Robert Baden-Powell of Gilwell - The Matabele Campaign

And this is what we find is the situation of affairs.

Matabeleland had been captured by the Chartered Company’s troops, acting from Mashonaland, in 1893, and Lobengula driven to his death as a fugitive. Since then the country had been governed by the Administrator and his magistrates and native commissioners in the various districts into which the country was divided.

By 1896 the white population had increased to nearly four thousand, guarded by an armed police force distributed about the country. At the end of 1895 the greater part of this police was taken from Rhodesia, in order to take part in Jameson’s raid into the Transvaal.

Just about the same time the terrible scourge of rinderpest came down upon the land. Three years before, it had made a start in Somaliland, and had steadily and persistently worked its way down the continent of Africa – and it now crossed the mighty barrier of the Zambesi, and was sweeping over the great cattle–country, Matabeleland. With a view to checking its ravages, the Government took all possible steps for preventing the transmission of infection, and, amongst others, that of slaughtering sound cattle was adopted. This procedure was perfectly incomprehensible to the native mind, and before long it was mooted among them that the white man’s idea in slaughtering the cattle was to reduce the native to the lowest straits, and to starve him to death.

The natives had only been very partially beaten in the war in 1893, and the memory of it rankled strongly in their mind. They had thought the war was merely a passing raid, and it was only now they were realising that the whites had come to stay, and to oust them from their land. They were only waiting for their opportunity to rise and drive out their invaders.

Then, ever since the war, there had been a partial drought over the land, and what little crops there were had been devoured by unprecedented flights of locusts. All these misfortunes tended to spread among the people a general feeling of sullen discontent.

And this was increased to a feeling of bitter resentment against the whites, because they, the Matabele, found that the one remedy for want which in the old days they had been wont to ply so readily – namely, the wholesale raiding of their weaker neighbours – was under the new régime denied them. Nowadays, not only was every such raid prevented or punished as unlawful, but even in their home life their liberties were interfered with, and trifling thefts of cattle from a neighbour’s herd, or the quiet putting away of a lazy slave or of a quarrelsome stepmother, were now treated as crimes by policemen of their own blood and colour, but creatures of the white man, strutting among them with as much consequence and power as any of the royal indunas.

These things developed their hatred against the whites, and served as plausible reasons for their conduct when the chiefs came to be questioned later on in giving in their surrender.

Meanwhile, the chiefs and headmen, hoping to get back their ancient powers, fomented this feeling for all that they were worth. And they had a ductile mass to handle, for to the vast majority of their people the question of rights and wrongs was an unknown quantity, but the lust of blood – especially blood of white men, when, as they anticipated, it could be got with little danger to themselves – was an irresistible incentive.

The withdrawal of the armed forces from the country for the Transvaal raid gave them their opportunity.

The Matabele have no regular religion beyond a reverence for the souls of ancestors, and for an oracle–deity adopted from the Mashonas, whom they call the M’limo. The M’limo is an invisible god, who has three priests about the country, one in the north–east beyond Inyati, one in the south in the Matopo hills, and one south–west near Mangwe. The pure–bred Matabele, as well as the aboriginal natives, the Makalakas and the Maholis, all go to consult these priests of the M’limo as oracles, and place a blind belief in all they say. In addition to the three high priests, there are four warrior–chiefs of the M’limo. These men working in with the priests brought about the outbreak of rebellion. Three of these warrior–indunas are Matabele, the fourth – Uwini – heads the Makalakas.

Choosing well their opportunity, when, as they thought, all the white fighting men had left the country, and none but women, children, and dotards were left behind, they spread the message through the land – with that speed which only native messages can take. They called on all the tribes to arm themselves, and to assemble on a certain moon round three sides of Buluwayo. The town was to be rushed in the night, and the whites to be slaughtered without quarter to any. The road to Mangwe was to be left conspicuously open, so that any whites who might escape their notice would take the hint and fly from the country. Buluwayo was not to be destroyed, as it would serve again as the royal kraal for Lobengula, who had returned to life again. After the slaughter at Buluwayo the army would break up into smaller impis, and go about the land to kill all outlying farmers and to loot their farms. The M’limo further promised that the white men’s bullets would, in their flight, be changed to water, and their cannon–shells would similarly turn into eggs.

The plan was not a bad one, but in one important particular it miscarried, and so lost to the Kafirs the very good chance they had of wiping out the white men.

About 24th March the outbreak began – but prematurely. In their eagerness for blood some bands of rebels, acting contrary to their instructions, worked their wicked will on outlying settlers and prospectors before attempting the night surprise on Buluwayo. That was their mistake – it gave the alarm to the whites in town and enabled them to prepare their defence in good time.

Among the Insiza Hills, some thirty–five miles east of Buluwayo, on that fateful day, seven white men with their coloured servants were butchered at Edkins Store, and at the Nellie Reef Maddocks a miner was murdered, while a few miles farther on a peaceable farming family were brutally done to death. The white–haired old grandfather, the mother, two grown–up girls, a boy, and three little yellow–haired children – all bashed and mangled.

At another place a bride, just out from the peace and civilisation of home, had her happy dream suddenly wrecked by a rush of savages into the farmstead. Her husband was struck down, but she managed to escape to the next farm, some four miles distant – only to find its occupants already fled. Ignorant of the country and of the people, the poor girl gathered together what tinned food she could carry, and, making her way to the river, she made herself a grassy nest among the rocks, where she hoped to escape detection. For a few terrible days and nights she existed there, till the Matabele came upon her tracks, and shortly stoned her to death – another added to their tale of over a hundred and fifty victims within a week.

The only comfort is that their gruesome fate saved many other lives, for the news spread fast, and as more reports from every side came in of murdered whites, those in Buluwayo realised that the rising was a general one, and merciless. They promptly took their measures for defence.

The laagers were formed, as I have described, to accommodate the seven hundred women and children in the place; while the eight hundred men were organised in troops, and armed and horsed in an incredibly short space of time.

Patrols were promptly sent out to bring in outlying farmers, and to gather information as to the rebels’ moves and numbers.

Ere long the rebel forces were closing round Buluwayo. North, east, and south they lay, to the number of seven thousand at the least. Throughout the country their numbers must have been but little under ten to thirteen thousand.