When David Rattray told a story, people listened.
Whether around the roaring log fire of his South African lodge or out on a rocky outcrop in the majestic KwaZulu-Natal landscape, his arms flung out to emphasize a point, the historian was famous for keeping his audience spellbound.
Dubbed the `white Zulu' after the tribespeople he championed, hero of reconciliation in a post-apartheid South Africa, friend of royalty and acclaimed author, Rattray had become an impassioned expert in the history of his country and almost single-handedly preserved accounts of heroism on both sides of the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879.
Late on Friday night, In his beloved Fugitive's Drift lodge he had built with his wife Nicky, the 48-year-old father of three was murdered, shot three times by six intruders who fled empty-handed. Police said the motive for the attack was unclear.
On Saturday, black and white, famous and ordinary South Africans joined in a nationwide mourning. According to his wife, Rattray had pushed her to the floor out of the gunman's way before he was hit. The couple's three sons were away at school at the time.
Among Rattray's fans was the Prince of Wales, who was said to have been reduced to tears by Rattray's battlefield stories when he visited his lodge near the battlefield of Rorke's Drift with Prince Harry after Princess Diana's death in 1997. "The prince was shocked and deeply saddened to hear of David Rattray's death," said his spokesman.
The murder has thrown fuel on the already burning controversy in South Africa over raging crime rates, among the world's highest: there were 18,528 murders in South Africa last year alone, more than 50 a day.
South African President Thabo Mbeki is seeking to play down the crime crisis as the country prepares to host the 2010 football World Cup, but government officials were outspoken in denouncing Rattray's killing.
Sibusiso Ndebele, premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, said: "David Rattray was a huge asset to our country who helped develop cultural tourism to promote economic development and alleviate poverty. His murder will fill all peace-loving South Africans with disgust."
Ndebele said the South African government would "see to it that those responsible for this vile murder are brought to justice."
Rattray was the pre-eminent historian of South Africa's Zulu kingdom.
Fluent in the language, he had talked to hundreds of people and gathered the oral histories that chronicled the stunning 1879 military victory against the British army at Isandlwana, immortalized in the film Zulu starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker.
He is credited as the first to write the history from the Zulu point of view and to help restore the proud reputation of Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group.
Rattray developed a thriving tourism business at the battle sites of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, trooping visitors across the hillsides and transforming the landscape for them into a tapestry of struggle and bloodshed but also of reconciliation and hope.
He described the violence between the British and the Zulus as a senseless tragedy and worked through tourism to help communities. Rattray told "not only the history of his beloved South Africa but also about the miracle that he saw us living through today," his wife Nicky said.
"Tens of thousands of people from Prince Charles to KwaZulu schoolchildren have listened to this unique South African deliver his message of nation building and reconciliation," she added.
"This famous son of South Africa now joins the unacceptable list of citizens who have lost their lives to the senseless banditry that is engulfing this country."
She added that business would continue as normal at Fugitives' Drift lodge, "which is how David would have wanted it."
South African historian Kingsley Holgate said he believed Rattray had been killed by Zulus, who make up the majority in KwaZulu-Natal.
"How tragic that a man who gave his life to preserving the Zulu culture and bravery of the old Zulu order ended his life at the hands of the Zulus," he said.
On the plain of Isandlwana, sprinkled with little heaps of white gravestones from the last century, South Africans' hopes for the future have had a tragic setback.
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