IN a previous article we focused on how, during Easter holidays, hordes of former white Rhodesians flock to forts and other Rhodesian memorials dotted around the country sprucing up their former monuments.
This week we look at how the 1893 co-existence with the Matabele Kingdom finally proved impossible in relation to Fort Victoria and other minor forts and how they were built to secure lines of communication and contain rebel concentrations of the Matabele.
A Matabele army, raiding and pillaging the local Shona in the neighborhood of Fort Victoria, forced that town into a laager in the fort on July 12 1893 and even demanded the surrender of those Shona who had found refuge within the fort.
For six weeks, the women and children remained permanently in the fort, initially manned by 80 men.
This fort was, more accurately, a defensible administrative centre and consisted, much as it does today, of the post office, courthouse and goal surrounded by a high brick wall with a firing step and two towers containing maxim guns at opposite corners.
The towers still stand, but were originally unroofed and of bare brickwork.
The hospital was set up in the Magistrate’s office, while the Dominican Sisters running the hospital lived in a hut in the prison yard.
Although the Matabele withdrew on July 18, this incident sparked the inevitable war which resulted in the rapid defeat of the Matabele and the ousting of King Lobengula by columns from Salisbury (Harare) and Victoria (Masvingo).
They were reinforced by a Southern Column, consisting of a detachment of the Bechuanaland Border Police under Lieutenant Colonel H. Goold Adams and volunteers under Commandant P. J. Raaff (Raaf’s Rangers), from Tuli.
This column was the only one to establish permanent fortifications.
At Empandeni, Fort Adams was built on November 3 1893, three kilometres from the site of this column’s one serious battle at Singuesi on the previous day.
The fort was only occupied for three days.
At Mangwe, the southern entrance to the Matopos, a further fort was built.
These two forts were only temporary timber and earthwork stockades around the laager camps, built when attacks were expected, but deserted as the column left.
The precariousness of the first eight years is highlighted by the events of 1896-97.
Within days of the outbreak of the Matabele Rebellion on March 23 1896, no European or European property survived in Matabeleland outside the laagers of Bulawayo, Gwelo (Gweru), Belingwe (Mberengwa) and Mangwe.
Bulawayo was surrounded by 15 000 Matabele, 2 000 of these armed with breech-loading rifles, while inside Bulawayo, there were only 800 men with 580 rifles.
The police force for the whole of Matabeleland consisted of 48 men.
Their slender hope of survival was clearly realised and made explicit by the Administrator, Earl Grey, immediately after the outbreak: “The position is not pleasant.
“Bulawayo is a beleaguered town with barely one month’s supplies, more than 500 kilometres from its base, Mafeking.
“Under the most favourable circumstances, transport wagons take a good deal over a month from Mafeking to Bulawayo.”
And circumstances were not favourable; the roads were in bad condition, rinderpest had destroyed all the transport oxen, mules had to be used and the Matabele threatened every road.
The tiny force was clearly unable to attempt to defeat the Matabele in their hill strongholds of the Matopos and so imperial troops entered the country, but they could only provide temporary relief.
Grey estimated that to feed the horses and mules of the imperial troops alone would require that 1 000 wagon loads of grain be brought into the country before the rains of 1896.
Lady Grey wrote in August: “Starvation stares the country in the face.
“It is not a question of money – no amount of money could save the situation when the rainy season comes or if the war is continuing and all the troops are still in the country.”
It was the commander-in-chief of the imperial and local troops, Major-Gen Sir Frederick Carrington, who, within two weeks of arriving in the country at the beginning of June 1896, determined a solution.
Forts had already been built to secure the lines of communication.
Now they were to be sited and built to contain and dominate all known rebel concentrations in the country, wherever they had been met.
This strategy was to save the settlers and was already in operation and having effect when Rhodes’ first peace indaba halted hostilities in the Matopos in August 1896.
The policy came fully into its own after the first indaba.
This had made it clear that most of the Matabele wanted peace, but were hesitant to lay down their arms, particularly outside the Matopos.
Therefore, forts were to be sited to make it clear to the ‘rebels’ that the European was ‘determined to stay’, to protect ‘friendly natives’, to encourage ‘rebels’ to surrender and provide a centre to which they could hand in their arms.
Again, orders emphasised that ‘offensive action was not to be taken’ from the forts or ‘hostilities provoked’, though in Mashonaland at the end of the rains in early 1897, forts were sited near the rebel grain lands so that these could be destroyed if necessary.
The strategy was successful that by December 1896, the imperial troops could leave Rhodesia, with the protection of the country remaining in the hands of 1 200 men of the newly formed British South Africa Police, reinforced by only 200 men of the 7th Hussars.
They manned the newly erected forts, almost all of which were by now administrative centres with civilian Native Commissioners in overall direction of pacification.
By this means, a few men could control the whole country, primarily by establishing a psychological dominance over the ‘rebels’ without bloodshed or resort to arms.
This dominance was so clear that only one fort was in fact ever attacked.
At the start of the rebellion, the Tuli Road, skirting the eastern Matopos, was cut by the ‘rebels’ and was impassable.
It became urgent to protect the only remaining link with the south – the road skirting the northern and western Matopos leading to Mangwe and then, free of danger, southwards.
The protection of this road and telegraph line became the responsibility of Captain Fredrick Selous, playing his last part in Rhodesia’s history.