aacs was able to make the following observations: "Religions - They have none. The Zoolas have no idea of a Deity, no knowledge of a future state. They cannot comprehend the mystery of creation"(Isaacs 301). Soon after Isaacs had arrived in Natal, Shaka was assassinated and Dingane became the new Zulu king. Isaacs' opinions of Shaka's predecessor are much more positive and optimistic. "I am proud to say of his successor that a ray of light has been seen in him. He is greatly advancing into that state of mental improvement, which only now requires the more enlightened aid of missionaries to ripen into perfection"(Hexham 38). On the other hand, Captain Alan Gardinar, the first missionary to the Zulu people, had a difference of opinion about Dingane. "That my views were not in any degree connected with trade he could understand, but what was God, and God's word, and the nature of the instruction I proposed, were subjects which he could not at all comprehend"(Isaacs 31). Gardinar was, however, convinced that all men have some natural knowledge of God. He was, therefore, able to conclude: "we seem to have arrived here at a period when the traditional knowledge of a Supreme Being is rapidly passing into oblivion"(Gardinar 178). As a basis for this statement Gardinar repeats a Zulu legend which he takes as a creation account and in doing so makes the assumption that the Zulu originator of life is equivalent to God. This is, of course, highly uncertain when, in fact, other Zulu accounts of creation clearly refer to an original ancestor rather than to God in the Christian sense. Even here, however, it is doubtful if Gardinar is relating a story which is uninfluenced by European contact because he also states: "The generality of the people are ignorant even of this scanty tradition; but since their recent intercourse with Europeans the vague ideal of a Supreme Being has again become general"(179). After making this observation, G...
