Faku a Ngqungqushe

King Faku was the last ruling monarch of the Mpondo kingdom in Southern Africa from 1815-1867. During his reign, he consolidated and unified several groups and expanded the territory he had inherited from his father. In 1844, he forged an alliance with the Cape Colony and encouraged British colonization of Natal, thus ensuring his own kingdom would have boundaries that were defined according to Western standards at the time. The kingdom was eventually annexed by the British Empire, became part of the Cape Colony and is today a section of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.