adminFeature Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The British South Africa Company’s (BSAC’) invasion of King Lobengula’s effective administrative territory had two immediate objectives, the first of which was the occupation of the kingdom and prospect for gold, and the second was to seize Lobengula’s large herds of cattle which totalled 70 000 in 1893. The BSAC grabbled 28 000 of those cattle and left
the remainder, 42 000, for the defeated monarch’s senior chiefs who had publicly acknowledged the BSAC’s militarily acquired authority over the country. Some of the cattle belonged to private individuals, but were seized all the same and given to some of the BSAC freebooters.
The company vigorously encouraged white settlers to peg mining claims throughout the country.
By June 1899, several gold mines were operating in the Midlands, Manicaland, Mashonaland Central and in a large tract of land some 160km west of Bulawayo and officially called the Tati Concession (TC) area.
It stretched from about the mouth of the Tuli River in the south — east right up to Lake Makgarikgavi in the north — west, and was under a concession granted to the Premier Tati Company.
The territory is now part of Botswana, having been given to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (BP) by the British government as a token of appreciation for the BP’s role against Lobengula’s forces in the 1893 Anglo — Ndebele war. The BP provided at least 200 mounted armed personnel on behalf of the BSAC.
Gold mining gained momentum from the time of the fall of the Ndebele kingdom. We find that 60789,3 ounces of that precious mineral was produced between 31 August 1898 to 30 June 1899 in the BSAC area, an area combining Mashonaland and Matabeleland, and by then called Southern Rhodesia.
Mining operations resulted invariably in the forced removal of whole communities from their traditional areas of abode to make room for mining development; and also resulted in labour recruitment by direct and/ or indirect force.
What had been experienced by the black people in Mashonaland at the hands of the Pioneer Column as from 12 September 1890 became the order of the day as from November 1893.
It was from that time that the BSAC ruthlessly introduced what were initially known as “Native Reserves.” People were violently removed from such areas as Emakhandeni (Fort Rixon), Nyamandlovu, Gwayi, Kenilworth, Insiza and dumped as far away as Chinhoyi, Karoi, Buhera and other places in various regions of this country.
Forced removal of black communities was also effected to create room for white settlers the majority of whom were from Britain. That was one of the traditional objectives of colonialism – to find living space abroad for nationals of the colonial power.
Colonial laws openly favoured white settlers by literally giving them land and livestock at the expense of the black people. Colonial administrations shamelessly dispossessed black communities to enrich the white settlers, especially what were known as “ the poor whites.”
It was to achieve precisely that objective that the BSAC occupied this country, that is to enrich the citizens of the British Empire, first and foremost. One of the BSAC armed bandits, a man called Captain Charles Fredrick Lendy, ended up with some 70 000 acres of land that he acquired in slightly less than two years.
Captain Lendy was a despicable moral degenerate who commanded an artillery unit of the Pioneer Column, having joined the BSAC group two years after its arrival in Mashonaland. He was responsible for shooting Mgandane Dlodlo and about 30 other Ndebele warriors in cold blood at Magomolis Village when he, Captain Lendy, was commanding about 40 members of what were called Victoria Rangers on 18 July 1893.
Earlier, he had butchered some 30 or so people including Chief Negomo in the Marondera area where he had been sent to look for alleged thieves who had been reported to the BSAC authorites by a white man, a Mr Bennett from whom they had allegedly stolen some petty property. Captain Lendy died in a Bulawayo Hospital on 14 January 1894 and is buried in the City Centenary Park where there is a memorial with a glowing epitaph to his memory.
The aims of all former colonial powers included the politico – economic empowerment of their nationals by disinheriting the colonised people. They meant to grab and possess the land, and turn the indigenous people into craven hewers of wood and drawers of water (for the white settlers).
In this country, successive colonial administrations passed a series of laws the effect of which was to make white settlers inherit that which belonged to black African people by natural right, that is to say by descent and not by adoption or conquest.
When Ian Douglas Smith and his Rhodesian Front colleagues declared independence unilaterally on 11 November 1965, they were trying to entrench a colonial socio – political system by which the white settlers could disinherit the black people of this country.
They were desperately trying to grab the heritage of the Africans for a few predominantly foreign white settlers or descendants of those white settlers.
The French colonialists used a different approach but failed to achieve the same objective. They declared their colonies in Africa, Asia and in the Caribbean region “overseas French provinces.” Portugal tried the same old trick and/ but also failed.
What Smith and his colleagues tried can be stated in much better words in various African tongues:
“Bazama ukuhluthuna ilifa labantu abamnyama: Bakayedza kuvuta nhaka yevanhu vatema; Bakalika pkhwita nhaka yebanhu batema”
We should understand the Zimbabwe liberation Struggle in this context, that is, to return the land to its rightful owners, and thus safeguard the national heritage of Zimbabwe.
We should also interpret the country’s land policy in exactly the same spirit in that land is the core national heritage. What else can a child inherit from its utterly poor peasant parent apart from the peasant’s piece of land?
A look at the history of our liberation struggle indicates that land was at the centre of the conflict. The BSAC for its part was after our land as can be seen in the offers made to the Pioneer Column members (by the BSAC).
Each member was to get a 3 000 – acre farm plus 15 gold mine claims. Each mine stood on a piece of land the seize of which depended on the gold – bearing reef.
We find that by 1926, commercial farming land owned by black people totalled a paltry 45 000 acres compared to 31 million acres under white ownership!
It was because of such glaring injustice that black communities began to demand land for their settlement. The Matebele Home Society was founded to achieve exactly that.
The land issue was worsened by the passing of the notorious Land Apportionment Act (1931) which divided the country into roughly two parts according to the two major racial communities: the black (African) people, and the white settler community.
The granting of what the British colonial system called “internal self – government” to the white settlers of Southern Rhodesia on 1 October 1923 was one of the first attempts to strengthen them against the African people, to dispossess them in both fact and effect. The Land Appointment Act, later called Land Tenure Act (1969) was a part of the same process.
Among the black people who opposed that law and its displacement effects was Bejamin Burombo whose organisation, the British African National Voice Association (BANVA) campaigned on the black people’s behalf.
Sergeant Masotha Ndlovu’s Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU) dealt with the problem but from a workers’ platform more than from that of the land – hungry black peasants.
The wave of African nationalism that swept the breadth and length of the African continent from the mid – 1950s, called for one person, one vote.
The acquisition of the vote was not an end in itself, but a means to access political power in order to restore the continent’s resources to their rightful owners, the black people. That was the basic aim of the liberation war.
Land is the most important of those resources as it is on it that all other resources are found. To own land means to own the means to produce food for oneself as well as for the nation at large. It also enables the land owner to create accommodation for himself and his family.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]
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