By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu

WHILE Britain and the Southern Rhodesian white settler-minority were consolidating their political and economic grip on the country, the black people were quietly trying to keep the revolutionary fire alive, albeit against massive security odds.
Shortly after the Rhodes-Mandebele Matopo Indaba of 1897, King Lobengula’s oldest son, Njube, tried to revive the Ndebele kingship by organising some Ndebele chiefs to install him as the Ndebele King.
King Lobengula had crossed the Zambezi at the end of 1893, following his defeat by Cecil John Rhodes.
He was never seen again south of the Zambezi River but word came in about 1920 or early 1921 that he had died near Lundazi in what is now Zambia’s Eastern Province where he had been given asylum by his cousin, King Mpezeni Jele of the Angoni.
In Matabeleland, the feeling among some Ndebele chiefs was that Rhodes and his fellow white settlers should be left to run the country undisturbed.
That sentiment was held particularly by those chiefs who had been appointed by Rhodes and his British South Africa Company (BSAC) after the 1896-97 uprising.
There was also a feeling that King Lobengula would return sooner or later at the head of a huge Ndebele army, wipe out the BSAC and seize power once more.
Those who held that optimistic feeling argued it would thus be ill-advised to install Njube as king as it would create a situation more or less similar to when Nkulumane was enthroned on the suspicion that his father King Mzilikazi was dead.
There was, of course, a non-Nguni group comprising BaKalanga, BaVenda, MaTonga, BaNambya, MaJawunda and BaShangwe who said they had not lost anything by the defeat of King Lobengula and would not sacrifice their lives in an attempt to install Njube or to revive the Ndebele kingship.
So, Njube eventually gave up his wish to resuscitate the Ndebele monarchy or to have himself crowned as his father’s successor.
He would occasionally, in the early evening, ride into town, dismount and tie his horse to a tree near where Exchange Bar was later built, enter into a tarven there to everybody else’s surprise.
After his death, Queen MaDlodlo of koNkosikazi became the nominal cultural symbol of Ndebele kingship.
Hopes of using that monarchy as the centre or agency for liberating the country faded with the death of King Lobengula’s various sons, wife and grandchildren.
Meanwhile, in Bulawayo in 1923, an organisation called the Rhodesia Bantu Voters Association (RBVA) was launched under the presidency of a South African-born Xhosa, Garner Sojini.
Sojini had come to live in Matabeleland in 1899 and was fairly well-educated that he could interpret the BSAC’s statutes and proclamations.
On July 25 1924, he wrote a letter to the resident British commissioner, lieutenant-colonel Sir John Robert, sending him RBVA’s minutes of a meeting held in Bulawayo on July 14 1924.
Sojini said the RBVA minutes were for Sir Robert’s approval.
He wrote that he had been told that Sir Robert’s sympathy and tactfulness in dealing with the ‘Native Problem in Mauritius’ had ‘left nothing that could be desired’.
Most of the black people who could communicate with the country’s colonial authorities were of South African origin, many of whom had come with the Pioneer Column in 1890.
In 1922, some of them formed the Union Bantu Vigilance Association (UBVA).
On May 12 1922, that organisation wrote a letter in Zulu to the Native Affairs Minister, H. M. G. Jackson.
The letter was signed by five men who referred to themselves as ‘ezako zinceku’.
The English equivalent of ‘ezako izinceku’ is ‘your serfs’.
The major complaint of both the UBVA and the RBVA was the Southern Rhodesian regime’s demand for black people to carry passes whenever they were travelling in the country.
Official correspondence from those organisations to the Rhodesian regime is characterised by terms expressing craven respect.
That should be understood in the context of the then prevailing inter-black-white relationship whose roots were in the recent slave trade in which black people were the commodities and white people the buyers.
It should also be understood in the context of the very-recent Cape Colony Great Trek experience and a general drifting northwards by the Boers, resulting in the displacement and the dispossession, especially of livestock, of the black people.
The imfencane/difaqane caused by King Tshaka’s ruthless military expansion southwards and northwards created massive socio-economic disruption and destitutes, some of whom later joined the BSAC Pioneer Column and settled as amaFengu in Rhodesia.
Those people felt that their existence was very much dependent on Rhodes and his BSAC.
Had Rhodes and the BSAC not brought them out of dire misery to a land full of hope, if not of milk and honey, they asked among themselves?
Another group of destitutes who joined the BSAC’s Pioneer Column from the very beginning, or a few years later in Mashonaland or Rhodesia, were victims of the unforgettable massive 1857 Xhosa tragedy caused by Nonqause, a daughter of Mhlakaza, who ordered all black people in her chief’s area to burn all their grain and to destroy their livestock because she had been told in a vision that all Xhosa people who had died in the past would resurrect, and that field would be filled with all types of crops and the Xhosa nation would drive all white settlers into the ocean where they would perish.
Her bidding was done, resulting in a terrible famine.
Some Xhosas became virtual slaves of the Boers; others were looked after by some missionaries and, years later, some survivors joined Rhodes on his imperialistic excursion into Mashonaland.
It was, therefore, little wonder that those who interacted with the Southern Rhodesian administration said they were serfs of those colonial rulers.
While they felt it inappropriate to demand or assert their democratic rights, to them it was a bounden duty to express their loyalty to the British Crown.
We thus come across Martha Ngano, President of the Bantu Women League, writing to the Honourable Lady Rodwell of Government House, Salisbury, on May 21 1929:
“On behalf of the mothers of Bulawayo, I pen your Excellency these grievances so that when you visit Bulawayo again, particularly our Location, and see the conditions in which (we) are living with our children, you will be able to give a good reply.
“The cottages made for us are two small rooms with no place for a door …”
“May God bless you and make you a mother and deliverer both spiritual and national for Rhodesia Bantu children. We are loyal to the British Throne and Empire. We want to be honest to God and to our King George V. God save the King.”
The above letter indicates how what we may refer to as the Rhodesian black elite related to the settler-colonial administration.
That type of African leadership represented a foreign minority, and was not replaced or supported by the majority of the indigenous people after the office bearers had died.
It could not, of course, lead the country out of colonialism because it was loyal to colonial authorities.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. sgwakuba@gmail.com