The 1896-97 War

Although several months have now elapsed since the public was thrilled and horrified by the accounts of the late Matabele and Mashona rising, I feel bold enough to think that the following narrative, in which I can now say I was lucky enough to play a part, may be of some interest to my friends.

I left England for Mashonaland in August, 1894, and therefore had had some little experience of the country previous to this war. Before beginning my story I propose to mention just a few events that led up to it.

Sometime in March, 1896, information reached Salisbury (Capital of Rhodesia) that the natives in Matabeleland had revolted, that several murders had already taken place and grave doubts were expressed as to the safety of the people residing in the outlying districts, doubts which unfortunately too soon proved to be well founded.

By April things had assumed such serious aspects that it was decided by the Chartered Company to send at once a detachment of the Horse Volunteers from Salisbury to Bulawayo. 140 men left on April 12th.

The distance between these two towns is about 300 miles and as nearly half the men, through the scarcity of horses, were "footsloggers" it may easily be understood it took some time to accomplish this journey, more especially as rinderpest was raging in the country in such a way that no less than 150 out of 200 trek oxen were lost en route.

The Column had not been long away when grave signs of discontent were visible among our own Africans, the Mashonas, but it was not until Sunday 31st May that anything like revolt occurred. News was brought into town that day that a man named Dougherty had been killed in the Lomagundi District by being thrown down a shaft, and large pieces of rock and stone had been found piled on top of his body.

At the same time natives in the employ of a white man had been found murdered, but no further act of hostility was encountered until a fortnight later and, in the meantime, the Government (B.S.A. Co.) was reposing in complacent confidence.

On 15th June, news reached town that two miners named Tait and Koeford had been killed at the Beatrice Mine by a body of natives supposed then to be Matabeles; the weapons used were knobkerries and four of the natives employed by these white men had also fallen victims.

On 17th June, the town was again startled by the news of the death of a man named Stunt, a prospector, who was killed on his way out to the Hartley District and later on came the news of two more men falling victims.

At this point grave fears were felt for the safety of Mr. and Mrs. Norton and their household who were residing at a farm some 18 miles from town on the Manyame River.

These fears were somewhat allayed by the appearance during the day of Mr. Talbot, one of the men living there with them, and who was destined to be the only survivor of that ill-fated party.

He had ridden in to report to the Native Department that all the natives employed on the farm had run away and assistance was required to bring them back, otherwise all was well. When Talbot returned that night he found no trace of Norton, his wife, child, nurse or assistants but there was evidence of a fearful struggle in one of the huts and the floor was covered with blood.

He immediately returned to Salisbury and brought in the news just as the whole community was at fever heat with excitement.

On 18th June, a mass meeting was held in the Market Hall and by 12 o'clock every man in the place was there to meet the representatives of the Government (B.S.A. Co.) and see what steps were going to be taken to provide for the safety of the inhabitants in the town.

I need hardly say the meeting was one of the most extraordinary and exciting that it has ever been my lot to witness. Anxiety and responsibility together with indignation were visible in every face.

Invectives were freely thrown out on all sides against the Government on account of the stolid indifference they had displayed.

A Defence Committee was ultimately organised which undertook to protect the town and the women and children. It was further agreed that every man should turn up that night at the Barracks to do picket duty round the town if required and two small patrols were arranged to go to the outlying districts and bring in or give notice to the people living there.

The first one consisting of five men was sent to the Mutoko District to give warning to the Native Commissioner out there but they never reached their destination and after one or two narrow escapes ultimately took refuge at the Jesuit Fathers' farm situated some nine miles from Salisbury.

The second one was sent to the Mazowe District where it was known some 14 men and three women were in laager.

The van arrived safely and met with no opposition on the road but it was considered by all advisable to start back at once as rumours had reached there that a large impi was on its way to that district; therefore a start was made as soon as possible.

The first detachment consisted of Dickenson, Cass, Faull, Pascoe, Fairbairn and Stoddart and they took with them two donkeys, a cart and Mashona carriers, being followed later by a second party with the van.

All went well until they got about three miles from the Mazowe Camp, here the natives started firing at them, and to quote Mr. Fairbairn's report on seeing some natives striking something on the ground with their knobkerries one of their carriers was sent to see what it was and he returned saying — "Fundisi is felie" meaning "Missionary Cass is dead".

Immediately after this Dickenson was shot dead. Several more Africans appeared on the ridge a short distance off and on them opening fire the 14 carriers threw down their loads and disappeared.

The party then decided to go back to the Camp but scarcely had they turned their cart than Faull who was driving was shot through the heart by a native concealed in the grass, he, however, bit the dust three seconds after, being shot almost instantly by Fairbairn.

The Africans still kept following them up and succeeded in shooting one of the donkeys which compelled them to leave the cart and make the rest of their way on foot.

They soon met the van containing three women and accompanied by the rest of the men who on hearing the news decided to return at once to the laager at the Mazowe Camp.

Before reaching their destination they were fired at from all sides and no less than 50 natives came out of the grass quite close to their rear and seemed for the moment intent on rushing them. However, by constantly firing and urging on the mules, they were able to reach the rough laager on the Kopje at the Camp having lost three men killed in their attempt to come in.

A desultory fire was still kept up by the natives on the laager and the women were obliged to crouch behind the rocks for shelter.

Shortly after this Blakiston, who was a telegraph mechanic but not an operator, offered to go to the Telegraph Office (a hut situated about 500 yards from the laager) if the telegraphist would go also and send a message to Salisbury asking for relief and describing the situation.

They took a horse with them and reached the Office safely and the message flashed through to Salisbury was, "We are surrounded, send us help, this is our only chance, goodbye".

Two minutes after sending this, both men and horse lay dead about half way between the Telegraph Office and the laager.

All through that day and night the natives kept up a hot fire. A Matabele who was evidently their leader posted himself behind a rock about 400 yards off and by the way he splintered the rocks in the laager each time he fired was undoubtedly the best shot of the party.

He never exposed himself and all that was left for the besieged to fire at was the barrel of his rifle.

He evidently had a great idea of his personality as during the evening he was heard to yell in his native tongue — "I am a Matabele, why do you leave me without tobacco?"

During the night the Africans got within 150 yards of the laager and although some of them were shot, things looked terribly serious for the inmates. Nothing, however, occurred and day at last dawned.

The Africans were armed with all sorts of rifles including Lee-Metfords and Martini Henry but a great many had muzzle loaders into which they crammed almost anything that came handy, pot legs and even stones, as some of the missiles that were afterwards taken out of the wounded horses testify.

MARONDERA
It was on March 23rd, 1896, that the second Matabele War broke out, but the vast majority of white people in Rhodesia never imagined that trouble would spread from there to Mashonaland. Their judgment, however, was soon proved to be faulty.

There had been signs for those who were prepared to read them, but many native commissioners, quite as much as other white people who came into less direct contact with the Mashona, refused to accept the evidence of their eyes and their informants. However, by June, 1896, facts could not be ignored; the Mashona had risen.

The Norton family was killed on Wednesday, June 17th, 1896. By midday of the same day the news had reached Mahopo, the kopje upon which Chief Mangwende had built his kraal. His son, Mchemwa, and his brother, Gatsi, understood the message beaten out from kraal to kraal by the drummers, and towards evening fires blazed out from the hills of Nhowe and were answered by similar fires on the far off hills of Goromonzi and Jeta.

When Ziute and Savidjgo came to Bernard Mizeki's home among the buildings which Gouveia had once inhabited, they did not come on the spur of the moment; for many weeks, even months, there had been plotting and planning. And yet, although Mchemwa waited for a message before letting his wrath loose on the white men and those who befriended them, there was no concerted African movement against the scattered European population.

Bernard Mizeki was dragged from his hut on Mchemwa's instructions and mortally wounded late in the night of June 17th, but it was not until the 20th, however, that the rest of Marondera felt the full impact of the war.

For three days, then, the Mashona stayed their hand, and the tiny European population, quite unaware either of Bernard Mizeki's death or of the possibility of a general uprising, continued to trade and travel along the main road.

That Bernard Mizeki was the first casualty in the Marondera area throws some interesting light on the causes of the war. For what had incensed Mchemwa and the n'anga (witch-doctor) was Bernard's attachment to the white man's church and his traditions and beliefs, so much so that they believed he was really a white man in disguise, hiding himself under a black skin.

Molimile Molele, the Methodist catechist at the Nengubo Mission, was disliked for the same reasons, and he too lost his life in the war on account of his attachment to the white people and their ways.

The oral evidence is quite clear on this point, and it finds expression on two main fronts. The first, for the sake of convenience, may be termed administrative, for the African teachers had attempted to make the Government's instructions understood. Mrs. Farrant noticed that

Bernard visited the kraal on top of the hill whenever he could in an attempt to interpret and justify to the chief the actions of the Government

and Douglas Pelly wrote in March of a visit to Bernard Mizeki that

our talk was chiefly of crops and cattle, and the future actions of the Government.

The African teachers were equated with the Government and the white men who controlled it, so that the African peoples really came to believe that Bernard Mizeki's task, under the guise of Christianity, was to snatch their children away from them and convert them into white children.

The teachers were also held responsible, quite apart from the hut tax and. demands for labour, for the terrible scourges of locusts, rinderpest and drought which the white man was alleged to have brought into the country. And this introduces the second, major channel of discontent, the religious; for if God failed to make it rain, was He not angry at those Africans who had turned away from the traditional spirits?

In its baldest form, this opposition is expressed by old Mrs Mangachema:

Molele had provoked them by telling them to leave the mudzimu

but individual complaints concerning monogamy, the killing of twins and so on also divided the powerful leaders of traditional African religion from the new, white-led religion. Unless one or other was going to give way, there was bound to be a conflict, especially since religion in Shona society held such an important and long-standing position.

Thus those men who assisted the white men, whether in Governmental duties and explanations or religious observances, were clearly assisting in breaking down the traditional fabric of African life, which others were so keen to uphold.

The reason why the Reverend Molele and the rest were killed was because they were said to be keeping foreigners, and they wanted to destroy Nengubo because he had accepted the Missionary.

These statements sum up the fusion of administrative and religious forces which prompted the people of Nhowe to kill Bernard Mizeki and the people of Chizengeni to murder Molimile Molele.

This is not the place, however, to discuss the complex causes of the Mashona war. But the reasons for the murders of Mizeki and Molele, both men of great courage and Christian principles, indicate that the war was something much less superficial than a Matabele-directed expression of discontent. It was a genuine national revolt such as every invading people must expect, when they come to live in another's land with any degree of permanence.

A BRUTAL WAR
The war was not a well-organised movement nor was the strategy coordinated. Bernard Mikezi was killed on the Wednesday night; nothing happened after that event until the Saturday, when the Africans moved towards Mendamu farm. Still more strange is the story of the European man who lived near Mchemwa's kraal on Mahopo, and yet had no experience of the war until first light on the Sunday.

He had only been on his farm a few weeks, and was unwilling to leave his new home. At dawn on the Sunday, an African, perhaps one of the messengers, Jan, or perhaps the cook-boy, Simon, went to urge him to make for the Marondera hotel immediately.

The man demurred; his mind was soon made up, however, when a number of Africans, led by Mangwende's son Mchemwa, appeared from over the neighboring kopje's crest and came running towards the homestead, not concealing their hostile intent. He seized his rifle and made for the bush at a fast pace.

There then ensued a thrilling race between the European and his African companion on one side, firing back at their pursuers from time to time, and Mchemwa's band on the other side. The two managed to reach the hotel, exhausted and unharmed.

At the hotel preparations were being made all night for the escape. They prepared three wagons from those which had arrived at the hotel on Friday to take some of the ammunition back along the Fort Charter road to Matabeleland. At least these had mules, and not oxen.

There were nine European men gathered at the hotel. Exactly who the men were is not known. Whoever they were, they were off early on the Sunday morning. The Africans who had watched the preparation, assumed the party would make for Salisbury, and they blocked the main road to the west accordingly.

This bad misjudgment gave the Europeans a chance to gain a slight lead and be through the narrow nek which lies to the east of the hotel and into more open country before Marondera's men could stop them.

Not without alarms, the racing convoy continued to keep ahead of the Africans, and the mules, which had been driven flat out, were changed after 16 miles at the old stables, and soon the party was on its way again, keeping a sharp look-out for the enemy; but they never came close nor made any concerted attack upon the wagons.

After these first exciting days Marondera subsided into complete inactivity. No white man remained in the area. The Europeans in the rest of Mashonaland found themselves in the same predicament as those in Matabeleland, surrounded, as they were, by hostile Africans and short of provisions. They badly needed food as well as military assistance.

On the 28th of July, a column of the Matabeleland Relief Force came to the Ruzawi River. The crossing lay beneath Mangondo, a series of kopjes among which Chief Sadza had built his village and where Selous had been entertained many years before.

It was quite a different reception which these men now received. But organised gunfire drove the Mashona back into the recesses of the kopjes, and members of the relief column followed them with gay abandon, exploring the huts, catching chickens and collecting fowls, for they had been told in Bulawayo that the Mashona would not show fight.

The loud report of the elephant gun, or family gun as it was more usually called, disabused them of that idea, and for some time desultory fire continued between the inhabitants of the kopjes and the relief force.

There was only one entrance to the agglomeration of petty caves which honeycombed the rocky mass and that was defended from the inside by the Mashona, amply supplied with family guns and copper wire, stones, old pots, broken bottles and even bullets as ammunition. It would be a bloody process to force the entrance.

By the beginning of August the supply of food for Salisbury was so dangerously low that a message was sent requesting the Infantry to collect grain from the kraals in the Marondera neighborhood. With this aim, the bulk of the Mounted Infantry set off early on the 10th for Gatsi's kraal which they found deserted, its inhabitants having removed themselves into the numerous caves which abounded there.

One African, however, was captured and he was used as a go-between with Chief Gatsi. He was lowered through a cleft in the rocks on a rope and a parley took place between Gatsi and his advisers underground and the whites above. Not much progress was made for Gatsi, like Mchemwa his arrogant nephew, had no intention of giving himself up to white men without a real struggle.

But while these fruitless negotiations were going on, a Lieutenant Barnes, in his search for stored grain, incautiously put his head into a crevasse already occupied by a manned tower musket, and the boom of the familiar family gun told its own sad story.

After Barnes's death, the Europeans no longer felt like negotiating. The solid rocks and the running streams made the Gatsi caves an ideal retreat, and although the Mounted Infantry attempted to smoke the Africans out, they had no success, and were forced to move on, having gained no grain, but having lost an officer.

And so they went to Mahopo instead, to the kraal of Chief Mangwende. But he had gone, and his grain with him, to the Bogoto Mountains to the north, while Mchemwa and his followers had left for Nyameni and the terrain under Chief Marondera's suzerainty to the south. All that remained was a large Portuguese flag, which Gouveia had given the chief a decade earlier.

Soon after midnight on the 2nd of October, Captain Pease led out 40 men of the Mutare Volunteers, who had just arrived from the eastern districts, and 30 men of the Matabeleland Relief Force in a southerly direction. They marched about ten miles before attacking a well-fortified, but uninhabited, kraal belonging to the sub-chief Chiwara.

The Africans had already got wind of their coming, and had moved off to Manyabira's, a less well-fortified village, but better provided for defensive purposes, for it was sited on some flat rocks through which the river ran, and beneath which were some caves amply provided with water.

The beastliness of the war had only just begun. Pease's troops withdrew 100 yards from the rocky fastness and shelled it with their seven-pounder, but to no avail. The early lessons were now bearing fruit, for it became abundantly clear that only dynamite would move the Africans from their lairs, and a message was sent to Mutare asking for explosives.

After a week they tried smoking the Mashona out, but this, too, was unsuccessful. At last the dynamite arrived. Three 10 lb. charges were put down, but they elicited no response. Then a whole case was put down. This produced an enormous explosion with a dull flash in the midst of a great volume of smoke, which cleared to show that the caves had been markedly altered in shape.

After a long wait, the women and children came out, and awful sights they were. The cave was evidently a small one and. they had been thrown against the rocks and were all covered with blood and the dynamite had skinned them or burned the skin off their bodies.

But even this was not the end. For the men refused to surrender; they shouted defiance and continued to take pot shots at anyone in their line of fire. So three whole cases of dynamite were put down into the cave, and the whole complex was utterly destroyed, the rocks disintegrating or subsiding and the bodies being hurled, mutilated and lifeless, in all directions.

Such was the fighting which the terrain and the African determination dictated. It was repeated again and again, at Gatsi's and Svosve's just as at Manyabira's, where the ultimate death toll could never be known.

The Mashona's endurance and determination was astonishing; for they only rarely attacked, and then only in very favourable circumstances, but allowed themselves to be trapped in positions which were secure against the Matabele, but not against the white man's dynamite, there to await death usually in the most horrible circumstances.

For twelve months this went on in the Marondera district. The Mashona retreated to their rocky defences, where the odds were stacked against them, to meet their destruction, and only infrequently did the dull thud of the family gun mark a marginal success for them with the death of an Imperial trooper.

The return to Gatsi's kraal on October 24th began a repeat performance of what had occurred at Manyabira's. For the previous week the neighboring kraals had been cleared out, on one day no fewer than eight kraals being burnt before breakfast at 10, and their inhabitants gathered at Gatsi's kraal, beneath which lay enormous caves and running water.

The kraal itself was rushed and the Mashona fled into the caves; the seven-pounder, doing more damage to the fowls than the Africans, and some dynamite made no effect, for the caves were large enough, airy enough and sufficiently well-watered to cater for all the men gathered there.

For nearly a week the undisciplined troops remained, shooting indiscriminately, looting and joking. It was this lack of discipline which was responsible for the death of the Commanding Officer, Major Evans. His death was a particular tragedy, because he had married only two days before he set sail to Central Africa.

He was much loved by his troops, who shed tears at his untimely death, and he was buried in the Ruzawi cemetery early the following morning. There was a 24 hour lull while the funeral took place, but once that was over the business of ejecting Gatsi and his followers from the caves continued.

The women and children, having been warned of the impending use of dynamite, came out, but the men remained, unrepentant and unbowed. Finally, 2,000 lbs. of dynamite were set off at once, and the same havoc, the same misery, the same ultimate success repeated itself.

Slowly, then, the district was being cleared and, although some chieftains refused to give up, many began to move away from their old homes, as Mangwende had done, travelling north into the Murehwa district or east into the empty lands of Chihota, or, as some of Svosve's followers had done, south into the Hwedza area.

Expeditions still went out all through October to dislodge the Mashona from their natural fortresses in which they had gathered, to Svosve's in the south, as well as Gatsi's in the north.

The approach of the rainy season heralded important activities on a more general scale. By December, patrols had swept clear in a great circle, inflicting defeats on most of the chiefs they had met, while the road to Mutare along the watershed was also clear; Mutasa had come down off the fence; Makoni was dead, though his son remained hostile among the rocky terrain to the north of Rusape; Marondera's, Gatsi's and Mangwende's homes were destroyed, and those who remained at large were being driven further away from the main road and their traditional homes.

By the time the rains were coming to an end, the Police in Marondera were faced with only one major problem, and that was the defeat of Svosve and his henchmen. To the north and west, the war had virtually ceased to be. It was only in the unknown area to the south-east, where Karl Mauch had trekked across in 1872, that it continued to flourish.

Patrols were repeatedly sent out after Chief Svosve, who remained with some, but not all, of his followers in the rocky plateau where the Svosve Reserve is now. On April 14th a patrol of 24 Mutare Volunteers went into Svosve's lands, and was there attacked, one private being killed and two other men injured; patrols were sent out into the same area on April 17th, May 26th and again on June 19th, but on all these occasions it was the volunteers who attacked, not without some minor casualties, and the Mashona reverted to a purely defensive attitude.

Svosve himself had been captured, but some of his young headmen continued the struggle to the bitter end. But the struggle became less keen and less universally supported as the long odds against an African victory began to be understood, so that by the end of July the war began to peter out, and headmen were surrendering to the Native Commissioner and giving up their arms. Many of these were clearly the purchase price for 'old workings' paid by the early-day prospectors.

There was a number of Martini-Henry rifles and some Lee-Metfords, which had been gained as loot at the beginning of the war but had not been used much because of the difficulty in getting hold of ammunition, as well as the inevitable elephant gun and other strange armaments.

The followers of Mangwende were driven away from Mahopo and their traditional garden lands towards the north, where the Mangwende Reserve is now situated. In the south, Svosve's followers drifted down to the Sabi River and can be found in the Hwedza Reserve, although the rocky bastion of the present Svosve Reserve continues to be the home of some of the descendants of Svosve's warriors of the 1890's.

In this case, they were never completely defeated and driven out. In the Chiota Reserve to the west, Chief Sadza can be found, 20 or 30 miles away from the family home among the kopjes called Mangondo.

In this way, the pattern of Land Apportionment finds some of its roots in the war, and the Europeans' occupation of the lines of communication was a natural sequel to the strategy employed in 1896 and 1897.

It is in this respect particularly that the war had a lasting effect upon the history of Marondera. For it settled, by force of arms, the area of European occupation and so laid the foundations of the farming community of Marondera.

He was outraged by the apparent blindness, the spinelessness and easy-going nature of all black people, and expressed these views most outrageously when he had drunk some beer. Nothing restrained him from telling his people the bitter truth about themselves.

He would remind those prepared to listen to him that we had only ourselves to blame for defeat in the 1896 struggle. We had begun the war with many advantages, but as time went on, he would say, our stamina and resourcefulness dwindled to such an extent that many of our people lost heart, went over to the enemy and enabled the white man to flush our soldiers out of their rock fastnesses.

Since then, bullied and corrupted, we had made no other attempt to free ourselves and were willing enough to slave for the settlers. In his view, all black people, whoever they were and wherever they came from were mbudzi (goats), whose passive patience was unending. (From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe)