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In the shadow of empire
Noah Tucker, 21st Century Socialism
August 03, 2008

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/in_the_shadow_of_empire_01694.html

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The dominant account of the debacle in Zimbabwe is one which dismisses both history and the international context as irrelevant. The focus of blame and outrage is on events within Zimbabwe, and specifically on the actions of its president, Robert Mugabe, since the late 1990s. Yet for the last 120 years, Britain has cast its shadow over Zimbabwe.

The British point of view was set out succinctly by the UK's former Foreign Secretary, Lord Peter Carrington:

For 15 years [following independence in 1980] Zimbabwe didn't do too badly [...] It was all right and then things went wrong so Mr. Mugabe played the race card, and then that didn't work because all the [land] redistribution went to all the friends and the people who didn't do anything about it. And then subsequently he's become more and more authoritarian and you've seen Zimbabwe, the strongest economy in Africa, go down the drain. And it's a disgraceful state of affairs.

Lord Carrington's comment was made in a BBC 'Breakfast with Frost' programme in 2005. The other participant in the interview was Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the UK, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, who intervened:

Well let us not forget, you know, Lord Carrington referred to the race card. The question of race has never been very far in Zimbabwean politics. We all know that during the 90 years of colonial rule the land was forcibly taken from the black majority.

The black majority was brutalized, we never heard of any human rights [...] And indeed the question of land being owned by white people in Zimbabwe was not introduced by President Mugabe. It was introduced by the British colonial administration. Therefore, any land reform programme in Zimbabwe had to acquire land from white people, that's how the race sector comes in, in order to distribute to the black majority.

The noble lord responded by dismissing the colonial past, as if it had no effect on shaping the present:

This is absolutely irrelevant to what is happening in Zimbabwe at the present time. The white farmers and all the rest of it, that's all history. What has happened since, there's been an authoritarian government, oppressing the people of Zimbabwe, you've seen what's happened to the currency, you've seen what's happened to the food, they're starving.

Land, lies and bullets
The territory which was then known as Matabeleland and Mashonaland was acquired by the British Empire through a combination of state-sponsored entrepreneurial activity, deception, the exploitation of hostilities between indigenous leaders and groups, and superior military technology. Following the discovery of gold deposits in the area, the wealthy adventurer and politician Cecil Rhodes, based in the British Cape Colony in what is now part of South Africa, sent envoys to persuade Lobengula, the Ndebele king, to accede to a mineral concession. In 1888, Lobengula eventually signed what became known as the Rudd Concession, in exchange for 1,000 rifles, ammunition, a river patrol boat, and a monthly payment of £100, having been assured that only ten white miners would arrive.

On the basis of this contract, the British Government awarded Rhodes' company, the British South Africa Company (BSAC), with a Royal Charter; this gave the company the authority and military backing of the Crown to administer the region on behalf of the Empire, enshrining Britain's exclusive of possession of Matabeleland and Mashonaland to the exclusion of the other European colonial powers which were also scrambling for Southern African territory- the Portuguese, the Germans and the Dutch Boers.

The following year, 300 colonial policemen and 200 settler 'pioneers' established a British military base in Mashonaland; they named it Fort Salisbury after the British Prime Minister at the time, Lord Salisbury- this base would become the capital city of the colony. Enticed by the promise that they would each receive gold mining claims and 3,000 acres (1200 hectares) of land, hundreds of European settlers began to arrive.

Realizing that he had been tricked, King Lobengula repudiated the Rudd Concession, and attempted to appeal directly to Queen Victoria. He was rebuffed. Then, when approached by Edouard Lippert, who was believed to be a representative of Boer and German interests, Lobengula signed another contract, which included the leasing of tracts of land; hoping thus to play the colonialists off against each other. But Lippert sold this contract to the BSAC, and the company then used the clauses of the Lippert Concession as legal cover for carving up Ndebele land and apportioning it to the British settlers.

This double deception was followed by a military campaign. After a punitive Ndebele raid against some Mashona villages near Fort Victoria, the British, declaring that they were acting to protect the Shona people, made war on King Lobengula's forces, devastating the Ndebele warriors with the awesome firepower of the newly-invented Maxim gun. In the process, the British military forces and the BSAC seized loot including 200,000 head of cattle. Demoralised and defeated, Lobengula died in 1894.

Subsequently, as a Zimbabwe government background paper records:

...the acquisition of black land had begun in earnest both for crop and livestock production as well as for speculative purposes. Henceforth the dispersal of the African populace into mostly marginal lands would be embarked upon with a ruthless determination following the creation of the Gwaai and Shangani Reserves in Matabeleland in 1894.

Historical records of the period leading to the 1896-97 First Chimurenga/Imfazwe, depict a story of a systematic violation of the rights and dignity of the indigenous people under white domination. Confirming the official sanctioning of this policy, the Rhodesia Herald of 19th April 1895 reported thus:

"For the Rhodesian it was absurd to take the untutored savage, accustomed as he is from time immemorial to superstitious and primitive ideas of law and justice, and suddenly try to govern him by the same code of laws that govern a people with many centuries of experience and enlightenment."

The 1896-97 [war] was therefore fundamentally a struggle for the recovery of lost land and dignity.

Known in Zimbabwe as the First Chimurenga or First War of Independence, the insurrection of 1896-97 involved both the Ndebele and the Shona peoples; it was planned by Mlimo, who was the spiritual leader of the Ndebeles. In the belief that the indegenous people had been subdued, the British South Africa Company sent most of its military contingent in Matabeleland off to a mission of white-on-white violence, the ill-fated 'Jameson raid' against the Boer settlers in the Transvaal, who were allied to Britain's imperial rival Germany.

Seizing the moment, the indigenous forces launched the revolt; combining siege warfare and guerilla tactics, the Shonas and Ndebeles killed hundreds of white settlers. Realising the importance of Mlimo as a gifted tactician and inspirational figure, the British sent two officers behind enemy lines to assassinate him. Surprising him in his cave while he was performing a ritual dance, alone and unarmed, the officers shot him just below the heart. The assassins later described Mlimo as "60 years-old, with very dark skin, sharp-featured, and a cruel, crafty look".

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