by John Wilcox
Chapter 15
Three months later, Simon, Alice, Jenkins, Mzingeli, Ntini and Joshua stood amongst cheering pioneers in the shade of jacaranda trees as the Union Jack was hauled up a very crooked pole and fluttered at the foot of Mount Hampden. The end of the trek had provided a rather embarrasing anticlimax, in that, having reached the high kopje, outspanned and declared the terminus Fort Salisbury, in honour of the Prime Minister of Britain, Johnson, as nominal leader, had sent a scout to the top of the kopje who had then seen the real Mount Hampden ten miles to the west. The ceremony had to be repeated at the new site, but this time the embryonic township was firmly declared to be the capital of their new country, which was then and there formally annexed in the name of Queen Victoria.
‘Why don’t they call it Fort Rhodes and have done with it?’ whispered Alice.
‘Probably will within a week,’ grunted Simon. He was almost right, for it took only a few days before it had become common practice to call the new territory ‘Rhodesia’.
The journey from the border to their destination, some two hundred miles to the north-east of Bulawayo, had not been without incident, for it had been a gruelling task to cut a road through the wooded territory of the south and then up over the mountain ridge that ushered them into Mashonaland. But despite all the threats and alarms along the way, Lobengula had not attacked. When the column reached the Lundi river, he had sent a message saying, ‘Go back at once and take your young men,’ but nothing ensued. Every night the searchlight had probed the bush, and every morning, from three a.m. until dawn, the column stood to, waiting for the attack that never came.
‘Why didn’t he come, eh, Fonthill?’ asked Colonel Pennefather just after Mount Hampden had been reached. ‘He could have taken us at any time, you and I know that. Why didn’t he do it?’
Simon shrugged. ‘I presume because he just didn’t want to. For all his faults, Lobengula is a shrewd man. His spies were observing us all the time as we plodded and cut our way through the timber country in the low veldt in the south, and he knew that a couple of impis could have overwhelmed us at any time. Yet he also knew that a terrible retribution would come afterwards, which would mean the loss of his country. He remembered that eleven years ago, Ulundi followed Isandlwana. He doesn’t want to take on the British Empire.’
‘Hmm. Suppose you are right. Pity, in a way. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of a scrap, don’t you know.’
Along the route, Jameson had dutifully followed the instructions from Whitehall that the column should leave a string of forts behind it, with small garrisons, to protect the lines of communications to the south. The last one had been called Fort Charter, and the one preceding it, Fort Victoria, had been sited just after Providential Pass, the 1,500-foot-high passage through the escarpment that marked the entry into Mashonaland. From this vantage point, the pioneers had looked down across the rolling, lush plains of what was, literally, their promised land. Here, the high veldt offered long grass and distant views, merging into mauve hills on the far horizons. This was what they had been straining to reach as they chopped and sawed their way through the humid bush of the low veldt. Here, stretching before them, were the farmlands and rich mineral sites that would make all their labour worthwhile.
After the pioneers had finally been dismissed as semi-soldiers under the flagstaff at Salisbury, it was not at first the threat of war that caused them problems as they spread out across the thinly populated land of the new Rhodesia, looking to stake their claims. The Matabele was not the enemy as they ranged through the high veldt, anxious to stake and then register their precious acres. Fonthill, together with his little party, was among them. And he, like the others - prospective farmers and miners alike - suffered as nature turned on them all, as though she had decided that if Lobengula would not protect his own, she would.
The worst storms that the region had seen in many years swept across the high veldt in late 1890 and the early months of 1891, turning dried-up dongas into swollen rivers and washing away the early diggings that the miners had begun. After the rains came mosquitoes and the blackwater fever, and rough burial grounds sprang up, almost outnumbering the wooden shacks that formed the early townships.
Fonthill, with Alice, Jenkins and Mzingeli - plus Ntini and Joshua, who had agreed to stay and help establish the farm - suffered less than some of the others, in that Simon had staked his claim in the north of the territory, far away from the diggings in the foothills of the mountains of the south, which had been so badly affected. They rode out the storms in the little huts the men had built. The members of the press contingent had returned home, of course, after Mount Hampden had been reached, and Alice had contentedly stepped down from her assignment with the Morning Post, clutching to her the congratulations from her editor on the quality of her reporting and a request that she should contribute the occasional colour piece about life on the high veldt in the new country. She retained her indignation that Rhodes had succeeded in riding roughshod over Lobengula and had, as she had predicted, settled land that was not his. Within a year, some fifteen hundred settlers had followed the pioneers and were living in the old Mashonaland. But there was nothing, it seemed, that Alice or the king could do about it. She had long since acquiesced in Simon’s determination to twin their land in Norfolk with a farm in the new territory, and they had all decided to grit their teeth and ride out the frightful weather to establish their holding, although it meant living the rough life of pioneers for a couple of years.
Fonthill had always known that it was Lobengula’s practice to send out raiding parties among the Mashonas to keep them in line - to maintain his sovereignty over them, at least, if not on the ground they trod. He also knew that Jameson, who had been appointed by Rhodes administrator of the new territory, had attempted to keep the king sweet by giving him the ownership of a gold reef and even equipping the mine with a steam engine, with the king’s initials picked out on the green paint of its boiler. It was Jameson who told Simon of the first dark shoots of unrest.
‘The trouble is,’ he confided, ‘the Mashonas are perfectly happy to have white people living among them and don’t see why they should pay tribute to old Lobengula any more. This has gone to the head of a Mashona chief called Lomagundi, who has refused to pay his dues to the old tyrant in Bulawayo. I am trying to soothe things down a bit and I don’t think it will get out of hand.’
A Matabele troop was sent and Lomagundi was killed. Jameson protested, but Lobengula was evasive in his reply. Soon the incidents began to mount. Another Mashona chief cut five hundred yards of Rhodes’s newly laid telegraph wire and was promptly fined by Jameson and ordered to pay the fine in cattle. He did so - but with Lobengula’s cattle, which had been sent to graze on the chief’s green land as part of his tribute. The king promptly sent his warriors, and this chief, too, paid the price for attempting to shield behind the white settlers. Once again Jameson’s protest was met by the bland and not altogether illogical answer that while all the white men must abide by the laws of Mr Rhodes’s company, the natives of Mashonaland and Matabeleland remained subject to the king’s laws. Nothing in any of the treaties that had been agreed between him and Rhodes, Lobengula pointed out, negated that fact.
‘I don’t like any of this,’ said Alice. ‘The fundamentally immoral nature of Rhodes’s position here is being exposed all the time. Things are building up. Rhodes must not push Lobengula too far. If he does, the lid really will come off the pot.’
There had been so many false alarms, however, both on the long journey to the north and in the petty skirmishes since the farmers and miners had become tentatively established, that few of the white folk in the tiny townships or out on the veldt believed that the explosion would come. For the Fonthills, the news was brought by a Kaffir on horseback, who arrived at their remote holding with a message from Jameson. It was terse and to the point:
Big trouble with Matabele around Fort Victoria. Can you come right away?
Simon had come t
o respect the little Scotsman, and such a request could not be resisted. With Jenkins and Mzingeli, therefore, he prepared to ride south. His intention was that Alice would stay with the two boys and look after the cattle. Inevitably, though, she insisted on joining them. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the ‘big trouble’, this would be too good a story to resist, and the arrival of the telegraph at Victoria meant that she could cable a dispatch to the Morning Post immediately. Simon’s protests were easily overridden, and the four arrived to find that the situation around the little town had become critical.
They rode through country just outside Victoria that was littered with the corpses of killed and mutilated Mashonas. The Matabele impi had taken this opportunity to wash their spears, and it seemed that few had been spared, including natives working on the new farms, some of whom had been pursued into the farmhouses and butchered under the horrified eyes of the settlers.
Fonthill found Jameson in a determined but unfazed mood.
‘Glad you could come with your private army, old chap,’ he said, rising from the chair in a little hut near the ramparts where he had set up his headquarters. He bowed gallantly to Alice.
‘How did it start?’ asked Fonthill.
‘Usual thing. The local Mashona chief here refused to bend the knee to Lobengula. In his time-honoured fashion, the king sent two and a half thousand warriors to carry out what he felt was some well-deserved disembowelling. This time, though, the chief lived close to the town. The arrival of an impi in full war regalia was frightening enough to our folk here, but then the Matabele proceeded to kill all of the Mashonas in the area, including, as you have seen, many who worked for the white men. Settlers from around have flocked into the town behind our rather flimsy walls and the war drums are beating.’
Alice looked up from her notebook. ‘Have any white people been killed?’
‘Not yet, although cattle have been stolen.’ Jameson removed his spectacles and vigorously polished the lenses with his handkerchief. ‘I certainly don’t want war and I am sure that Lobengula doesn’t either. If we do have a little skirmish here, then I think the king might even be glad that we have relieved a bit of the pressure on him by thrashing some of his young warriors.’
‘Depends upon whether his foot is achin’ or not, I should think,’ murmured Jenkins, but no one seemed to hear him.
‘The trouble is,’ continued Jameson, ‘the settlers here have put up with a lot over the last few days. This impi is composed of very arrogant young bloods who undoubtedly have behaved extremely badly. I am afraid that, uncharacteristically, so has Lobengula.’ The administrator leaned forward. ‘He has sent a most brusque letter to the magistrate here, demanding that the Mashonas who are sheltering within the walls of the fort should be handed over to Manyao, the inDuna who is leading the impi. He has offered one insolent concession: he says that they will not be killed near the river, where they might pollute the water, but would be finished off in the bush.’
Fonthill frowned. ‘It sounds as though things have gone too far.’
‘Yes. The other complicating factor is that the settlers here, having been frightened out of their lives, are just itching for a fight, and are talking about dealing with the Matabele “now and for ever”. So I’ve got two lots of hotheads on my hands, so to speak. Even so, I think I can handle it.’ He sat back in his chair, his bald pate gleaming.
‘What do you propose to do?’ asked Fonthill.
‘I have rushed a very polite but firm letter by special messenger over to Lobengula in Bulawayo, asking him to withdraw his impi at once. In the meantime, however, I have summoned Manyao to a meeting on the banks of the River Tokwe. As you know, I have always believed that talking is better than fighting. I think I can calm everyone down.’
Alice looked up from her pad, her face flushed. ‘I do hope so,’ she said. ‘Lobengula has been pushed pretty far already in my view. I don’t think anyone back home - and particularly in the government - wants another native war. It’s Lord Salisbury in Number Ten now, you know. Not Disraeli.’
‘Aye, I understand that. But if the members of the House of Commons could see the bodies that you saw when you rode in, then perhaps they might have a different view of things. But as I say, I am going to try and cool things down. You’re welcome to come to the meeting.’
The following morning, Jameson took his kitchen chair down to the banks of the river and sat with his back to the fort, with a handful of settlers and Captain Lendy, the officer in charge of the modest detachment of soldiers based at Victoria. Fonthill, Alice, Jenkins and Mzingeli joined them.
As Fonthill arrived, he drew in his breath at the Matabele ranged opposite the little doctor, a small group of inDunas at their head. He had never before seen so many of Lobengula’s men arrayed for battle. One hundred and fifty of the two and a half thousand massed on the other side of the river formed a semicircle in front of Jameson. They were splendid specimens. Tall and muscular, and naked except for their loincloths and monkey tails at calf and biceps, they wore warpaint on their faces and chests and their black skin glistened in the morning sunlight. Plumes nodded from their heads, and most carried assegais and shields, though some were proudly nursing new rifles. They were restive and their postures exuded hostility, most of the warriors jigging up and down. It was as if their killing spree had released a long-pent-up savagery within them.
‘Blimey,’ murmured Jenkins. ‘I don’t like the look of that lot. ’Ow many men ’ave we got to fight ’em, if it comes to it?’
Fonthill spoke softly so that Alice could not hear. ‘About forty or so soldiers, I think, with probably the same number of settlers who can handle weapons. Not exactly an army. Let’s hope that Jameson can talk them out of more killing.’
The doctors raised his hand for silence. For a moment all that could be heard was the buzzing of the thousands of flies that had decided to attend the conference, probably still gorged from feasting on the bodies that surrounded the fort. Then Jameson began to speak. He did so observing the etiquette that members of the Zulu race espoused at meetings of this sort: welcoming Manyao and his inDunas with compliments but suggesting that they had gone too far by indulging in the mass slaughter in the country that he, Jameson, now controlled.
Manyao was an elderly man, with the isiCoco ring of the inDuna woven into his grey hair, and he spoke with equal politeness and dignity. Through his interpreter he pointed out that the original treaty with Rhodes had acknowledged that Lobengula was king not only of Matabeleland but also of Mashonaland, and that the only powers given to the white men had been to dig for minerals, not to erect forts or settle the land. For more than a century the Matabele had collected tribute from the Mashona, and the law decreed that default was punishable by death. The action taken had been within the law and following precedent. No white people had been hurt.
Alice put her pencil in her mouth and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. ‘I don’t approve of the killings,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘but if this was a court of law, old Manyao would have won the verdict hands down.’
The inDuna finished speaking, and it was clear that, for once, Jameson had no reply. The silence hung on the air like a blanket of embarrassment as the doctor sought uncharacteristically for words. Then one of the minor inDunas, named Umgandaan, stepped forward. He was much younger than Manyao, tall and well muscled, a warrior in his prime. But while Manyao had been rational and elegant, Umgandaan was truculent and loud. His king, he said, was paramount in his own country, and he had been sent to perform the king’s will. No white man would stop him.
His aggression produced a murmur of dissatisfaction from the small group of settlers behind Jameson’s chair and gave the doctor his prompt. He cut the young man short and ordered Manyao to withdraw all of his impi across the river before sundown, or his white soldiers would drive them across.
‘With what?’ asked Jenkins sotto voce. ‘Three blokes on ’orseback?’
The meeting broke up in surly disarray. Ja
meson picked up his chair and strode towards Fonthill, who blew out his cheeks in consternation. He remembered hearing that the doctor had earned a reputation in Kimberley as a hard-nosed poker player. ‘You’re taking a big risk, aren’t you, Jameson? What will you do if they call your bluff? We’re outnumbered by about fifty to one. And they’ve got rifles.’
The little man seemed completely unfazed. ‘They’ll go,’ he said. ‘I know these people. They think they’re Zulus but they’re not really. They will move back by tonight, you’ll see.’
But they did not.
Looking down from the flimsy mud ramparts of the fort as the sun sank towards the horizon, Jameson, with Lendy and Fonthill, realised that the Matabele impi remained firmly encamped on the Victoria side of the river. Many of those who had remained on the far side for the morning’s meeting had obviously crossed during the day and were now either sitting cross-legged on the bank or milling about, quite unperturbed, under the walls of the township. Fonthill noted, however, that all carried their weapons. In the distance, he saw that another kraal had been set on fire and more of the company’s cattle were being rounded up.
‘Well, I was wrong,’ admitted Jameson.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Fonthill.
