An African Adventure

by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

Upon Lobengula's suggestion it was decided to occupy Mashonaland first. This was achieved without any trouble and the British flag was raised on what is now the site of Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. Most of the members of the expedition remained as settlers, and farms sprang up on the veldt. The Company had to organize a police force to patrol the land and keep off predatory natives. But this was purely incidental to the larger troubles that now crowded thick and fast. In the South the Boers launched an expedition to occupy Matabeleland by force and it had to be headed off. To the east rose friction with the Portuguese and a Rhodesian contingent was compelled to occupy part of Portuguese East Africa until the boundary line was adjusted.

In 1893 came the first of the events that made Rhodesia a storm center. A Matabele regiment raided the new town of Victoria and killed some of the Company's native servants. The Matabeles then went on the warpath and Dr. Jameson took the field against them. For five weeks a bitter struggle raged. It ended with the defeat and disappearance of Lobengula and the occupation of Bulawayo by the Company forces. This brought the whole of Matabeleland under the direct authority of the British South Africa Company. The campaign cost the Company $500,000.

Three years of peace and progress followed. Railway construction started in two directions. One line was headed from the south through Bechuanaland toward Bulawayo and another from Beira, the Indian Ocean port in Portuguese East Africa, westward toward Salisbury. Gold mines were opened and farms extended. At the end of 1895 came the Jameson Raid. Practically the entire force under the many-sided Doctor was recruited from the Rhodesian police and they were all captured by the Boers. Rhodesia was left defenceless.

The Matabeles seized this moment to strike again. Ever since the defeat of 1893 they had been restless and discontented. Various other causes contributed to the uprising. One is peculiarly typical of the African savage. An outbreak of rinderpest, a disease hitherto unknown in Southern Africa, came down from the North and ravaged the cattle herds. In order to check the advance of the pest the Government established a clear belt by shooting all the cattle in a certain area. It was impossible for the Matabeles to understand the wisdom of this procedure. They only saw it as an outrage committed by the white men on their property for they were extensive cattle owners. In addition many died after eating infected meat and they also held the settlers responsible. The net result of it all was a sudden descent upon the white settlements and scores of white men, women and children were slaughtered.

This time the operations against them were on a large scale. The present Lord Plumer, who commanded the Fourth British Army in France against the Germans,—he was then a Lieutenant Colonel—came up with eight hundred soldiers and drove the Matabeles into the fastnesses of the Matopos,—a range of hills fifty miles long and more than twenty wide. Here the savages took refuge in caves and could not be driven out.

You now reach one of the remarkable feats in the life of Cecil Rhodes. The moment that the second Matabele war began he hastened northward to the country that bore his name. As soon as the Matabeles took refuge in the Matopos he boldly went out to parley with them. With three unarmed companions, one of them an interpreter, he set up a camp in the wilds and sent emissaries to the syndicate of the chiefs who had succeeded Lobengula. He had become Premier of the Cape Colony, was head of the great DeBeers Diamond Syndicate, and had other immense interests. He was also Managing Director of the British South Africa Company and the biggest stockholder. He was determined to protect his interests and at the same time preserve the integrity of the country that he loved so well.

He exposed himself every night to raids by the most blood-thirsty savages in all Africa. Plumer's command was camped nearly five miles away but Rhodes refused a guard.

Rhodes waited patiently and his perseverance was eventually rewarded. One by one the chiefs came down from the hills and succumbed to the persuasiveness and personality of this remarkable man who could deal with wild and naked warriors as successfully as he could dictate to a group of hard-headed business men. After two months of negotiating the Matabeles were appeased and permanent peace, so far as the natives were concerned, dawned in Rhodesia. After his feat in the Matopos the Matabeles called Rhodes "The Man Who Separated the Fighting Bulls." It was during this period in Rhodesia that Rhodes discovered the place which he called "The View of the World," and where his remains now lie in lonely grandeur.

At Groote Schuur, the Rhodes house near Capetown, which he left as the permanent residence of the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, I saw a prized souvenir of the Matopos conferences with the Matabeles. On the wall in Rhodes' bedroom hangs the faded picture of an old and shriveled Matabele woman. When I asked General Smuts to tell me who she was he replied: "That is the woman who acted as the chief negotiator between Rhodes and the rebels." I afterwards found out that she was one of the wives of Umziligazi, father of Lobengula, and a noted Zulu chieftain. Rhodes never forgot the service she rendered him and caused the photograph of her to be taken.

Following the last Matabele insurrection the Imperial Government which is represented in Rhodesia by a Resident Commissioner assumed control of the natives. The Crown was possibly guided by the precedent of Natal, where a premature Responsible Government was followed by two Zulu wars which well-nigh wrecked the province. It has become the policy of the Home Government not to permit a relatively small white population to rule the natives. Whatever the influence, Rhodesia has had no trouble with the natives since Rhodes made the peace up in the hills of the Matopos.