I just gotta know. Is the Iwisa just what it looks like? A whacker. Nice club with a ball on the end. Serve any other purpose?
the iwisa, a.k.a. 'knobkerry', is effectively a wooden mace. you could hold it about 2/3 down from the ball, with the protruding pommel end against your forearm to protect it from strikes by your opponent, and club him with the ball end.
they were also carried by the zulu officers as badges of rank. the smaller headed ones were for the generals who used them like a swagger stick to signal, and who did not expect to actually have to kill someone with it. again, like a swagger stick, could be used to 'discipline' a disobedient underling.
the balls vary from about an inch and a half up to 4-5 inches in diameter. the larger ones for the troops. i'd guess the middle sized ones, 2-3 inches were for the average zulu trooper,m the larger for their bigger guys.
the zulu empire contained a large number of conquered subsidiary tribes that paid tribute in weapons to equip the zulu regiments, which were a professional standing army that did nothing else. the weapons tribute of iwisa could thus vary considerably in size, both length and diameter. the best ones had the braided wire bands just below the head and along the haft and at the pommel. some had cord windings in lieue, some no bandings. ditto on the assegai (iklwa) the normal 'trooper' model varied in length, tho were all less than 40 inches overall. the head were always tanged, not socketed ,and were burnt into the end of the haft with very little tang showing, then glued and a leather binding consisting of a leather tube cut from a cows tail was soaked , applied then dried to shrink & bind the join. the best ones had a braided binding of bands of nickel steel wire and brass wire, like mine. my iklwa appears to have had two smaller bands of wire braid missing from along the shaft. the iwisa has bout a half inch band of alternating brass/steel wire at the pommel. i have others, shorter models that have no banding at all.
like this one, which is a good 6 in. shorter
this one has braided fibre bands and is about 35":
the balls frequently show fine cracks from curing, which as auntie says about khuk grips 'will not go anywhere. i fill them with superglue justincase. they are made of a hard dense african wood, ebony, ironwood or 'assegai wood. the really high status ones were carved from rhino horn, and are now not only VERY expensive, but VERY VERY illegal.
while watching the movie 'zulu' last nite i paid carefull attention to the zulus and the zulu officers. not one iwisa. all carried iklwa, some shots showed iklwa of varying lengths and head sizes,tho most shots showed a fairly standard pattern. some hand to hand shots these were seen to be floppy rubber! the ones where they were stuck into the ground were real tho. on anothe note, the used real zulus to make the movie, had a couple hundred. they did not have enough for the mass displays up on the hillside that appear to be thousands. they made a whole bunch of cardboard shields, nailed about 10 across to a plank, put a real zulu & shield either end and stretched them out. looks good, but if you know the trick, you can see them moving about in a bit too 'synchronised' groups without legs.
. all the shots of masses of real zulus used the same zulus over and over, miraculously resurrected after each battle. i hear they had great fun making the movie, and even made an unseen 'alternate' ending where they won.
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