John Dunn, white Zulu chief and secretary of the King

I always loved the stories of men immersing themselves fully into a culture and making a life for themselves in places other men never would have ventured into. These people are history’s true originals, and sometimes their choice to swim against the current pays off beautifully.

John Robert Dunn was such a man. A man history ought to remember. A hunter and trader of British descent, Dunn was born in South Africa in the early 1830s. Ambitious and capable of “thinking outside the box”, he decided to do business with the Zulu’s and learn their language and their customs. This gave him an advantage over other traders in the era who would stubbornly speak only English or bastardized Dutch.

Dunn eventually befriended high chieftains, princes even, and then the King of the Zulu himself. The King was so impressed by the tall bearded white man who spoke his tongue as if he was a native, that he made him his personal advisor on trade, as well as his secretary. He then gave John Dunn the title of “chief” to rule a little slice of his kingdom as his own. The new white chief was also offered two beautiful young Zulu brides — his own wife, a mixed race South African lady, begrudginghly agreed. And he didn’t stop there… as the years went on, the white Zulu took twenty-four brides from all the different regions of the Zulu realm. By these wives he fathered a grand total of 150 children, most of whom survived to adulthood and had children of their own.

By the time Dunn died, his descendants numbered in the hundreds, and by now there are tens of thousands of Dunn-descendants. Sadly, in the era of Apartheid, the South African state tried to put people in categories based on their skin color or racial characteristics. Dunn’s numberous great- and great-grandchildren were labeled either “black”, “colored” or “white” if they were particularly pale. “But we didn’t feel white or black,” one descendant later said, “we we’re Dunns!”

In an act of rebellion, many the “white Dunns” had themselves reclassified as “black” or “colored”. Then Nelson Mandela came along, apartheid came to an end and they all became one huge family once more. Global history may not remember John Dunn, but he started a mighty clan and a big chunk of the human gene pool for them to swim in!