reserve. It has also, perhaps, been confused with the highly-coloured accounts of the Qokli hill battle presented in Ritter’s (1955) book. While apparently finding resonance with tourists, African game guards and white rangers since at least the 1970s, the ‘history’ of such a battle must also be read against current critical scholarship on the entire Zulu-Ndwandwe clash during this period. The extent to which feedback has occurred into living oral traditions in the region from 72…

I did happen to find that it has been referred to incorrectly from many sources and figured out that the name was in fact spelt wrong.  So if you ever get asked this question, here is some info. ;-)   Have a great day and thanks for responding to my mail.
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