…revisiting invasion of Southern Africa

AFRICA, before the coming of the Europeans, had Muslims to the north and west; Christians in Ethiopia and Egypt, while central and southern Africa had the hunhu/ubuntu doctrine engraved in their communities and traditional ways of governance.
The literal translation of hunhu/ubuntu in English is ‘humanness’ and to be without hunhu/ubuntu, ‘inhumanness’.
Africans knew God and the difference between right and wrong before the coming of the Europeans.
In East Africa, there were Arabian traders, Muslims who lived peacefully with the people of inland Africa.
Along the coast just below the horn of Africa, the Arabic language was gradually added to the indigenous Bantu language (similar to chiShona) of that region to form the Creole known as kiSwahili.
Muslim rulers who were known as Emirs operated in south-east Africa as traders and maintained good relationships with the locals of the lands encompassing Tanganyika, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe for hundreds of years.
The world map used by the Muslims before the coming of the Europeans was upside down as compared to the one we use these days.
To the old world, Europe was at the bottom and southern African countries, like South Africa and Zimbabwe, were at the very top.
Zimbabwe was called Mwene waMthwakazi.
Pure gold and other precious stones found in this land were known to the Ottoman Empire and other Arab trading groups.
Africans would mine the gold from inland Zimbabwe and bring it to the Mazambuko (Mozambique) coast via the Sofala trading route.
Africans would also bring cattle and other raw materials to the coastal markets and in return acquire cloths, beads, wines and other things they desired from the East.
Coins from China would reach Masvingo and beads from Yemen would be found in Sena, Mozambique, Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe in South Africa with the same colours, styles and order.
Weaving technology would also be evidenced by archeological findings in the lands between southern Arabia and South Africa.
This proves there was a sophisticated, developed trade and governing system in Southern Africa before the coming of the whites.
Besides trade and mining, Southern Africa’s eastern coast was rich in fish which were commonly taken inland to Zimbabwe and sold dried and salted.
Another important resource was sea travel.
Mazambuko was given its name because of the boats called zambuko or sambok in English which were used by Africans to cross (yambuka) the Indian Ocean to Arabia, India and Madagascar.
Watermelons are only known and grown in China today because they came from the east African coast by way of sailing traders.
Watermelons are thus known as xigua in Chinese; meaning ‘Western melon’, because to China, Africa is oriented West.
The prosperity we once enjoyed was lost to a new type of people who began pestering Africa for its fertile lands, good climate, natural resources and skilled, strong and large labour force.
The first of these slavers and colonisers were from Portugal.
To fully comprehend how these whites came to Africa, it is important to note some key historical events.
Southern Europe, particularly Spain (Iberia) and southern France were under the leadership of black Muslims from Arabia and West Africa called Moors from around 700 to 1492 CE.
The Moors had a superior culture to the Europeans who were in the Dark Ages. Northern Europeans were Barbarian tribes ruled over by Catholic priests.
They envied the Moors and partook Islam so as to enter Moorish universities like Taledo.
The Portuguese were the biggest beneficiaries of Moorish education and they learnt navigation of seas and land, mathematics, astronomy and other things from Moorish institutions.
Around 1453 CE, when the Moors were losing power, Portugal managed to use its newly acquired skills of navigation to sail to the Cape Verde Island called San Thome and they invaded it.
They enslaved the indigenous people and began deporting some undesirable Portuguese whites to San Thome who practised much miscegenation and produced a large mixed-race population.
They began taking slaves to Portugal from West African countries like Senegal. Benin, which is now a part of Nigeria, was an ally of the Portuguese slave traders and many people were taken away as slaves in Nigeria.
They were made to work in the sugar plantations of San Thome.
They soon found out there were other resources besides labour in this area and built a fort in Ghana (Elmina) to acquire gold.
The Portuguese grew exceedingly wealthy in the west coast of Africa and when competition began rising, they sought to discover other lands that could satiate their greed.
This would lead Portuguese sailors, such as Diego Cam, to places like Congo.
In Congo, the Portuguese met a friendly and hardworking community, which practised mixed-farming.
They initially embraced the Europeans and accepted to be evangelised by Catholic missionaries.
When they realised the Portuguese were trying to cunningly colonise them, the King of the Congo who had become Christian appealed to the King of Portugal for help, but received none.
Instead, his land was eventually attacked and plundered by the Portuguese and the people of Congo were killed and enslaved.
Neighbouring Angola was not spared by the Portuguese who stationed themselves in Luanda so as to acquire slaves from the southwest African coast.
The blacks of Angola were shipped to plantations in Brazil which had been conquered by the Portuguese after the Columbus voyages in 1492 CE.
In 1502 CE, the infamous Vasco da Gama led the first Portuguese sailors into east Africa via Tanganyika (Tanzania).
Fleets of Europeans began sailing to the coast of Zanzibar solely to fight over the Muslim Sultanates and Emirates.
By 1505 CE, Zanzibar, Mombasa and the rest of the Tanganyika coast had been taken over by the Portuguese.
The quantity and quality of gold that was found on the east African coast attracted the Portuguese and their ambition was to take over the gold trade.
They soon realised the coast was just the market and the gold was mined inland in places like Zimbabwe.
Sofala was wealthy because of the gold and cattle from the hinterland, so the Portuguese under Commander Pedro D’Anaya took it over in 1505 CE.
They made Sofala a regular stop-point for Portuguese sailors and began growing corn (maize) that they had acquired from the Americas.
This is how the maize we now use to make sadza came to this region. Prior to the coming of the Portuguese, Zimbabweans and other Southern Africans used millet, rapoko or sorghum grains to prepare sadza.
The Portuguese began plotting to take over the hinterland; a thing that even the Arabians dared not do, for they left the mining, livestock rearing and cultivation to the local people.
The Portuguese studied the area and found ruling at the Great Zimbabwe, the Mutapa. After realising the peace and order of the land was attributed to the fear of God (Mwari) and observance of hunhu/ubuntu, the Portuguese sought to win over the Zimbabweans non-militarily, but through evangelisation as they had done in Congo.
In 1560 CE, Goncalo da Silveira, a Catholic Jesuit from Portugal, was assigned to turn the heart of the Mutapa King from his traditional beliefs and to embrace Catholicism. The Portuguese were almost successful as Silveira began gaining favour from the King and winning converts among his people. That was until a group of advisors called VaMwenye (foreigners) who lived at the Zimbabwean court, but operated as far as the Mozambique coast convinced the Mutapa King that whites were evil and their religion would cause God (Mwari) to be angry and withdraw the rains, among other things.
The King listened to his advisors who soon after plotted the assassination of Silveira.
Had the Portuguese been successful, they would have done in Zimbabwe as they did in Congo.
Eventually they were confined to Mozambique.
However, the rest of Southern Africa’s woes were not over, for another group of whites namely the Dutch, would shortly after enter the region from the Cape in South Africa.