Second Matabele War

The Second Matabele War was a conflict fought in 1896–1897 in what is now the southern African nation of Zimbabwe. The war was fought between soldiers employed by the British South Africa Company and the Ndebele people, known as the Matabele, and the neighboring Shona people. The second war resulted from the First Matabele War, which the British forces won in 1893. The Ndebele were angry at the defeat and blamed the presence of the White settlers for the damaging locusts and drought that had affected their homeland. When the company sent its hired military police unit on a raid into rival territory, the Ndebele took advantage and attacked the White settlers, who scrambled to defend themselves. They were eventually reinforced by British troops supplied by the company. The tide of the war began to turn when the rebel Ndebele leader was assassinated, prompting the leader of the British South Africa Company, Cecil Rhodes, to make peace with the Ndebele.

Background

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore southern Africa in the fifteenth century. The Dutch were the first to colonize the region, settling in modern-day South Africa in 1652. In subsequent decades, Dutch, German, and French settlers arrived, continuing to claim more land. In 1795, the British seized control of the colony to keep it out of French hands. By 1806, the Dutch surrendered all control to the British.

As British colonists began arriving in South Africa, they clashed with the farmers known as Boers. In the 1830s, these farmers and their families began migrating inland where they established the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. As the British expanded their territory, they often clashed with the Boers and the indigenous peoples. When diamonds and gold were discovered in the area in the late nineteenth century, Europeans’ desire for the land increased.

The Ndebele people—a name meaning “men of the long shields”—were originally part of the Zulu people of South Africa but split from the Zulu and moved north in the 1820s. Led by their king, Mzilikazi, the Ndebele first moved into the Transvaal where they clashed with and were defeated by the Boers. They then settled in the southwest of modern-day Zimbabwe, a region the British called Matabeleland. After Mzilikazi died in 1868, his youngest son, Lobengula, emerged victorious from a power struggle to claim the kingship. Lobengula built an army of fifteen thousand men and held tight control over his homeland. While he welcomed business with the White settlers, he was wary of their intentions and maintained strict limits on those he allowed to enter his kingdom.

Overview

In 1884 and 1885, at the height of the “Scramble for Africa,” the great powers of Europe met in Berlin, Germany, to negotiate a plan to divide Africa into colonies. While South Africa and Zimbabwe were awarded to Great Britain, the local inhabitants of these regions had no input in the decisions. After gold was discovered in Zimbabwe in 1886, British colonists began to move into the northern region of the country. This area was controlled by the Shona people and was known as Mashonaland. The British prime minister of the South African Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes, wanted access to Matabeleland, but first needed to find a solution to Lobengula. In 1888, Rhodes negotiated a deal with Lobengula to provide money and guns in return for the mineral rights in his territory.

The next year, Rhodes formed the British South Africa Company (BSAC) and sought an exclusive royal charter to administer British territories in the region. Britain’s Queen Victoria granted Rhodes the charter later in 1889. Planning to eventually take Matabeleland, Rhodes moved a force of settlers and military police working for the BSAC into Mashonaland. The move was partly meant to provoke Lobengula as Rhodes was looking for any excuse to start a war with the Ndebele.

In 1893, a Shona chief conducted a cattle raid in Ndebele territory. Lobengula retaliated by sending warriors into Mashonaland with strict orders to avoid harming White settlers. The Ndebele burned several villages and massacred any Shona they found. The incursion was just the excuse Rhodes was waiting for, and he ordered BSAC troops and their Shona allies to invade Matabeleland. The Ndebele army was no match for the firepower of the British, and Lobengula’s soldiers were routed. Rather than have his capital of Bulawayo taken, Lobengula burned it to the ground and retreated into the hills with the survivors. The British confiscated the Ndebeles’ cattle and farmland and claimed control over the entire region. It was renamed Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes.

The Ndebele were humiliated by their defeat and the loss of their land. Lobengula died in 1894 with rumors circulating he had smallpox or took his own life. Ndebele farmland was divided among the BSAC troops and White settlers, and Bulawayo was redeveloped as a European-style city within a year. The defeated Ndebele also faced several devastating natural disasters. Waves of locusts descended upon the countryside, with some infestations so thick they blotted out the sun. Drought and disease also killed many of the people’s remaining cattle.

The Ndebele seethed under British rule and blamed the presence of the White settlers for the disasters gripping their homeland. A Ndebele holy man known as the Mlimo seized this anger to predict the eventual defeat of the settlers, claiming that magic would make the White settlers’ bullets turn to water.

In December 1895, Rhodes ordered most of his BSAC soldiers to invade the neighboring Transvaal, attempting to overthrow the Boer government. The raid failed, and British forces were surrounded and captured. With only about forty-eight military personnel to defend the entire territory of Rhodesia, the five thousand remaining White settlers were vulnerable to attack. The Mlimo saw this as an opportunity and ordered the Ndebele warriors to kill every White settler they could find.

In March 1896, the Ndebele began a series of guerilla raids in the countryside, killing hundreds of farmers, miners, ranchers, and their families. The survivors fled to the country’s two main towns—Bulawayo and Gwelo—which they fortified to repel an attack. Groups of armed settlers ventured beyond the towns to attack the Ndebele and rescue any survivors. In one case, they found thirty-eight settlers holed up in a farm building and got them back to the relative safety of Bulawayo.

For the next several weeks, the settlers and the Ndebele engaged in numerous skirmishes. An estimated ten thousand Ndebele warriors held positions surrounding the White settlers, but the Ndebele never mounted a coordinated attack on the fortified towns. Historians speculate this may have been because the Mlimo had said a victory was predestined, and the Ndebele felt it was just a matter of time. In May, Cecil Rhodes arrived in Bulawayo with about six hundred reinforcements. The added military strength allowed the British to coordinate several successful attacks on the Ndebele forces.

In late May, the British received word on the location of the Mlimo and sent two men to assassinate the Ndebele leader. With the Mlimo dead, most Ndebele forces retreated to their stronghold in the hills. The British attempted to flush them out but lost hundreds of troops in the attempt.

The British were surprised when the Shona joined the Ndebele uprising in June. The Shona and Ndebele had historically been enemies, and the British viewed themselves as the allies of the Shona for protecting them in the First Matabele War. However, the British had also confiscated Shona cattle and lands, and many Shona were forced into working for the British. The Shona began attacking any White settlers living near the British settlements in Mashonaland.

Over the next few months, skirmishes were common between the British, Ndebele, and Shona. The British realized they would have to exert an expensive and dangerous assault on the Ndebele stronghold to dislodge them, while the Ndebele had begun to lose the will to fight after the death of the Mlimo. Rhodes began peace negotiations with the Ndebele leaders and eventually came to a peace agreement. With the war against the Ndebele over, the British turned their attention to subduing the Shona, who were less willing to lay down their arms. The last Shona chief surrendered in October 1897, marking the official end of the Second Matabele War.

The war took a significant toll on the British and the Ndebele and Shona peoples. Estimates place the number of Ndebele dead at two thousand, but the true number may be much higher. Additionally, hundreds of White settlers were killed, and many farms and homesteads were burned to the ground.

Bibliography

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