So, while I sympathize with the farmers who are being robbed of their land by the corrupt socialist government( the best pieces of confiscated land will, of course, go to the friends and families of the government officials), I also sympathize with the black population who was cleverly robbed of both mineral resources and lands by the international bankers and their corporate fronts.
Chapter 5
The Story of Southern Rhodesia (Continued)
For some time the Company's agents avoided direct contact with the Matabele people, confining their activities mainly to the region inhabited by the Mashonas who acknowledged Lobengula's overlordship. Here they proceeded to mine, to lay out settlements, and to build forts. But friction of a minor kind seems to have been constant.
Eighteen months passed. In May, 1891, the British Government, by Order in Council, assumed the powers of a Protectorate "within the parts of South Africa bounded by British Bechuanaland, the German Protectorate, the Rivers Chobe and Zambesi, the Portuguese possessions, and the South African Republic." Matabeleland and Mashonaland were comprised within this area. It might have been assumed that this action would have secured for the native inhabitants of the country the guidance and protection in their external relations to which, as protected subjects of the Crown, they were thenceforth entitled, and which the British Government was morally bound to extend to them.(1) But four months later we find the official representative of the British Government at Buluwayo (Mr. Moffat) an assenting party to a transaction by which the unfortunate Matabele ruler completed his undoing and that of his people. By this transaction, known as the Lippert Concession, Lobengula made over to a German banker of that name settled in the Transvaal, acting in association with an Englishman called Renny-Tailyour:
the sole and exclusive right, power and privilege for the full term of 100 years to lay out, grant, or lease, for such period or periods as he may think fit, farms, townships, building plots, and grazing areas, to impose and levy rents, licenses and taxes thereon, and to get in, collect and receive the same for his own benefit, to give and grant certificates in my name for the occupation of any farms, townships, building plots and grazing areas.
These rights and privileges were to apply only to such territories as were at the time, or might subsequently become, within the sphere of operations of the Chartered Company. The agreement appears to have superseded a precedent agreement with Mr. Renny-Tailyour, the text of which is not available.
It is clear that Lobengula could not have realised and did not, in fact, realise the significance of such an agreement. A careful perusal of the document reveals what was in the mind of the misguided African potentate. His idea was to appoint a reliable European bailiff, who would take the troublesome business of his relations with the white men off his hands, and protect his interests in his dealings with the Chartered Company. The opening passage of the agreement is explicit on this point: "Seeing that large numbers of white people are coming into my territories, and it is desirable that I should, once and for all, appoint some person to act for me in these respects." The consideration to be paid, "in lieu of the rates, rents, and taxes," which Mr. Lippert was to appropriate, amounted to £500 per annum and to £1,000 cash down. The relative modesty of these sums is a further indication that Lobengula imagined himself to be merely employing an agent who would rid him of the harassing perplexities in which he was becoming increasingly involved, and who would remit a moiety of the revenues to which he was entitled. In point of fact, however, the wording of the agreement was such that the Chartered Company, after having acquired it from Lippert, claimed on the strength thereof ownership over the whole of the land of the Matabele. In due course, Lippert disposed of his privileges to the Mr. Rudd, whose name will be familiar to readers of this story, the said Mr. Rudd promptly disposing of them to the Chartered Company!
It was mainly on the strength of the acquired "Lippert Concession" that twenty-three years later, the Chartered Company was to put forward, officially, its monstrous claim to the whole unalienated land of the country, meaning by "unalienated" land, all land not given or sold to white immigrants, i.e., the whole land of the country. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have now declared the Lippert Concession to be valueless as "a title deed to the unalienated land."(2)
Meantime friction increased between Lobengula and the Chartered Company, whose manager in Africa was the famous Dr. Jameson, author of the armed raid into the Transvaal, and eventually Prime Minister of the Union. Lord Knutsford, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, called the attention of the High Commissioner at the Cape to a statement published in London to the effect that everything possible was being done to provoke Lobengula. The trouble was first confined to the Company's dealings with the Mashonas. We obtain some indication of the Company's methods from the fact that the High Commissioner found it necessary to remind the Company's manager that, "no death sentence can be carried out without warrant." The reminder did not appear to inconvenience the Company's officials. Shortly afterwards a Mashona chief and his people having been credited, rightly or wrongly, with stealing cattle belonging to some white settlers, the chief's village was attacked by the Company's armed forces, the chief himself and twenty of his followers killed, and 47 head of cattle "lifted." This affair drew further expostulations from the High Commissioner, and from the Secretary of State for the Colonies: "The punishment inflicted in this case," wrote Sir Henry Lock, "appears utterly disproportionate to the original offence." "There is nothing in the information now before his Lordship," wrote Lord Knutsford, "which affords any justification of Captain Lendy's proceedings.... The full report by Captain Lendy subsequently received and forwarded, would, in Lord Knutsford's opinion, have justified much stronger terms of remonstrance than were used by the High Commissioner." But neither the High Commissioner nor the Secretary of State demanded the officer's retirement, and his services were retained by the Company.
Events were rapidly maturing for that direct collision with Lobengula which was obviously desired in certain quarters. Complaints of cattle stealing by the natives were rife. What justification there may have been for them we are never likely to know. But cattle lifting was apparently not wholly on one side. Early in 1893 the Company seized cattle from a. petty Mashona chief, whom it accused of having abstracted some yards of telegraph wire. The cattle taken was the property of Lobengula, who, in accordance with the custom of the country, hired out his herds in which his subjects had a communal interest. The "King's cattle" was a kind of symbol of sovereignty, and any interference with them was an affront not to the King only, but to the tribe. The Company was advised by the High Commissioner's representative at Buluwayo, "to be more careful in their seizures." Two months later Lobengula, apparently at Dr. Jameson's request, sent a body of warriors to punish a Mashona community living in the neighbourhood of the Company's settlement at Fort Victoria, for alleged stealing of "royal" cattle. He notified the Company of his purpose in advance. Acting without orders, Lobengula's men pursued some of the Mashonas into the "communage" of the settlement, and there killed them. Accounts, subsequently ascertained to have been wildly exaggerated, were put into circulation as to the number of Mashonas who lost their lives in this affray. Dr. Jameson thereupon summoned Lobengula's men to retire. As they were retiring he sent a body of troopers after them under the same Captain Lendy. Firing ensued. Thirty Matabele were killed. No member of the Company's force received a scratch. This occurred in July, 1893. Dr. Jameson reported to the High Commissioner that the troopers fired in self-defence. Lobengula denied this. The High Commissioner ordered an investigation. The official charged with this task eventually reported that: "Dr. Jameson was misinformed when he reported officially that the Matabele fired the first shot at the whites ... the sergeant of the advance guard fired the first shot ... the Matabele offered practically no resistance."
But this report came long "after the fair." The collision had at last provided the Company with the pretext its representatives on the spot had been seeking, and for which they had provided. The right atmosphere now prevailed for the "smashing of Lobengula." In his history of the smashing process, Major Forbes, who was in chief command, reveals that on the morning of the day after the collision, Dr. Jameson produced an elaborate campaign for the military invasion of Matabeleland. A month later (August 14) Dr. Jameson sent his historic letter to Captain Allan Wilson, the "Officer commanding the Victoria Defence Force." The exact wording of this document was only revealed, in 1918, at the Privy Council Inquiry into the company's claim to proprietorship over the land of Southern Rhodesia, to which allusion has already been made. Its substance had been known in South Africa for some years [together with the creation of a "Loot-Committee" to give effect to its terms after the "smashing" had been duly administered.] Its full text has been published this year by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society.(3)
In this communication, which we are entitled to assume was made without the knowledge of the High Commissioner or of the Secretary of State, Dr. Jameson undertook, on behalf of the company, that every trooper engaged in the forthcoming expedition should receive 3,000 morgen (nearly nine square miles) of land. The company retained the right of purchase "at any time" at the rate of £3 per morgen. The potential value of the grant was, therefore, £9,000.(4) Every trooper would also be permitted to peg out twenty gold claims. The communication additionally provided that: "7. The 'loot' shall be divided, one-half to the B.S.A. Company, and the remainder to officers and men in equal shares."
As the only lootable property possessed by the Matabele (apart from their land and its mirierals) was cattle, "loot" could have referred to nothing else, and large quantities of cattle, as we shall see, were eventually seized. To reckon the potential value of the twenty gold claims and his share of the "loot" together at £1,000 per trooper, would be ridiculously low. But on that basis it will be seen that the incentive to participate in the invasion of this African community, enjoying British protection, was £10,000 -- £9,000 in land, £1,000 in gold and cattle -- per invader.(5) According to Messrs. W. A. Willis and Lieutenant Collingridge,(6) the force which had been gradually got together on the Matabele frontier numbered, at the date of this letter, 672 Europeans and 157 Colonial natives. Although the latter were entitled under this agreement to certain benefits, I will deal only with the Europeans. It will be seen, therefore, that the collective stake amounted to £6,720,000. The land of the Matabele thus confiscated in advance amounted to over 6,000 square miles, being six-sevenths the area of Wales. For a parallel to so comprehensive and cynically calculated a plan of anticipatory spoliation, we must hark back three hundred and sixty-seven years to the famous contract between Pizarro, Amalgro, de Luque and their followers, for the sack of Peru.
While Dr. Jameson was thus perfecting his arrangements for the filibustering enterprise which he was to repeat, with less success, later on against the Boers, Lobengula on the one hand, and the High Commissioner and the Colonial Office on the other, were doing their best to avert war. It cannot be said that the High Commissioner's efforts in this respect were characterised by much vigour. It is fair to bear in mind that he was doubtless hampered by his distance from the scene, and by the ingenious misrepresentation of facts at which the manager of the Chartered Company was an adept. The desires of the Colonial Office were unmistakably expressed, by Lord Ripon, who had succeeded Lord Knutsford as Secretary of State:
"It is important -- he declared in a dispatch dated August 26 -- that the British South African Company should not, by menacing Lobengula, commit themselves to any course of action which I might afterwards have to reverse. Their duty under existing circumstances must be limited to defending their occupied territory and Her Majesty's Government cannot support them in any aggressive action."
But vague threats of this kind were not likely to deter those responsible for the action on the spot of a corporation with the Court and social influence possessed by the British South Africa Company. It is also true that without the European farmers and engineers the primitive Zimbabwean tribes could never have developed their agricultural and mineral resources. |
