Equipment
Due to budget constraints in South Africa, the British were unable to provide NNC troops with uniforms. Instead, soldiers wore their traditional tribal apparel with a red cloth bandanna around their foreheads, the only item to distinguish them from Zulu warriors. The NCO's and Officers wore Khaki and black uniforms.
The European population of Natal had long feared that arming the black population would constitute a severe security risk and as a result only one in ten NNC soldiers was issued with a rifled musket, while the rest were armed with their traditional spears. The officers and NCOs, about 90 men per battalion, carried rifles, ammunition and bayonets. In addition, those soldiers issued with a musket firearm were provided with only four rounds of ammunition at any one time. The bulk of the NNC fought with traditional African spears and shields and only about 20% of the unit had some sort of gun.
Read more about this topic: Natal Native Contingent
Famous quotes containing the word equipment:
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.”
—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
“Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)