The Zulus and Matabele: Warrior Nations

by Glen Lyndon Dodds

  Among victims were Europeans who had treated the Matabele decently. In 1938, Nganganyoni Mhlope (who had been involved in slaying settlers in the Inyathi area) recalled people he had helped to kill: ‘They were our friends but since we were starting to fight they might have killed us too.’

  On 25 March the imperial authorities, which had imposed strict controls on military or police activity in Rhodesia following the Jameson Raid, inadequately responded to news of the rising by declaring that ammunition could be issued to ‘not more than 100 volunteers’. That night panic swept Bulawayo when a false report circulated that hostile Matabele were approaching. ‘The gallant inhabitants,’ recalled a regular officer, Captain MacFarlane, ‘lost their heads and scrambled and fought for what rifles were left in the Government Store. It was a disgraceful scene and the less said about it the better.’

  Bulawayo went into laager the following day. According to Frank W. Sykes, ‘early in the morning, the commencement of a laager was formed round the Market buildings with empty wagons. Four machine guns were placed, one at each corner of the enclosure, and barbed wire thrown on the ground at a distance of about forty feet all round the line of wagons.’

  During the day, the laager—which was soon strengthened—was empty save for men on duty. But as night approached, it filled rapidly with people eager to enjoy its security; though some preferred to remain in their own homes rather than endure the discomfort of the laager, to which they nonetheless resorted when the alarm was raised. Then, according to Sykes, it ‘would be literally covered with human beings lying on the ground packed like sardines’, while others slept in the wagons or in the Market Hall. The Matabele Times of 6 April states that a count of people who had sheltered in the laager the previous Friday night had totalled 1,547, of whom 915 were men. Defences were also provided elsewhere about the town. The Rhodesia Review, for instance, tells us that by 11 April, Williams’ Consolidate Buildings in the west of Bulawayo had been transformed ‘into a very strong fort, and the top of the second storey into an observatory, with telephone and heliograph station’.

  When the rising commenced, white military organisation was abysmally weak. There were only 48 officers and men of the Matabeleland Mounted Police in the whole of Matabeleland. Although few in number, they were at least loyal. On the other hand, members of the Native Police who had not joined the rebels were deemed suspect and thus disarmed as a precaution. About 600 whites in Matabeleland had enrolled the previous year to serve in a new volunteer unit known as the Rhodesia Horse, but as this was not a standing force, it was not available for immediate service and some of its scattered members were among those who had been murdered.

  The majority of the Rhodesia Horse soon managed to make their way to Bulawayo and, in April, they were incorporated by the Acting Administrator, A.H.F. Duncan, in the Bulawayo Field Force, a new unit commanded by Colonel John Spreckley, composed of every white man in the town capable of lifting a rifle. It consisted of about fourteen troops (amounting to some 850 men) one of which, the Afrikander Corps, mainly comprised Boers who had settled in Rhodesia.

  On 1 April, Rutherford Harris—who was at Kimberley—was told that 200 regulars were en route from England and that Colonel Herbert Plumer, the Assistant Military Secretary in Cape Town, would take charge of them and raise additional men in Cape Colony. (By early June Plumer’s command, the Matabeleland Relief Force, was to number nearly 800 men.) Moreover, in mid-April Sir Hercules Robinson, once again High Commissioner, offered Lord Grey—who had been appointed Jameson’s successor as Administrator and was then at Mafeking—the services of 500 imperial troops stationed in Natal. The offer was made partly at the urging of Rhodes who had arrived in Rhodesia in late March and was in Mashonaland. It was accepted.

  Meanwhile, several clashes had occurred between Matabele rebels and European patrols. On the afternoon of 4 April, for instance, a few hundred warriors assaulted a patrol of 169 men under the Honourable Maurice Gifford which had set out from Bulawayo that morning for Shiloh, a settlement to the north, and whose armament included a Maxim gun. The rebels were driven off and the patrol laagered for the night in open ground. The hours of darkness proved quiet, but shortly after setting off the following morning, Gifford was attacked again, this time by a larger number of Matabele. Nonetheless, the rebels were again repulsed and Gifford crossed the Umguza and laagered on the eastern bank some twenty miles from Bulawayo.

  Early on the 6th, members of the patrol who had been sent out to scout came across the rebels gathered at a homestead and opened fire, before falling back towards the laager, pursued by the enemy. An anonymous member of the patrol stated: ‘Our men were hardly in laager when [the Matabele] rushed out into the open from the bush, with the evident intention of charging the laager. The steady fire from the men, however, soon checked them, and a few shots from the Maxim made them retire into the bush again’, save for a few warriors who bravely took cover behind some stumps and dead trees in the open and maintained a galling fire until despatched by some of Gifford’s best marksmen.

  Hostilities died away at about noon. The patrol then spent the afternoon strengthening its position, while word was sent to Bulawayo asking for assistance. But before relief arrived, the patrol—which was short of ammunition and food—was attacked unsuccessfully once again on the morning of the 7th. Despite the various clashes, Gifford’s losses were slight: two dead, one mortally wounded and a few others less seriously injured. Gifford himself had received a wound that led to the loss of his arm. The total number of Matabele dead—who had belonged to a force under Nyamanda, Lobengula’s eldest son—was estimated as at least 200.

  On 10 April, another patrol, 100 strong and again with one Maxim, was nearly annihilated by warriors under an induna called Babyaan. Commanded by Captain George Brand, the patrol left Bulawayo on 2 April to rescue whites in the Gwanda district to the southeast. It found the whites gone (they had moved to Tuli) and on the 9th the patrol duly began heading back up the road towards Bulawayo. The following day it entered very broken country where Matabele warriors were sighted on overlooking hills. Snipers then opened fire and a running fight developed as the patrol made its way through the hills.

  Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia contains a vivid account of what transpired by Lieutenant Webb of the Afrikander Corps: ‘Our route lay over successive ranges of ridges and valleys, and afforded plenty of cover for the enemy, as the grass was about three feet high, and the country thickly studded with bush and trees.’ The enemy, whom Webb believed were over a thousand strong, ‘formed a half-moon round us and skirmished excellently, taking advantage of every bit of cover. They also fought with ferocious determination, and often showed pluck verging on lunacy.’

  Eventually, Brand occupied a huge flat rock projecting about 15 feet above ground in the Nsezi Valley, and fighting continued, with the rebels firing from cover at a range of only 30-40 yards. Brand handed over command to a more experienced colleague, Captain van Niekerk, who decided that it would be best to charge the enemy and, hopefully, drive them from their vantage points. Several such sallies occurred and by 5.30pm the Matabele had had enough and began to withdraw after having been engaged for about six hours. Five members of the patrol had been killed, two were mortally wounded and over twenty less seriously so. Van Niekerk (who was credited by many members of the patrol for its survival) was one such. He had been hit twice. Moreover, 33 horses had been killed.

  It was in mid-April that the authorities set to work constructing a chain of forts between Bulawayo and Mangwe to the southwest along the road to Bechuanaland, a task eased by the fact that the area contained a number of collaborating chieftaincies. On 11 April, for example, a certain Captain Molyneux left Bulawayo with 60 men and proceeded to establish a small fort on a hill at Figtree, about 30 miles to the southwest.

  The rebels were to focus their attention on Bulawayo, which was to be loosely besieged by strong bands of warriors on all sides other than the
southwest. Selous states that he thought that it was on 16 April—the day a patrol from Bulawayo clashed with a rebel force beside the Umguza River, a few miles to the northeast—that the inhabitants first became aware that the Matabele had advanced to within proximity of the town. The warriors involved in the clash on that day belonged to the northernmost group of rebels, whose leadership was centred on the middle Bembezi River where Nyamanda was holding court.

  Although they shared the goal of driving out the whites and restoring the old order, the rebels were initially divided into two main factions, for not all of them wished Nyamanda to succeed Lobengula. The other faction, located to the south of Bulawayo, favoured the installation of a brother of Lobengula called Umfezela. A key advocate of Umfezela’s cause was Umlugulu Khumalo, the Matabele ‘high priest’ whose official duties included organising the first fruits ceremony, a man described by Selous as ‘a very gentle-mannered savage, and always most courteous and polite’.

  Moreover, some senior izinduna did not rebel. This was true, for instance, of Gampo, whose chiefdom lay in western Matabeleland: in the 1880s he had been the foremost induna in the kingdom and had married no less than five of Lobengula’s daughters. It was also true of Mjaan, the former commander of Imbizo. As a result, the rebellion was also partly a civil war in which Matabele intent on ending white rule clashed with those who were prepared to accept or collaborate with the Europeans: such encounters occurred either entirely or principally in western Matabeleland.

  On 17 April the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, announced that all the forces in Rhodesia were to come under the command of General Sir Frederick Carrington, a veteran of native warfare. Carrington was instructed that once the defeat of the rebels was assured, he was to let Sir Richard Martin, the imperial Deputy Commissioner, judge what punitive measures were then necessary and effect a settlement. Nonetheless, as Ranger comments: ‘Rhodes was highly unlikely to tolerate the prosecution of war or the making of peace in a manner of which he disapproved.’ Hence although the British government was keen to sideline him, Rhodes was to play a key role in events.

  Following the clash on the 16th, three unsuccessful attempts were made by the whites to dislodge the impi beside the Umguza. The most serious occurred on 22 April, and as a result of its failure, morale in Bulawayo reached a low ebb.

  On the 25th, however, Captain Ronald MacFarlane, an ex-officer of the Ninth Lancers, led a detachment of some 120 whites and about 170 natives in another attempt to drive off the rebels. The force’s armament included a Hotchkiss gun and one Maxim. Fierce fighting ensued on the far bank of the Umguza and the Matabele sustained heavy losses before MacFarlane, who had lost four of his own men, decided to fall back following the approach of enemy reinforcements from the west. The rebels were evidently disheartened somewhat by the outcome of the fighting and thus generally withdrew several miles downstream to the northwest, away from close proximity to Bulawayo, though a few parties remained in the neighbourhood.

  Grey arrived in Bulawayo on 28 April and found its inhabitants in ebullient mood. Indeed, he described the town ‘as safe as Piccadilly’. But the murder of eight ‘coolies’ on its periphery earlier that very day underlines the fact that Grey’s comment was only partially correct.

  The new Administrator wished to follow up the success of the 25th, but it was not practical to do so given that he lacked the required number of men and supplies. Furthermore, Chamberlain and the High Commissioner had forbidden a major offensive until Carrington arrived. Thus May proved to be essentially a month of consolidation on both sides.

  On 2 May, Gwelo—which had gone into laager at the start of the rebellion—was relieved by a column from Salisbury under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Beal. On the 11th, Colonel William Napier set off from Bulawayo at the head of over 600 men to link up with Beal. They duly met on the 19th near the Shangani River, after Napier had routed a body of Matabele en route, burnt homesteads and seized corn.

  Instead of then making directly for Bulawayo, on the 21st Napier set off down the valley of the Insiza River with the bulk of the combined force, while Colonel Spreckley and about 400 men likewise headed south by a different route, with the intention of rendezvousing with Napier southeast of Bulawayo, near to where the road from Bulawayo to Belingwe forded the Insiza.

  Selous, who was with Napier, tells us that as the main body made their way down the valley they skirmished with Matabele, burnt native homesteads, seized or destroyed grain, and captured livestock. They also came across the grisly remains of whites, such as the Fouries, who had been murdered in March. Selous relates:

  I went down to the scene of the massacre of the Fourie family. The murders had evidently been committed with knob-kerries and axes, as the skulls of all these poor people had been very much shattered. The remains had been much pulled about by dogs or jackals, but the long fair hair of the young Dutch girls was still intact.

  The scene was such that both ‘Englishmen and Dutchmen alike’ vowed ‘a pitiless vengeance against the whole Matabele race’. Napier duly linked up with Spreckley on the 27th and arrived back at Bulawayo on the last day of May.

  General Carrington duly arrived—early on 3 June—to assume command of operations and his staff included Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, of subsequent Scout Movement fame. Carrington had at his disposal the approximately 800-strong Bulawayo Field Force and other irregular units such as the Gwelo Field Force of 336 men under Captain Gibbs and Beal’s Salisbury Column of 150 men. In addition, Plumer’s Matabeleland Relief Force had recently arrived on the scene, and would soon be followed by a 200-strong Cape Corps. The latter had been formed by Grey at Mafeking in late April and was marching towards Bulawayo. It consisted of half-castes and natives from South Africa (some of whom were Zulu) and would thus add to the non-white element, comprising Matabele ‘friendlies’ and Ngwato already sent up by Khama at Carrington’s disposal. Additionally, Carrington could call upon the 500 regulars offered to Grey who had been moved to Mafeking, and 480 regular mounted infantry at Cape Town.

  Carrington decided to strike at once. On 4 and 5 June, two large patrols under MacFarlane and Plumer were sent out to the north and northwest of Bulawayo to engage the enemy. They proceeded to burn homesteads and destroy large quantities of grain. Moreover, on 8 June MacFarlane had a stiff clash with a rebel force about 1,000 strong in the Redbank Hills, but failed to defeat them decisively.

  Meanwhile, late on the 5th a report reached Bulawayo that a large Matabele force had been sighted encamped on a ridge beside the Umguza northeast of the town, overlooking the ford on the main road to Salisbury. It is said to have consisted of ‘carefully selected, picked men from eight different impis’ (Report on the Native Disturbances in Rhodesia, 1896-97, 1898). Colonel Spreckley was charged with dealing with it and set out at about 9am on the 6th. Selous and Baden-Powell were among the 250 or so mounted men under his command.

  The patrol crossed the Umguza and rode against the waiting rebels. Selous comments:

  At this time we were hidden from the Kafirs by the slope of rising ground behind which they had retreated, but when this was crested they were seen in the bush little more than a hundred yards in front of the foremost horsemen. The order was at once given to charge, on which a whirlwind of horsemen bore down on them.

  The Matabele, who are said by Selous to have numbered about 1,000 men (Baden-Powell puts the figure at around 1,200), responded by firing an ill-aimed volley. Baden-Powell comments:

  As we came up close, the niggers let us have an irregular, rackety volley, and in another moment we were among them. They did not wait, but one and all they turned to fly, dodging in among the bushes, loading as they ran. And we were close upon their heels, zigzagging through the thorns, jumping off now and then, or pulling up, to fire a shot (we had not a sword among us, worse luck!) and on again.

  According to Baden-Powell, at times groups of Matabele tried to rally but were soon put to fligh
t, while Selous says that the action was ‘not a fight but only a pursuit in which the natives were killed as fast as they were overtaken’. The chase ceased when the rebels entered a belt of thick bush.

  The above-mentioned report, states that the rebels ‘probably lost more heavily on this occasion than at any other action during the campaign’. In late August the Administrator’s daughter, Lady Victoria Grey, visited the site and wrote: ‘All the ant-bear holes are filled with the corpses of niggers, they are only skeletons now. In several places we came across skeletons lying in the bush with the shield and assegai and sandals lying beside them.’

  Following this reverse, the Matabele survivors retreated to the formidable natural stronghold of Intaba Zi Ka Mambo. This is often said to have been a centre of the Mwari cave-cult under a ‘priest’ called Mkwati: a cult focused on several shrines devoted to the worship of Mwari or Mlimo, the Shona high-god. Although Mwari had been worshipped by the Shona for centuries, the Mwari cave-cult was a more recent phenomenon. It had originated with Venda who migrated into Zimbabwe early in the nineteenth century from south of the Limpopo, where they had been subject to Shona influence and where they had merged worship of their own high-god (associated with a cave shrine) with that of Mwari.