By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu

KING LOBENGULA’s trust in the London Missionary Society’s pastors was prevailing over his mind when he said in October 1888 to the Rev Charles D. Helm: “Letha usiba Helemu ngidwebe kuleli iphepha lika Rhodes” or some similar words just before he affixed an ‘X’ on what was soon to be called ‘the Rudd Concession’.
He had been heard on several occasions saying that missionaries never lied to black people, a belief that was known to Cecil John Rhodes, hence their (Rhodes and Lobengula) use of Rev Helm as their official interpreter in their discussions.
Rhodes had corrupted the Rev Helm to do his bidding, and Lobengula, meanwhile, believed that Rhodes’ messengers could not mislead him, as the Rev Helm would protect the Ndebele state interests by maintaining an impeccably high degree of honesty as an interpreter.
The truth soon inevitably surfaced that he had been duped, and that Rhodes’ actual intention was to grab his whole kingdom sooner rather than later.
The Rev Helm could only say that he had interpreted audible and written words and not unexpressed intentions, particularly those of Rhodes who was not even at the occasion personally.
King Lobengula was, however, not aware of the reverend’s Cape Town bank account into which Rhodes’ company deposited a thousand pounds sterling yearly.
The controversy about King Lobengula’s granting, or otherwise, of the concession should be looked at from four perspectives: the local or purely internal Ndebele political and military setting; the Ndebele territorial hegemony covering the region between the Limpopo and the Zambesi River.
The military, political and economic developments affecting the South African region from the Cape to the Limpopo, and throughout Bechuanaland right up to Germany West Africa, now Namibia at that time should also be taken into account.
In the territory effectively administered by King Lobengula, his chiefs and regiments, sentiment was very strong that the Ndebele state should not only be protected, but that it should continue and not collapse.
News had filtered through from Zululand that King Cetshwayo’s army had routed a British contingent at Isandlwana Hill in 1879, a source of much pride among Lobengula’s Nguni-dominated regiments.
That historic military feat was, however, soon rendered relatively unimportant by subsequent British re-inforcements which led to the ultimate defeat of the Zulus and the arrest and detention of their king, Cetshwayo.
King Lobengula was very clearly aware of the technological superiority of the gun over the spear, hence his insistence on a clause in the concession granting him
1 000 guns plus some ammunition.
The Ndebele monarch viewed the whole territory lying between the Zambezi River in the north and the Limpopo in the south as his domain.
That was why he granted Rhodes the right to mine and farm in Mashonaland, a region comprising, at that time, 32 chiefdoms, each of which considered itself an independent and sovereign state.
As for King Lobengula, those chiefdoms were his kingdom’s tributary territories that were expected to pay annual or some form of regular tribute to him as the supreme king.
Those chiefdoms, plus those of the neigbhouring Tonga, Nambya, Venda and Kalanga people were subjected to occasional Ndebele military raids whose targets were able-bodied personnel, livestock, grain and whatever else was considered valuable or useful.
Across the Limpopo River, the Boers, under President Paul Kruger as from 1879, regarded themselves as a sovereign (Dutch) South African Republic.
Massive gold deposits had been discovered in 1886 on an area that later became one of the world’s most important sources of that precious mineral.
Kruger and his allies, such as General Joubert and General Smit, wanted the SAR to expand, and thus turned on nearby Swazi people whose ineffectual king, Umbadine, was compelled to retreat into a mountainous region while he was trying to get Britain to take his kingdom under its wing as a protectorate.
Basutoland and Bechuanaland had already become British protectorates and were more or less enjoying relative protection from covetous Boer filibusters.
Those Boers treated Lobengula’s kingdom with some respect due to its fearless regiments and also because they were very much aware that the British, through Rhodes at the Cape, would not allow them to seize that region as that could close their road into the African interior.
King Lobengula must have been aware of the Boer versus British rivalry over his kingdom.
The LMS pastors were undoubtedly keeping him abreast with information about what was going on in the adjacent South African region, and very likely advised him about what action to take.
In addition to that political aspect, they also enlightened him about industrial and commercial developments, hence his strong wish for the Ngwato king, Machen, to let wagons of commercial travellers pass through his country untaxed.
We also, sooner rather than later, find King Lobengula owning a gold mine in the Hartley (Chegutu) area.
So, his decision to grant Rhodes a concession could have been influenced by a wish to take his kingdom a rung higher industrially and commercially.
Diamonds were being mined at Kimberley and some of his people were known to travel all the way there to work on these mines.
They returned with gifts for their king.
At the time of the granting of the Rudd Concession (1888), gold mining on the Reef had been undertaken for two years.
It is quite possible, if not most likely, that the Ndebele king was aware of all this economic development and wanted to modernise his own country’s life.
He had granted a concession earlier to the Tati Company to prospect and mine in a territory extending for several hundreds of kilometres in his kingdom’s western region, bordering the land of the Ngwato (Tswana) people further to the west.
The territory came to be known as the Tati Concession (TC) area, and the Tati Company opened only one mine, the Monarch Mine, 16 km or so north-east of where Francistown was later established.
The company abandoned that mine soon after the discovery of gold on the Reef in the then SAR and joined the rush to that El Dorado.
The Tati Concession territory, stretching from the lower Shashi River, and extending northwards up to the Makgarakgari salt pans, was later clandestinely given to the Ngwato Tribal Authority (by Britain and Rhodes’ company) for assisting the British Government and Rhodes’ company to defeat King Lobengula’s forces in 1893.
At the head of the British Government at that time was Lord Salisbury.
The word ‘Tati’ is a corruption of the Kalanga word ‘Dati’ , the name of a river that was the TC’s western boundary, the eastern border being a three-strand barbed wire fence erected in 1908.
Lobengula also gave a German prospector, Karl Mauch, a mining concession before that granted to Rhodes.
Mauch later sold his concession to Rhodes’ company.
We should not look at King Lobengula as a primitive Nguni monarch whose thinking was decades or centuries behind the then current prevailing industrial trends, especially mining.
If that were the case, there could not have been a monetary clause in the Rudd concession.
It is interesting to note that Lobengula’s Ndebeles have a song about them crossing the Limpopo River on their way to look for money.
The immortal composition goes: “Sawuwela, sawuwela, sawula sibili! Sawuwel’ uNgulukudela, siyofuna imali. Bapina obaba? Basemazulwini, bawuwel’ uNgulukudela beyofuna imali!”
(We crossed the Ngulukudela, we really crossed the Ngulukudela, we were going to seek (for) money! Where are our fathers? They are in the heavens; they crossed the Ngulukudela, to seek (for) money.”
We do not know when that song was composed, but we are very much aware that some Ndebele, Kalanga, Venda, Tonga, Nambya and Shangaan able-bodied men from what are now Zimbabwe’s southern, western and south-eastern regions travelled to either Kimberley or to Johannesburg to work on the mines as a matter of tradition.
With Rhodes’ BSAC as his eastern neighbours, Lobengula’s days and those of his kingdom were clearly numbered because Rhodes was obviously going to use the controversial concession to achieve his imperial dream of turning the whole of Africa from the Cape to Cairo into a British colonial possession.
All that was needed was a pretext to launch a military attack against Lobengula’s administration, something that he did with the connivance of his right-hand man, Dr Leander Starr Jameson just before the end of 1893.
It was significant that Rhodes’ Pioneer Column consisted of 500 armed military personnel, and only 192 prospective miners and farmers.
That indicated the actual intentions of Cecil John Rhodes about Lobengula’s kingdom’s future.