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Modern day 'Matabeleland' is currently divided into two provinces: Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South. These two provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers. The province is named after its inhabitants, the Ndebele people, who took control of the area in 1834 after having been pushed out of other areas of southern Africa during the Mfecane. Population (1992) 1,855,300. Area: 181,605 km². The language spoken is Ndebele. The major city is Bulawayo. Another notable town is Hwange. The land is particularly fertile and this area has important gold deposits. Industries include gold and other mineral mines, and engineering.

Contents

History

The San People and various ironworking cultures

Urozwi Empire

Ndebele Kingdom

British South Africa Company

First Matabele War

Second Matabele War, a.k.a., First Chimurenga

Birthplace of Scouting

British Rule

Sovereign Rhodesia

Zimbabwe

See also

References

External links

History

The San People and various ironworking cultures

Stone Age evidence indicates that the San people, now living mostly in the Kalahari Desert, are the descendants of this region’s original inhabitants, almost 100 000 years ago. There are also remnants of several ironworking cultures dating back to AD 300. Little is known of the early ironworkers, but it is believed that they put pressure on the San and gradually took over the land.

Urozwi Empire

Around the 10th and 11th centuries the Bantu-speaking Shona arrived from the north and the both the San and the early ironworkers were driven out. By the 15th century, the Shona had established a strong empire, known as Munhumutapa, with its capital at the ancient city of Zimbabwe. This empire was split by the end of the 15th century with southern part becoming the Urozwi Empire.

Ndebele Kingdom

In the early 1800s, some 20 000 Ndebele, descendants of the Zulus in South Africa and led by Mzilikazi Khumalo, invaded the Urozwi Empire. Many of the Shona people were incorporated and the rest were either made satellite territories who paid taxes to the Ndebele Kingdom–. He called his new nation Mthwakazi, a Zulu word which means something which became big at conception, in Zulu "into ethe ithwasa yabankulu".The territory came to be known as Matabeleland after conquest by the BSAC. Mzilikazi organized this ethnically diverse nation into a militaristic system of regimental towns and established his capital at Bulawayo. He was a statesman of considerable stature, able to weld the many conquered tribes into a strong, centralized kingdom.
From 1847-51, the Boer invaded this territory, but these Ndebele warriors proved strong enough to repel the invaders. In 1852, the Boer government in Transvaal entered into a peace with Mzilikazi. However, gold was discovered near Mthwakazi in 1867 and the European powers became increasingly interested in the region.
Mzilikazi died on 9 September 1868, near Bulawayo. His son, Lobengula, became the king of Mthwakazi. In exchange for wealth and arms, Lobengula granted several concessions to the British, the most prominent of which is the 1888 Rudd concession giving Cecil Rhodes exclusive mineral rights in much of the lands east of his main territory. Gold was already known to exist in nearby Mashonaland, so with the Rudd concession, Rhodes was able to obtain a royal charter to form the British South Africa Company in 1889.

British South Africa Company

Main articles: British South Africa Company

In 1890, Rhodes sent a group of settlers, known as the Pioneer Column, into Mashonaland and when they reached Harari Hill, they founded Fort Salisbury (now Harare). Rhodes had been distributing land to the settlers even before the royal charter, but the charter legitimized his further actions with the British government. By 1891 an Order-in-Council declared Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Bechuanaland a British protectorate. Rhodes had a vested interest in the continued expansion of white settlements in the region, so now with the cover of a legal mandate, he used a brutal attack by Ndebele against the Shona near Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) in 1893 as a pretense for attacking the kingdom of Lobengula.

First Matabele War

Main articles: First Matabele War

The first battle in the war occurred on 1 November 1893 when the laager was attacked on open ground a few miles from the Impembisi River. The laager consisted of 670 British soldiers, 400 of whom were mounted along with a small force of native allies fought off the Imbezu and Ingubu regiments computed by Sir John Willoughby to number 1 700 warriors in all. The laager had with it a small artillery of 5 Maxim gun, 2 seven-pounders, 1 Gardner gun, and 1 Hotchkiss. The Maxim guns took center stage and decimated the native force. Other African regiments were in the immediate vicinity, estimated at 5 000 men, however this force never took part in the fighting.
Lobengula had 80 000 spearmen and 20 000 riflemen, against fewer than 700 soldiers of the British South Africa Police, but the Ndebele warriors were no match against the British Maxim guns. Leander Starr Jameson immediately sent his troops to Bulawayo to try to capture Lobengula, but the king escaped and left Bulawayo in ruins behind him. But this was no victory for the Ndebele. Under somewhat mysterious circumstances, King Lobengula died in January 1894, and within a few short months the British South Africa Company controlled most of the Matabeleland and white settlers continued to arrive.

Second Matabele War, a.k.a., First Chimurenga

Main articles: Second Matabele War

In March 1896, the Ndebele revolted against the authority of the British South Africa Company in what is now celebrated in Zimbabwe as the First Chimurenga, i.e., First War of Independence. Mlimo, the Matabele spiritual/religious leader, is credited with formenting much of the anger that led to this confrontation. He convinced the Ndebele that the white settlers (almost 4,000 strong by then) were responsible for the drought, locust plagues and the cattle disease rinderpest ravaging the country at the time.
Mlimo's call to battle was well timed. Only a few months earlier, the British South Africa Company's Administrator General for Matabeleland, Leander Starr Jameson, had sent most of his troops and armaments to fight the Transvaal Republic in the ill-fated Jameson Raid. This left the country’s defenses in disarray. In June 1896, the Shona too joined the war, but they stayed mostly on the defensive. The British would immediately send troops to suppress the Ndebele and the Shona, only it would take months and cost many hundreds of lives before the territory would be once again be at peace. Shortly after learning of the assassination of Mlimo at the hands of the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, Cecil Rhodes showed great courage when he boldly walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills and persuaded the impi to lay down their arms, thus bringing the war to a close on October 1897.^[1] Matabeleland and Mashonaland would continue on only as provinces of the larger state of Rhodesia.

Birthplace of Scouting

It was during the Second Matabele War that Baden-Powell and Burnham first met and began their life-long friendship. In mid-June 1896, during a scouting patrol in Matobo Hills, Burnham first taught Baden-Powell woodcraft, the fundamentals of scouting. As a boy growing up in the American Old West during the Indian Wars, Burnham had learned woodcraft from Indian trackers, frontiersman, and cowboys, so as a scout in Africa he was simply practicing the art and applying it as a soldier. So impressed was Baden-Powell by Burnham's scouting spirit the he fondly told people he "sucked him dry" of all he could possibly tell. Woodcraft was not generally practiced outside of the American Old West, but it was vitally needed in places like colonial Africa, so Baden-Powell and Burnham discussed how this art might be taught to young boys. These young boy scouts envisioned by Baden-Powell and Burnham during those evenings camping in the Matobo Hills was one of fighters first whose business it was to face their enemies with both valor and good cheer, and as social workers afterward. Baden-Powell went on to refine the concept of scouting and eventually become the founder of the international scouting movement.

British Rule

Main articles: Southern Rhodesia, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

British settlement of Rhodesia continued, and by October 1923, the territory of Southern Rhodesia was annexed to the crown. The Ndebele and Shona thereby became British subjects and the colony received its first basic constitution and had its first election. Ten years later, the British South Africa Company ceded its mineral rights to the territory's government for £2 million, and a deep recession of the 1930s gave way to a post-war boom of British immigration.
After the onset of self-government, a major issue in Southern Rhodesia was the relationship between the white settlers and the Ndebele and Shona populations. One major consequence was that the white settlers were able to enact discriminatory legislation concerning land tenure. The Land Apportionment and Tenure Acts reserved 50% of the land area for exclusively white ownership. 25% was designated “Tribal Trust Land” which was available to be worked on a collective basis by black tribes and where individual titled ownership was not possible.
In 1965, the white-settler government of Rhodesia declared its independence. Initially, this state maintained its loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II as "Queen of Rhodesia" (a title to which she never consented) but by 1970 even that link was severed, and Rhodesia became a totally independent republic.

Sovereign Rhodesia

Main articles: Rhodesia

The white-ruled Rhodesian government struggled to obtain international recognition and faced serious economic difficulties as a result of international sanctions. At first, a few states did support the white minority government of Rhodesia, most notably South Africa, Portugal, Israel, and some Arab states. Over time, however, even that support faded. In 1972, the Shona, led by Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union began a lengthy armed campaign against Rhodesia’s white minority government in what became known as the "Bush War" by White Rhodesians and as the "Second ''Chimurenga''" (or ''rebellion'' in Shona) by supporters of the guerrillas. The white regime’s ability to fight the war steadily eroded and the government fell in 1979. For a brief period, Rhodesia reverted to the status of British colony, but in early 1980, elections were held and the ZANU party, led by Mugabe, exercised their rule over the independent nation of Zimbabwe. Matabeleland and Mashonaland would continue on as provinces of this new nation.

Zimbabwe

Main articles: Zimbabwe

Following independence in 1980, Zimbabwe initially made significant economic and social progress, but tensions between the Shona and the Ndebele began to surface once again. Internal security worsened as the Ndebele resorted to terrorism to challenge Mugabe and his majority Shona ruled party. The government responded with a series of military campaigns against the terrorists and Mugabe was accused of numerous atrocities against civilians in Matabeleland. By early 1984, the military disrupted food supplied in Matabeleland and much of the Ndebele population was left starving. The Shona and the Ndebele finally reconciled their political differences by late 1987, although the economy continued to sputter never recovered.
In the early 1990s, a controversial Land Acquisition Act was passed calling for the Mugabe government to purchase half of the mostly white-owned commercial farming land at below-market prices to redistribute land to black peasants. Matabeleland has rich central plains, watered by tributaries of the two rivers, the Zambezi and the Limpopo, allowing it to sustain cattle and consistently produce large amounts of cotton, sugar, and maize. But land grabbing, squatting, and repossessions of large white farms under Mugabe's program resulted in a 90% loss in productivity in large-scale farming, ever higher unemployment, and hyper-inflation. White residents fled the country and strikes further crippled production prompting ever more severe repression by the government. The AIDS virus too has had a significant impact on this nation; more than 25% of the adult population is currently infected.

See also

★ Beneath the Zanu PF, MDC feud - notes for Mbeki Newzimbabwe.com - George Mkhwananzi

References

1. The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Land Warfare: An Illustrated World View, , Byron, Farwell, W. W. Norton & Company, , ISBN 0393047709

External links

★ The History of the Ndebele people {Zimbabwe}