History of South Africa podcast

Last episode we had joined Dinuzulu on his tour of the Boer New Republic as it was known in 1888, the area around modern day Utrecht. Piet Meyer the Republic leader thought it best to step back, wary of the fact that the Zulu chief had crossed the boundary line and was openly talking in treasonable terms at least from the British perspective.

But the Qulusi branch of the Usuthu whom he led were impressed by the young chief, they had been cut off from the rest of Zululand, and began to muster on the large, imposing flat-topped Ceza Mountain. This bold geographical feature would become crucial in Zulu historiography - the site holds deep cultural and spiritual importance for the Zulu nation. An annual KwaCeza Mountain Prayer is held here, attended by Zulu Monarchs and provincial leaders who honour the resistance of King Dinuzulu.

By March 1888 word spread in Zululand, and Natal, that the uSuthu had become a sanctuary for those defying the British, as well as their collaborator, Zibhebhu of the Mandlakazi. In April Dinuzulu rode to the Phongolo River, rallying support from the outlying villages — and as you heard last episode, it was during this period that local magistrate Addison tried to arrest the uSuthu leaders he’d left behind in the Ndwandwe district - modern day Nongoma.

You’d remember that Zibhebhu used the chaos to mobilise his warriors, the Zululand police were on the move from Eshowe, backed up by a couple of hundred British troops. Dinuzulu realised he’d reached a point of no return, and in May he and his men withdrew to Ceza Mountain.

The uSuthu Rebellion - as it became known - had begun. They began raiding from their hilltop refuge, attacking those they regarded as friends of the British - victims included Mnyamana and Ziwedu, who sought refuge at the British military camp as Nkonjeni just north of Ulundi.

In early June, a force of African levies from Myamana’s Buthelezi joined the Zululand police force and British troops as they advanced on Ceza planning to arrest Dinuzulu and Ndabuko, along with the other rebel chiefs. This left Addison’s camp at Ndunu hill exposed, a small garrison remained, so he asked Zibhebhu and his Mandlakazi to encamp on the hill as insurance against a surprise attack. The British mobilised more of their troops, 515 infantry and 455 mounted men swelled the ranks along with 22 officers. Eshowe resident commissioner Melmoth Osborn managed to mobilise about four thousand black auxiliaries in southern Zululand - so the order of battle began to develop quickly.

On 27 April 1994, South Africa inaugurated a new constitutional democracy which embraced the freedom and equality of all sectors of the South African society. The Preamble of the Constitution states one of its aims was to “heal divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”. This goal was to be realised by, among others, section 211 which recognised the institution, status and role of traditional leadership and entrenches indigenous African law as a source of South African law alongside the common law.

Ironically, on the very same day, 27 April, in 1889, the British Administration rejected the time-honoured institution of traditional leadership in Africa and decided finally to remove the hereditary traditional leaders from Zulu society. This is generally regarded as the final act which caused irreparable harm to Zulu solidarity and has resonated down the ages.

The British had tired of the constant warring, the tension amongst the descendants of Senzangakhona. But more importantly, they were seeking to shore up their northern marches against both the Boers and the increasingly aggressive European nations like Germany who were also seeking colonies in Africa. It has perhaps been forgotten just how active Germany was in Mozambique. German companies were buying up land in Lourenzo Marques by the late 1880s, in order to gain a foothold over south eastern Africa. Nine-tenths of the transit business along the Mozambique coast into Tanzania and even further north was in the hands of German companies, and the press in Germany were as jingoistic as any other European nation of the time.

So as we consider what was going to happen from here on in, we must keep an eye on the global effect.

When we last heard about Dinizulu was back in episode 281 where the Boers and induna’s had annointed him as King of the Zulu.

Ever since the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, the territory had been in turmoil and from the time that Dinizulu succeeded his father Cetshwayo he was caught up in a series of conflicts which eventually destroyed him. Dinizulu fought three major contests, against Usibebu the British government sponsored chief of the Amandhlakazi, against the Transvaal Boers who were eager to make use of the Zulu civil wars to appropriate land and cattle in Zululand - eventually claiming what they called the New Republic. Dinizulu fought a third battle against the Natal colonists and government which history has described in various ways, including as a rebellion.

The Ndebele chief said the Rudd concession document did not reflect his verbal agreements. His induna’s who’d negotiated the concession disputed the terms as well, along with missionary Charles Helms who’d translated for Lobengula.

Nevertheless, chief negotiator Charles Rudd had returned to Kimberley clutching the concession, a single page document which purported to give Rhodes’ British South Africa company sole rights to mining gold throughout Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and other adjacent territories, in exchange for one thousand Martini Henry Rifles, 100 000 rounds of ammunition, one hundred pounds, and a gunboat on the Zambezi River.

Lobengula said he’d only agreed to the rights for ten men to dig for gold at one spot rather than the general rights throughout the region to the north of the Limpopo river. Once they discovered what Rhodes was claiming, some Ndebele induna’s threatened to revolt.

At least one, Gambo, approached the Boers of the Transvaal. To the East, there was also much trouble brewing in Manicaland. That lay between Delagoa Bay and the highlands of eastern Mashonaland, where the Portuguese lay claim.

In a nutshell, like the headwaters of the Nile and the importance of the Suez Canal, the vast territories north of the Limpopo became the means through which southern Africa and the Cape could be controlled by the British Empire.

The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand gave the Transvaal the cash to expand northwards and towards the coast and the Boers could rival the existing British dominance in the region north of the Cape. The Portuguese had ancient claims to Mozambique, stretching back almost 500 years and they posed a threat to the sea route between England and India. Then in 1887 Portugal laid claim to the a swath of land stretching coast to coast from Mozambique to Angola through the region north of the Limpopo.

In the British colonial office, Lord Salisbury of the conservative party was trying to stymie the Portuguese, and supported Cecil John Rhodes at least nominally, but only north of the Limpopo. The more grandiose all red-route touted by Rhodes of the Cape to Cairo was a pipedream, thought Salisbury.

He brushed aside the Portuguese protests based on their pre-existing treaties signed by Mashonaland chiefs stretching back to 1629, but then was warned that a Portuguese expedition had set off from the coast led by Colonel Joaquim Carlos Pavia d’Andrada heading towards Mashonaland.

Backed by the newly created Companhia de Mozambique he was joined by Manuel Antonio de Sousa - half Portuguese, half African, mixed race soldier feared by the British because he had mobilised 7000 black irregulars — local warriors.

Before they arrived in upper Manicaland, Lobengula’s two emissaries would arrive in London. Babayane and Mshete were joined by Edward Maund, Rhodes’ adversary in the concession-making business, and Natal translator, John Colenbrander.

As you heard last episode, the emissaries carried two bits of information. One was a letter for Queen Victoria, complaining of Portuguese threats to his east, the other was for the Queen’s ears only, and would be delivered verbally directly to her, face-to-face. Lobengula was going to formally renounce the Rudd concession.

Eventually, on February 6 1889, Maund, Colenbrander, Babayane and Mshete boarded the the steamship Moor, and sailed to London. The next day, a telegram arrived at Robinson’s official residence, apparently the Queen wouldn’t have enough time to meet the envoys because she was preparing for a European trip. Robinson was relieved. Perhaps all the waylaying was going to work out and he wondered, were Babayane and Mshete on a doomed mission?

We’re in Bulawayo, just over the border from the Limpopo, and very much part of South Africa’s story — the Ndebele Chief Lobengula ruled what was known generally as Matabeleland, in a territory that the British colonial office called Zambesia, which we now call, Zimbabwe.

Name changing is one of the constants of world history, let alone African or South African. Empires rise and fall, kingdoms change, political leaders come and go, languages are part of empire.

The area around the Ndebele settlement in 1888 was in the rough shape of a circle, the radius extending about 120 kilometers around the capital, known by Ndebele speakers as Gubulawayo. The circumference of the circle extended from what became known as Plumtree through Gwai, Gwelo, Selukwe, Shabani down to the Shashi River, then back to Plumtree. With that circle, Mzilikazi and then Lobengula had established some dominance over the nearby Sotho and Tswana majority.

The magnitude and frequency of Ndebele warfare reinforced their roots in a militarised Zululand - a monocratic form of government. The Ndebele immigrants into Zimbabwe could maintain their existence only if they remained obedient to their commander-in-chief. They incorporated alien captives in their midst gathered through rapid conquest rather than through the assimilation of an immigrant population. Mzilikazi had died in 1868 and his son Lobengula took power after a short sharp civil war.

Among the Ndebele, Mzilikazi represented an epic hero, similar to Moses or Hannibal - the founding father, the umdabuli wa sizwe, symbolising nationhood, loyalty and patriotism. Subjects called themselves abantu be nkosi, people of the king. Lobengula was saluted by the call, Bayete wena Nkosi, hail his majesty, and visitors knelt respectfully before him as the regent. The kings ancestral spirits were the national deities and guardians of the society itself. All property of the state including the land, natural resources, cattle, tributes of whatever sort, and the people themselves were the property of the king.

Contrary to the expanding colonial powers, Ndebele rule was through a non-monetary, pre-industrial bureaucratic administration - and this tension grew by the year in the 19th Century. Lobengula was the director and financier general, personally appointing all administrators, military officers, even regiments — as Mzilikazi had done. Ndebele weapons were manufactured in a small workshops scattered around Matabeleland, but only the king’s artisans could make shields and the all-important stabbing spears. When a warrior died, his shield and stabbing spear would usually be returned to the king - unlike the Vikings for example.

It was into this militaristic and organised kingdom that European concession seekers into Matabeleland travelled, trying to gain the all important slip of paper allowing them to mine gold. The two main rivals, the Exploring Company of Edward Maund and the British South Africa Company - BSAC of Cecil John Rhodes, left Kimberley in August 1888 heading north.

The BSAC team was comprised of Charles Rudd, Francis Robert Matabele Thompson and James Maguire sent who arrived in Bulawayo before Maund in late September. They discovered to the chagrin that Lobengula was a highly skilled negotiator who accepted their gift of one hundred gold sovereigns - worth around 100 000 dollars today then sent them back to their wagons. It had been a tiring journey no doubt, said the Ndebele king and they should rest.

Three days passed before they met once more, and Lobengula spent most of the meeting firing questions, distracting from the main objective. The three repeatedly tried to steer the conversation back to the right to mine gold, Lobengula deflected their queries, pointing out it was his respected induna’s who would negotiate mining rights.

He was clearly stalling for time.

Lobengula eventually deigned to meet Rudd who begged for a mining commission.

If you have access to Google Maps, or preferably, an original wall map of Africa, stand back for a moment to savour the grand vista which is southern Africa. Living on the tip looking upwards creates a culture of outwardness, a mental and psychological state of eternal expansion. Despite this grandiosity, for many, it is a place of entrapment, they express sentiments of being stuck at the end of Africa, peering outwards to the continents of Europe, or America, Australasia with a sense of longing.

It is as though we are fenced in by our own preconceptions, endlessly scrolling through the timelines of the grand and glorious X Y or Z generation gallavanting through the safe woods of Croatia, swimming along the elegant isles of the Med, wondering at the delights of the Barrier Reef. Croatia, of course, is where European-based ethnic cleansing took place in 1995.

Europe is where almost 50 million died 70 years ago in a world war. America has been transfixed by a form of national socialism, Australia faces Chinese hegemony. Still, humans are a strange bunch, history a distant ship smoke on the horizon.

It is a pitiful state where middle-class South Africans appear to have become transfixed by the myth of greengrassism. Where the grass is always greener on the other side.

Our ancestors made their way into south Africa with a very different set of personal codes. From the earliest San, the Khoekhoe, then the Bantu settlers, then the European settlers, all arrived in this territory with plans and dreams. The dream may have been purely survival, or seeking treasure, for some it was purely adventure, for others, a combination of the above. But all of our ancestors had a plan which involved movement, migration, heading out to the next vista with necessities of whatever sort packed away and taken along. They were stoked by imagination, courageous, expansive.

Looking at that southern African map a few important facts leap out. There are three main corridors from the south to the centre. One lies to the East, which can be tricky as it harbours fevers, faster flowing rivers, and inhabitants stretching back millennia.

The centre is cooler in places, it is higher ground, but it also suffers from a lack of water, slow flowing larger rivers, and as you move north, geology plays tricks on you.

To the west, well, there’s a bloody great series of deserts, marching from the Karoo, Namaqualand, to the Kalahari, into the Namib, then into the Angolan plateau. Good luck using that route, even these days. Take a Land Cruiser with spare tanks, tyres and don’t forget the satellite phone.

There are a few important characters in this episode. One is Lobengula kaKhumalo, the descendant of Mzilikazi who had led his followers away from Shaka. You know his story if you’ve followed this series.

Lobengula was crowned king of Ndebele in 1868 after a short, sharp civil war, at the great place called Mhlanhlandlela. He had long been tolerant of the Boer and English hunters who showed up as his home in Matabeleland, and in 1870 had even granted Sir John Swinburne’s London and Limpopo Mining Company the right to search for gold along the Tati River — between the Shashe and Ramaquabane Rivers.

N those days, the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but people like MacNeill were working towards Home Rule. In what can only be called a head scratcher, Rhodes fell in with the nationalists. He knew that they had 85 seats in the British parliament and were strategically important, many times when the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party were at loggerheads, it was the Irish Parliamentary Party that turned into King-makers, holding the balance of power in the House of Commons.