This was the royal capital of the Zulu King, Dingane. Having killed his half brother King Shaka some nine years previously, he had come to the throne to end the bloodshed that had characterized Shaka's reign of terror. Soon, however, he became paranoid and killed large numbers of his own subjects, either by sending out his top indunas ('generals') to lay waste to some vassal chief who had offended him or by execution for such trifles as a comment or a cough or for some imagined slight Those killed at Umgungundlovu were not executed in the kraal but dragged by the king's execution squad to a nearby hill and either beaten to death with stones or knobkerries or impaled.