adminSaul Gwakuba Ndlovu
FOR reasons that are difficult to appreciate, the white settlers in general and the British South Africa Company (BSAC) administrators in particular, believed at that time (1896) that Shona people welcomed them very much in their region.
That they were displacing and dispossessing whole Shona communities was to those white people nothing to worry about. Their explanation was that they were saviours of the Shona people from Ndebele military raids, and that the Shona communities should treat them as allies rather than as enemies.
The truth was, however, that although the Ndebele state was a military one, and that it depended on seasonal raids on militarily weaker nations in the regions as was the norm and practice of every military state all over the world, its raids lasted only a few weeks whereas the BSAC’s Pioneer Column had obviously come to settle permanently.
And not only to settle, but also to displace hundreds of thousands of people from their land, to seize their livestock and force them to work for them, and pay tax in the process.
The white people went further than this by claiming to be the new rulers of the land, replacing the Shona chiefs whom they were disrespectfully referring to as “boys” whose duty was to take and obey orders of the BSAC settlers. The Shona communities felt that Ndebele military raiders were a more tolerable problem in that they came and went away than the BSAC which had come to sink roots forever.
It was during that tense atmosphere that a white prospector, Mr Docherty, was murdered in May 1896 in the Lomagundi District. A few suspects were apprehended but were later released for lack of clear evidence of their involvement.
That was, however, the beginning of what is now called Chimurenga. On 17 June 1896 Joseph Norton who had grabbed a large chunk of land some 50km or so west of Fort Salisbury, and called it Porta Farm was killed at Chief Nyamweda’s village, south of his holding.
He had gone there to complain to the chief about the local people’s disruptive and disturbing behavior and influence on his black workers, many of whom were Chief Nyamweda’s subjects.
While Norton was away at Chief Nyamweda’s palace, an unknown number of Shona revolutionaries attacked the Porta Farm homestead. They killed Mrs. Joseph Norton, her baby daughter, two white male employees James Alexander and Harry Gravenor, a white female employee, a Miss Fairweather, and two black domestic workers of Mozambican origin.
The sole survivor was a young white employee of the Nortons, George Reginald Talbot, who was away at Fort Salisbury when the attack was made on the farmstead.
A man called Chanetsa was arrested and charged with the murder of Joseph Norton some days after the event. He later escaped from jail, was re-arrested and was sentenced to death but was released on royal pardon of Queen Victoria a couple of years later.
The Porta Farm attack was followed by the murder of two white men near Chief Mashayamombe’s village in the Beatrice area a few days later. The men were a Mr. Tate and a Mr. Koefoed.
More guerilla operations were carried out in both Chief Mashayamombe’s and Chief Nyamweda’s areas, making the two men some of the people of this country whose selfless contribution to its liberation is not fully and publicly recognised.
They and other traditional leaders deserve to be honoured in one way or another not just by their respective immediate communities, but also by the state authorities.
We now look at what was happening in the Mazoe area, especially in the Gomba sector, as all this was unfolding at what we now refer to as the Mhondoro Communal Land.
About 10 white men and six women were living in the Mazoe area. One of them was a Mr Salthouse, who owned and operated Alice Mine where he lived with his wife. Other Mazoe area white residents were missionaries Mr and Mrs E.T. Cass of the Salvation Army’s Pearson Settlement. At the Mazoe business centre, there was Mr T.G Routledge who manned the local telegraph office.
There were in addition a few other white people some of whom operated the Vesuvius Mine, about half-way between Salisbury and Mazoe. Others were scattered in a 10km radius locality of the telegraph office.
There was a native commissioner’s office at Mazoe and the officer in it was Mr Henry Pollard. These and a few others were killed when the uprising started there on 17 June, the very day the Nortons were attacked.
So, there must have been some co-ordination of those guerilla operations from Mhondoro through the Gomba area right up to the Mazoe centre.
Cries of distress form Mazoe were wired by Mr Routledge to Acting BSAC Administrator, Justice Vincent in Salisbury, and mule-drawn wagons were sent post-haste to Mazoe to bring the white people to Salisbury where a laager measuring almost 100 metres by 50 metres had been constructed.
On their way back to Salisbury, the wagons came under fire from the hills, the bush and the tall savannah grass along the way. A number of white people were killed and, among them was Captain E.J Cass of the Salvation Army’s Pearson Settlement, a station that was founded before Howard Mission.
Commanding the guerilla fighters was Masvi Nyandoro, a former “Black Watcher” who had deserted colonial forces and joined the oppressed black people a month or two before the uprising.
The fleeing whites returned the devastating fire and some of them managed to reach Fort Salisbury.
Inspiring the fighters from the natural rocky fortresses of the Gomba region was Charwe, acting in her state as the physical embodiment of Mbuya Nehanda’s spirit.
The Mazoe District’s native commissioner, Henry Pollard, was murdered by one or two of his black workers out at Mount Darwin where he was on tour when the uprising was launched.
Let us now turn to the east of Fort Salisbury to see how that Chimurenga was spread and co-ordinated. Featuring prominently east of Fort Salisbury in this uprising was Chief Chirimaunga Makoni.
If it had not been for some historical power dispute between Chief Makoni and Chief Mutasa, the latter would have been deeply involved in the uprising as well.
Oral historians say that Chief Mutasa first heard about preparations to take up arms against the white colonial settlers from Chief Makoni’s court. He, Mutasa, felt slighted by that as he maintained that he was senior to Chief Makoni, and that the correct protocol should have been the other way round, that is, his court should have been responsible for informing Chief Makoni since he was by history and tradition senior. That was his strong feeling.
Whatever was the reason, Chief Makoni and his subjects played a bigger role in the First Chimurenga than Chief Mutasa.
In the theatre of guerilla operations along the Salisbury-Umtali highway, a couple of donkey-drawn wagons were heading for Umtali on 16 June 1896, the day before the successful guerilla raid on Porta Farm.
In command of the group was a well-known trader of Jewish extraction, a Mr. Lamb. He was accompanied by two or three other white men, one white woman and three black people.
When they reached Marandellas, now Marondera, they caught up with a wagon belonging to a rich merchant, Viscount de la Panouse. They would travel together and assist one another as they trundled along.
They were however, intercepted by a runner from Headlands with a telegram instructing Mr. Lamb and the whole group to return to Fort Salisbury forthwith as the Shona had launched an armed rebellion.
The whole convoy returned to Fort Salisbury without hesitation, but on the way they had to pass through persistent fire from the roadside.
The travellers had to jettison some of their commodities, and abandoned one or two of their wagons with their loads, and left bodies of their shot colleagues unburied along the road as they breathlessly headed for relative safety at Fort Salisbury.
So critical was the situation that Justice Vincent had to divert 40 of a 70-man contingent known as the Natal Volunteers from its initially Bulawayo-bound mission to, first, Beatrice and then, later, to Fort Salisbury from where the personnel were dispatched to various outlying sectors to deal with the uprising.
By August, the revolution was progressing well in Mashonaland, and patriots such as Chief Kadungure Mapondera were operating unmolested in parts of what we now call Mashonaland Central Province. Chief Mapondera and Chief Makoni are yet some national heroes who are not fully recognised by the state.
But in Matabeleland, Cecil John Rhodes had realised that his company, the BSAC, could not financially sustain the war, and had started to sue for peace. He was strongly opposed by General Sir Frederick Carrington and other British military personnel, but he insisted and entered into negotiations on the Matopo Hills with senior Ndebele leaders.
Those leaders, for their part grabbed the opportunity to negotiate peace because they could hardly continue the guerilla campaign because of an acute shortage of food. However, the Ndebele were relatively militarily better off than the BSAC regime. But the shortage of food was quite acute because Rhodes’ forces had ruthlessly destroyed crops in virtually every Ndebele field. That caused so much famine that turned some people into cannibals. However, the Ndebele demanded withdrawal of all foreign BSAC troops from Matabeleland and Rhodes agreed to leave only his BSAC police force.
Within that situation the BSAC embarked on mopping up operations, and it was during that campaign that a Mwali/Mwari/ Ngwali intermediary, Hhobana Ncube and six others were shot dead in cold blood at the Njelele Shrine.
Those were heroes whose sacrifice has gone unsung by the free nation of Zimbabwe. Hhobana was a descendant of the Malaba clan, and belonged to the House of Lubimbi of that clan. The House of Lubimbi is responsible for all Mwali ceremonies.
Having pacified Matabeleland, the BSAC turned its full military force on Mashonaland, routed the areas where the campaign was launched, arrested Mbuya Nehanda, Masvi Nyandoro, a Mandaza and hundreds of others.
Masvi Nyandoro betrayed other guerilla fighters while in jail and, as a reward, was pardoned and released. The story was that he and other prisoners planned to escape from jail at a given time. But the treacherous former “Black Watcher” tipped the prison guards.
When the time came to put the plan into action, Masvi Nyandoro teamed up with the jail guards against his fellow prisoners. He assisted the jail guards to subdue the prisoners and Masvi Nyandoro was rewarded by an immediate release!
Mandaza was among those charged with multi-murders more or less like his boss, Mbuya Nehanda, except that Nehanda faced an additional charge of incitement to murder. She, however, defended Mandaza by telling the court that he (Mandaza) was only her messenger, her aide-de-camp, in fact, who acted only on her express orders. Mandaza was discharged because of that evidence.
Nehanda and Kaguvi were sentenced to death on 2 March 1898 by hanging. The Judge, a Mr Watermayer ordered the execution to be carried out on 27 April 1898 in the Salisbury prison. After the judge pronounced the sentence, Nehanda solemnly stated: “Muchandi uraya zvenyu, asi mafupa angu achamuka, acharwa nemwi.”
Some oral traditionalists say that Mbuya Nehanda actually said: “ . . . achamukunda.”
Sekuru Kaguvi was dragged to the gallows kicking, fighting and cursing, and had to be carried and held by eight to 10 jail guards.
Chief Kadungure Mapondera defied the BSAC regime and fought a rear guard guerilla action as he retreated into Mozambican territory where he was eventually subdued by Portuguese security forces five or six years later. They handed him and his followers to the BSAC authorities who imprisoned him awaiting trial. He died in goal.
Chief Makoni was killed in action but his son, Mhiripiri escaped. Tradition has it that the British troops that killed Chief Makoni took his head to Britain as a trophy. The BSAC administration later denied Mhiripiri his right to succeed his gallant father.
In Matabeleland, the BSAC rounded up and publicly hanged an unknown number of those it suspected to have intiated the 1896 uprising. Some of them, including Chief Sikombo Mguni and Qhugwana Hlabangana were however, not touched by the vengeful BSAC security forces and lived to tell this story about Matabeleland’s heroic exploits for a number of years later.
These are some of the heroes that are not celebrated on this August occasion.
- Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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