Two themes dominate the 1880s in Swaziland, and one ceases to have the same central significance. With Cetshwayo's defeat by the British in 1879, the Swazi were able, for the first time in living memory, to enjoy the luxury of disengagement from Zulu affairs. Although rumours circulated in the first half of the 1880s about Swazi support for one or other of the contending factions in the fractured Zulu state, and although the civil war there occasionally spilled over into the Pongola valley or the southern Lebombo, the Swazi kept themselves largely aloof from the conflict, and Zululand faded from the forefront of Swazi leaders' minds. However, if Zululand lost its central significance, two other problems came much more to the fore. The first was Mbandzeni's quest for personal authority; the second, the ‘paper conquest’ of his country through concessions, and the diplomatic complications to which this gave rise. It is with these that this chapter will be concerned.

For much of this period the two questions were closely interwoven, but as the Transvaalers wrested their independence from the British in the summer of 1881, it was the first which occupied the centre of the stage. Mbandzeni, it will be recalled, began his reign from a position of exceptional weakness. He had been chosen as king less for his exceptional qualities than for his exceptional lack of them, his lack of mother included, and the best that could be said of him was that he was 'a quiet puff-adder', itself a notably ambiguous metaphor.