Vusumuzi Dube
Elliot Ziwira, Deputy Features Editor
AS Zimbabwe reflects on its rich tapestry of resistance and sacrifice this upcoming Heroes Day, a long-overdue correction echoes in the nation’s historical narrative, the elevation of General Mtshana Khumalo to National Hero status.
This posthumous honour conferred by President Mnangagwa in 2020 alongside the unveiling of a commemorative shrine at the Pupu National Monument in Lupane, Matabeleland North Province is more than symbolic. It is redemptive.
General Mtshana Khumalo, the Imbizo Regiment commander under King Lobengula, led one of the most remarkable military engagements in the resistance against colonial invasion: The Battle of Pupu on December 4, 1893.
There, armed mostly with traditional weapons and rudimentary rifles, his warriors annihilated the Allan Wilson Patrol, a contingent of 34 colonial soldiers led by the vaunted Major Allan Wilson.
Though the battle did not ultimately halt the imperial machinery, it momentarily disrupted its momentum and laid a foundation for future uprisings culminating in independence on April 18, 1980.
Until recently, General Mtshana Khumalo’s name was largely missing from mainstream historical accounts, even though his role in resisting imperial expansion was critical.
Meanwhile, Wilson and his men were immortalised with statues, schools, a holiday (1895–1920) and burial among “heroes” in Matobo.
This disparity, as President Mnangagwa pointed out, was a grave injustice.
He declared: “As the Second Republic, we will remove the remains of those colonialists and rebury them where they lost the battle. How can the vanquished be honoured when the victors are not?”
Indeed, how could those who fought to conquer Zimbabwe be revered more than those who fought to defend it?
General Mtshana Khumalo’s selfless and courageous men are not even known by their names. History appears to deliberately disremember them. Yet, Allan Wilson’s name has been institutionalised as a training paragon in the heart of Harare, notwithstanding the dastardly past.
The elevation of the esteemed general, alongside the statue of Mbuya Nehanda at the busy Harare intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Julius Nyerere Way, is part of a wider reassertion of African agency in our national narrative. It is a bold and necessary act of cultural decolonisation.
Silencing the guns of conquest
It has to be recalled that the Battle of Pupu was not simply a clash of arms. It was a clash of civilisations, a confrontation between a people defending their land, sovereignty and spiritual identity and an invading force armed with both guns and imperial ideology.
The Wilson Patrol, armed with superior British weaponry, was part of a larger force commanded by Major Patrick Forbes, tasked with capturing King Lobengula. They believed seizing the monarch would symbolically collapse the Ndebele Kingdom, just as the British had done with King Cetshwayo of the Zulu a decade earlier.
However, General Mtshana Khumalo would not allow history to repeat itself.
According to historian, Pathisa Nyathi, General Mtshana Khumalo orchestrated a brilliant series of military decoys to mislead and wear down the enemy. Alongside his troops, he used deceptive tracks, loud royal salutes and even staged a false royal grave, leading the colonialists to believe King Lobengula had died and been buried with his regalia.
In the meantime, the King was making his way north across the Zambezi River, seeking sanctuary among his kin in Zambia.
When the rain-swollen Shangani River cut off the Forbes patrol from Wilson’s advance party, Wilson’s men were left exposed. Armed with Martini-Henry rifles, spears, like the inzala, umdikadika (isijula, ijozi) and aerodynamic usiba, General Mtshana Khumalo’s freedom fighters encircled the 34-man patrol and launched a decisive assault.
Despite the absence of a Maxim gun, which Forbes had, Wilson and his men were wiped out to the last man. Their defeat at the hands of a numerically superior, spiritually driven and tactically agile Ndebele force shattered the myth of white invincibility, albeit temporarily.
Situating memory and myth
Despite the Ndebele’s tactical success, the broader war was lost, even though a major battle was won.
As expected, Rhodes’ imperial machine regrouped and crushed the resistance. Yet, colonialists took care to mythologise their losses and bury their defeats under layers of patriotic symbolism.
Allan Wilson became a martyr, with his name adorning schools, roads and history books.
Meanwhile, General Mtshana Khumalo’s name was buried, his men forgotten, their contribution dismissed in colonial accounts or omitted altogether.
This deliberate distortion mirrors European philosophical narratives, where Africa was often depicted as “ahistorical”.
Philosophers like Georg Hegel and writers like Rudyard Kipling argued that Africans were “outside history” or were “half-devil, half-child” — passive, primitive and incapable of self-governance.
Such views justified colonial domination, not just with guns but with ideas. Through Christianity and Western forms of education, colonialists sought to strip Africans of their spiritual and cultural identity, desecrating ancestral shrines and replacing them with European monuments.
When the Union Jack was raised on Harare Hill (the Kopje) on September 12, 1890, it signalled not just military conquest but the symbolic capture of African memory.
Reclaiming the story from colonial narratives
Today, Zimbabwe is reclaiming that stolen memory, for history echoes and cannot be silenced.
The recognition of General Mtshana Khumalo is a clarion call to decolonise history and restore our heroes to their rightful place.
His story is not isolated
It is intertwined with the epics of Queen Lozikeyi, Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chief Mapondera, Chaminuka and Mgandani Dlodlo, among others.
These were individuals who gave their lives not for personal glory but for the preservation of ubuntu, land and identity.
Therefore, as we commemorate Heroes Day in August, we must go beyond ritual and remember that the liberation war began not in 1966, with the first shots of the Second Chimurenga, but in the 1890s with the First Chimurenga. That resistance was spiritual, cultural and physical. It lives on today and will continue doing so into eternity.
It is the duty of writers, artists, historians, educators, and journalists to ensure that the African story is not only retold, but owned.
The idea that Zimbabwean or African history can only be understood through European lenses is a colonial hangover that must be cast off. Our people must know that we had laws before Roman law, education before missionary schools, and leadership before parliament.
We had ancestors, not just predecessors.
We had memory; a collective one at that.
General Mtshana Khumalo’s spear was not just a weapon of war. It was a pointer to a spiritual and cultural compass, directing future generations to fight for their dignity, identity, and ancestral land.
Thus, the need arises to exhume the past to heal the future.
Perhaps it is only just, as President Mnangagwa suggests, that Wilson and his men be exhumed from Matobo and buried where they fell — at Pupu. Not in honour, but in historical truth, for it is only right to do so.
Let their memory be contextualised as part of an invading force that met its fate at the hands of those who fought not for empire but for the homeland.
“It is this history that future generations should be privy to and revel in,” the President stressed back in 2020.
Indeed, Zimbabwe’s future depends on how we remember our past.
Therefore, in our solemn remembrance as a nation, let us honour not only the freedom fighters of the Second Chimurenga but also the pioneers of the First.
This should be the beginning of a broader movement to Africanise our memory and build monuments that speak to our truth.
General Mtshana Khumalo’s name must be inscribed in more than stone, but in our hearts, schools and songs. Our collective victory at Pupu must go beyond being a footnote to become a foundation for all that we aspire for as a nation, remembering that we are as strong as our weakest link.
Our inimitable hero’s spear must rise again, not in battle but in testimony to the indomitable African spirit.
Online Reporter