Edited by
Rowland J. Fothergill (1953)
Published by
The Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics
Contents
The registered number of each monument is given to enable the reader locate the monument on the map at the end of the book.
Monuments situated close to one another are grouped on the map under a single alphabetical initial.
PART I:
DISTINCTIVE AND BEAUTIFUL SCENERY
Victoria Falls: Monument 1
Hillside Dam: Monument 43a
Sinoia Caves: Monument 9
Ewanrigg Aloe Garden: Monument 46e
Pungwe Fall: Monument 12h
Rhodes Inyanga Estate: 10h
World's View: Monument 29b
Chirinda Forest: Monument 35
The Big Tree: Monumant 28
Bunga Forest: 54i
Rapisi Hot Springs: Monument 51
PART II:
ROCK PAINTINGS AND ENGRAVINGS
Gulubahwe Cave: Monument 20b
Silozwane Cave: Monument 19b
Nswatugi Cave: Monument 8b
Bambata Cave: Monument 7b
Mjelele Valley Road Cave: Monument 44b
Mtoko ZCave: Monument 25g
Domboshawa Cave: Monument 16c
Mkumbe Cave: Monument 21e
iMrewa Cave: Monument 24
Dengeni Cave: Monument 32
Dambarimwa Cave: Monument 60g
Makwe Cave: Monument 65
Somerby Cave: Monument 22
Muromo Rock Paintings: Monument 40i
Echo Farm and Borrowdale Farm: Monument 18e and 23e
Surtic Rock Paintings: Monument 52e
Diana's Vow: Monument 64
Engravings:
Petroglyph of Giraffe: Monument26
Bumboosie Ruin and Rock Painting: Monument 59
PART III:
RUINS
Zimbabwe Ruins: Monument 2
Van Niekerk Ruins: Monument 53h
Jumbo Ancient Working: Monument 45f
Khami Ruins: Monument 6
Dhlo-Dhlo Ruins: Monument 5d
Mtoko Ruins: Monument 61g
Naletale Ruins: Monument 3d
Matendera Ruins: Monument 31
Half-Way House Ruin: Monument 36
Mtoa Ruins: Monument 42
Chumnungwa Ruins: Monument 62
Ntaba Za Ka Mambo: Monument 68c
PART IV:
THE MATABELE INVASION AND OCCUPATION
The Mzillikazi Memorial: 39a
Mzillikazi Grave: 41b
Lobengulas Grave: 48
PART V:
THE EUROPEAN OCCUPATION
Old Fort, Fort Victoria: Monument 17
The Shangani Battlefield: Monument 13
The Rebellion Memorials (Filabusi (56), Pongo (33d), Mambo (57c), Fort Rixon (58) )
Old Mangwe Fort: Monument 50
Fort Ingwenya: Monument 67
Blakiston-Routledge: Memorial 55f
Rhodes Indaba Site: Memorial 63
Thomas Moodie's Grave: Memorial 27
Indaba Tree and Fort Hill: Memorial 38i and 34i
Two Cypress Trees: Memorial 66c
Old Jesuit Mission: Memorial 47a
Portuguese Fort, Makaha: Memorial 69
Memorial Cross, Umtali: Memorial 49i
"World's View Hill: Memorial 4b
Some Suggestions for Further Study
Registered Number of National Monuments
The Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics
The Monuments and Relics Act which provides 'for the better preservation of ancient, historical and natural monuments, relics and other objects of aesthetic, historical, Archaeological or scientific interest' was promulgated on the 8th May, 1936. The Ancient Monuments Protection Ordinance of 1902, the Bushman Relics Protection Ordinance of 1911, and the Victoria Falls Reserve Preservation Act of 1928 were thereby repealed.
In the early days of the Colony's history the attention of prospectors was directed towards the ancient ruins, of which a great number exist. Some of these ruins had been found to contain worked gold in the form of beads, tacks and foil, and many people believed that by exploiting them an easy road to wealth could be opened up. In 1895 a company called "The Ancient Ruins Company' was formed for this purpose. Before it was wound up in 1900, when disclosures were made of the acts of vandalism committed, many of the larger ruins had been ransacked and irreparable damage done. It became obvious that legislation was necessary to prevent further works of destruction, and the Ancient Monuments Protection Ordinance was passed. This proved a deterrent but did not entirely prevent further pillaging, and the destruction of these ancient buildings, built as they were without mortar, was accelerated.
Innumerable rock paintings by artists of a vanished race are to be found everywhere in the granite areas of the Colony. They exist not only in caves and rock-shelters, many of which are highly decorated, but on isolated rocks on the veld,and so numerous are they that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that wherever there are granite rocks there are rock paintings. Those more easily accessible have suffered to a considerable extent from vandalism. Attempts have been made to remove some of them by breaking up the rocks on which they occur. Many have been wilfully scribbled over and defaced, and the Bushman Relic Protection Ordinance did little to prevent the continuation of these acts of wanton destruction.
The passing of the Monuments and Relics Act was the result of the awakening of the public conscience to the duty of doing everything possible to preserve the precious relics of bygone days which, it is today recognised, constitute a legacy which we of this generation arc under an obligation to hand down to posterity.
It will here suffice to call attention briefly to the more important provisions of the Act. The Commission is empowered to recommend the proclamation of National Monuments and to exercise control over any if requested to do so by their owners, as well as to act as trustees for the Government of the Colony in respect of any monuments, relics, or articles which the owner desires to give or bequeath to the Government; to acquire any monument or relic; to undertake the excavation of any National Monument; to erect tablets in suitable places giving historical information about historical events which occurred at them; and to issue permits for excavation when deemed desirable. The Commission is further given power to make by-laws regulating access to monuments; fixing fees for such access; safeguarding monuments and relics and regulating excavation. Penalties for contravention of the provisions of the Act are laid down.
The first Commissioners appointed under the Act were the Hon. L. Cripps, C.M.G., Messrs W. A. Carnegie (appointed Chairman), D. Niven, Neville Jones (appointed Secretary), F. P. Mennell, P. V. Samuels, Dr George Arnold the Rev. Father Stapleton, S.J., and the Secretary for Native Affairs. They held their first meeting in August 1936. and lost no time in planning their future work. During the past sixteen years, more than sixty National Monuments have been proclaimed; descriptions of many of them are contained in the following pages. They include ancient ruins and paintings and areas containing them; scenic monuments, trees and beauty spots of national importance; areas of scientific interest; historical buildings, sites and memorials; and graves of special historical interest.
The Commission has from the beginning fully realized that its responsibilities are not ended when the proclamation of a National Monument has been effected. This is rather the beginning. To this end it employs an Inspector of National Monuments whose duties include the regular inspection of all monuments and the undertaking of such works of repair, maintenance or protection as may be necessary. He also visits any monuments which it is proposed to proclaim and furnishes reports which are of much value and service to the Commission. The Commission counts itself fortunate in having an Inspector who, prior to his appointment, had already gained for himself a reputation as an (amateur) archaeologist and this he has considerably enhanced since his appointment. In this connection, his work on the Khami
Ruins, to which he has lately written a guide book, is of outstanding importance.
It will be readily understood that, in a country such as this where ancient sites and rock paintings are so numerous, it is not practicable to proclaim them all. The Commission has therefore adopted the policy of proclaiming only the most important and those which, by virtue of their accessibility, are most likely to deteriorate through vandalism or natural causes. Some of the decorated caves in the Matopo Hills have been fenced off and placed in the care of native custodians, and have thus been given that measure of protection which the Commission's experience has shown to be absolutely necessary. It is here worthy of mention that all ancient monuments, whether proclaimed or not, are protected under the Act, and many such have been sign-posted accordingly.
From its inception until 1949 the Zimbabwe Ruins Reserve was administered by the Commission. In that year the National Parks Board took over the area which was subsequently proclaimed a National Park. The Commission, however, still controls the ruins themselves and remains responsible for their maintenance. The Victoria Falls Reserve and other National Monuments, where situated within the boundaries of National Parks, were also taken over by the National Parks Board. In this way, the Commission has been able to delegate to the Board its responsibilities in cases where the development of local amenities for the benefit of the visiting public is essential, since the Board is better equipped than the Commission for work of this nature.
The care and maintenance of the National Monuments of the Colony present many problems and the cooperation of all public bodies and the general public is welcomed. Such assistance has been given ungrudgingly in many quarters in the past. The Commission is always glad to receive suggestions and to interview any who may wish to meet it.
Special thanks are due to the Beit Trustees for their financial assistance in the publication of this book.
The Commission, as at present constituted, consists of the following members:
C. K. Cooke, Esq. (Secretary),
Mrs E. M. Finch, M.A.,
Neville Jones, Esq., O.B.E., F.R.A.I. (Chairman),
A. M. Macgregor, Esq., O.B.E., M.A., D.Sc., F.G.S.
D. Niven, Esq., O.B.E., F.L.A.,
R. H. N. Smithers, Esq., B.Sc., F.Z.S.,
R. F. H. Summers, Esq., F.R.A.I.
Inspector—K. S. R. Robinson, Esq., F.R.A.I.
The Office of the Commission
National Museum of Southern Rhodesia
P.O. Box 240
Bulawayo
NEVILLE JONES
Chairman
Editor s Note
For a proper appreciation of many of the monuments of Southern Rhodesia it is often necessary to study them in relation to their historical background or significance.
It is for this reason that I have divided the book into five parts. Each part contains details of monuments of roughly the same pattern or monuments which are related to each other historically. It is believed that, by doing this, the student of our prehistoric art and culture, or simply the observer of our beauty spots, will gain a better and more complete knowledge and appreciation of them. He will also find himself, like I did, taking a keen interest in the history of the Colony, so much of which can be grasped simply by studying its monuments.
Much of the work connected with this book had already been done before I undertook to complete the job. A great deal had been written by Mrs Margaret Beth Cuthbertson, now Mrs Bevis, formerly of Bulawayo, and without this contribution my task would have been immeasurably heavier. I am also greatly indebted to the members of the Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics, and particularly to the Inspector of Monuments, Mr K. R. Robinson, whose great knowledge of the subject has been of inestimable value to me.
Thanks are also due to the Public Relations Department, Salisbury, for providing most of the pictures, and to the Central African Archives for the use of their library.
ROWLAND J. FOTHERGILL
Salisbury, December 1952
PART I
Distinctive and Beautiful Scenery
So much of the history of Rhodesia is as yet unwritten that it behoves Rhodesians to guard the relics and ruins and records of the past with especial care. In the Monuments and Relics Act of 1936 the term 'monument' includes any ancient monument, any area of land of archaeological or historical interest, any area of land with distinctive or beautiful scenery, or a distinctive geological formation. The term likewise covers any area of land containing rare or distinctive or beautiful flora and fauna; it embraces waterfalls, caves, grottoes, avenues of trees, old trees and old buildings, and any other object, natural or constructed by man, of aesthetic, archaeological or scientific interest.
Rhodesia has its full share of lovely and varied scenery, from the tropical beauty of the Victoria Falls to the cloudy highlands of the Eastern Border, as well as a collection of monuments whose study enriches and intensifies the natural pride and affection its people feel for Rhodesia.
Under the provisions of the Monuments and Relics Act of 1936, a National Monument means a monument proclaimed as such by the Minister of Internal Affairs. A National Monument may have special significance for the European population of the country; the Shangani Memorial is one such that leaps to mind. On the other hand, the National Monument of Mzilikazi's grave has special significance for the Matabele people. European and African alike are awed and impressed by the majestic beauty of the Victoria Falls.
It was appropriate that the first area declared and set aside as a National Monument by the newly-formed Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics should have been the Victoria Falls.
Victoria Falls
(National Monument Number: 1)
The Victoria Falls is unique in Africa for its scenic beauty and grandeur. It is the only place in Rhodesia which affords evidence of almost continuous human occupation from the earliest times. Few parts of the country are so rich in history.
For a time, in geologic ages past, the sands of the Kalahari overlaid this countryside and drought and desolation held sway in the valley. But the drought age passed and rains fell again. Rivers flowed once more, carving new courses in the hard-packed desert sand. Trees sprang up and flourished, ousting the thin desert scrub. With the improved conditions animals returned to the valley—antelope, baboon and bird, and the water-loving hippopotamus and elephant. Following the animals came man the hunter.
Stone Age sites along the banks of the Zambezi close to the Falls, and along the banks of tributary rivers, have yielded stone tools and implements made by very ancient peoples of whom no other record exists than these relics of their skill and patience. In places along both northern and southern banks of the Zambezi, these stone tools are strewn in abundance on the surface of the soil. In other parts, factory sites long buried beneath the soil, have been revealed by excavation, or by the erosive action of a stream. Many of the stone tools are most skilfully made and many of them shine with a patina nowhere else equalled in Rhodesia. This patina lends a jewel-like quality to the stone implements.
But ancient as is the story pieced together by the archaeologist, the story unfolded by the geologist reaches farther back into time.
The Great Falls themselves, that divide the western stretch of the smooth-flowing river from the zig-zag raging torrent of the east, are very ancient.
The main flow of the river is from west to east, and its banks are generally designated northern and southern, though in actual fact at the Victoria Falls the southern bank is to the west and the northern to the east, due to a sudden bend in the river near Livingstone. A few miles south of the Falls the river bends again to the east, so that the northern and southern banks again assume their northern and southern situation.
Early visitors who gazed upon the tumult of the Falls believed them to be the result of a cataclysmic rending of the earth's surface, which plunged the broad river into a narrow channel between walls of rock suddenly cleft asunder.
When David Livingstone saw the Falls for the first time in November 185 5 he was convinced that the phenomenon of the Falls was caused by a crack in the basaltic rock. He saw no reason to change his view when he visited the Falls again five years later.
When Edward Mohr visited the Falls in 1870 he expressed his belief that only some awful and violent convulsion of the earth's crust could account for the strange scenery of this Central African valley. For fifty years after the discovery of the Victoria Falls this explanation of the extraordinary geography of the valley was accepted by the travellers who penetrated to the Falls.
Edward Mohr gave the name of Rain Forest to that tree- covered cliff that faces the Leaping Waters and the Main Falls. The native name for this forest means 'the place where the rain is born'. Beyond the Rain Forest lies the spray washed turf that leads to Danger Point, beneath which is the ever-seething cauldron where the waters of the Falls converge.
As a result of a close study of the country surrounding the Victoria Falls, Mr A. J. C. Molyneux in 1905 suggested firmly that causes other than a sudden rending of the earth's surface were responsible for the Falls. Mr. Molyneux put forward his belief that the whole combination of canyon, gorge, chasm and falls, were due to the relentless energy of the moving water forcing a passage through cracks in the hard igneous rock.
'The Zambezi valley at the Falls is flanked', says Mr Neville Jones {The Stone Age in Rhodesia,), 'by low hills of Kalahari sand overlying a wide sheet of basalt, which is really a succession of lava flows. The Kalahari sand was accumulated during the desert period, which lasted through a part of the Tertiary, and during this time the Kalahari desert spread over much of Southern Rhodesia and Barotseland. About the end of the Tertiary Period, however, the climate changed to a humid one and the desert area consequently contracted before its coming. Rivers began to flow permanently and to carve out their valleys. The Zambezi, between the Gonye Falls (175 miles west- northwest of the Falls) and the confluence of the Gwai River (70 miles east of the Falls) after removing a comparatively small thickness of Kalahari sand, was flowing over the very thick horizontal basalt. East of the Gwai confluence its bed was upon the relatively soft and easily eroded sandstones and shales of the Karoo system. It was able, with the help of a large number of strong affluents, to erode a wide and deep valley in the Karoo sediments, while the basalts, by offering greater resistance to erosion, caused a waterfall, which has in course of time receded to the present position of the Victoria Falls.
This process, which is still continuing today, was greatly facilitated by a series of shrinkage cracks, or master-joints,across the path of the river and due to the shrinkage of the basalt on cooling. These determined the direction of thegorge and caused the remarkable series of zig-zags.'
The thundering waters are still cutting back. There is little or no difference between the Falls that Thomas Bainespainted nearly a century ago and the Falls we see today, but aerial photos of the Zambezi valley that lies above the Fallsreveal features in the river bed that indicate the direction inwhich new gorges will be formed as the gradual recession takes place. As time goes on, successively new falls will come into being and the abyss into which the river now falls will remain as an additional gorge.
This process of cutting back, in which the river creates successive gorges, is probably exceedingly slow. A thousand years may show little difference in the appearance of the Falls. The pictures painted by Thomas Baines show no visible recession of the Falls. Such alterations as have already taken place in the Zambezi valley in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls took many thousands of years to accomplish.
The foundations of the Victoria Falls bridge were laid in the New Year of 1904. The railway line was still sixty miles from the Falls, but it was steadily approaching the river. Before the bridging of the ravine, it was necessary to make a journey of eight miles to go from one side of the narrow gorge to the other. The traveller had to go up the river to the ferry at the big baobab trees, cross the river and come down the bank on the other side.
The ravine was bridged by firing a rocket with a thin string attached, from one bank to the other. The string was hauled across, pulling after it a thicker cord, then a rope, and finally a steel cable was hauled across. To this steel cable the engineers hooked a bos'n's chair for conveying passengers from one side of the ravine to the other. The journey took ten minutes, the cable operating by winding on a winch.
One day a bag containing mail was being conveyed across when a sudden jerk sent it flying off the hook into the abyss. It was only then that the engineers decided to rig a safety catch on the hook to prevent as sudden a loss of passenger.
Slowly the bridge grew out from either side of the ravine, and in May 1904 the railway line was completed and the first engine reached the Victoria Falls station. The days of the old wagon road were over. Two hundred and eighty miles of shining rails linked the Victoria Falls with the growing town of Bulawayo, and Rhodesia's most popular tourist attraction was within the reach of all.
The Victoria Falls presents one of the most perfect natural beauty spots in the world. The wild grandeur has been preserved as far as possible, so that within a few minutes of leaving the large modern Victoria Falls hotel, the tourist will find himself in a garden of nature. There are many awe inspiring views of the Falls from different angles, and whole days can be spent in exploring the vicinity. Boating is pleasant on the Zambezi River above the Falls, and sight is obtained of wild creatures such as crocodiles, hippopotami and elephant.
In recent years a number of rest huts have been built on the Southern Rhodesia side of the river and the National Parks Board, which now administers the Falls Reserve, contemplate adding considerably to their numbers in the immediate future. These huts can be booked on application to the Tourist Manager at the Victoria Falls.
Hillside Fams
(National Monument Number: 43a)
There were those in Bulawayo who laughed scornfully when the newly-formed Waterworks Company proposed building dams on a portion of Napier's Farm, in that area known today as Hillside. Men rode out from Bulawayo on horseback to look at the dry dusty thornveld among the kopjes. Water on Napier's Farm was a ridiculous notion, they said.
But the dams were built and when the rains came the first thin stream of water found itself impounded. Early in 1897 the same horsemen who had sneered were riding out from Bulawayo to look and look again at the three stretches of water that lay among the kopjes. Already wildfowl had taken possession and were raising their broods among the grass at the water's edge.
To begin with there was enough water to last the town for 500 days, but as Bulawayo expanded it became necessary Hillside Dams to enlarge the capacity of the dams. The contractors who were entrusted with raising the wall of the upper dam in 1915, began by excavating soil from a piece of land within the Waterworks Reserve. As the Africans labouring in the growing excavation shovelled the earth that was to raise the wall of the dam, someone noticed bones among the rubble and soil. Work was halted and Mr A. E. V. Zealley, a member of the Geological Survey of Southern Rhodesia, was asked to investigate.
Mr Zealley's study of the area and of the bones collected from the excavation cast a brief sudden light upon the past inhabitants and fauna of this little valley enclosed by the rocky kopjes of Hillside.
The bone deposit was originally fairly extensive, but a large portion of its contents had been built into the dam wall, before the bones were recognised as being of archaeological importance in the understanding of the country'spast. The remaining portion of the deposit which was investigated by Mr. Zealley told a story of absorbing interest.
The bones recovered from the soil were of considerable antiquity and many of them were fossilized. Here, on the outskirts of Bulawayo, was once a settlement of very early man. A number of large stones had been carried to the deposit and here the Stone Age people gathered to break the bones and lick the marrow of the animals they had slaughtered. There was no pottery or metal in the deposit to suggest that these people had reached an advanced stage of civilization. Only a few crudely worked stone tools were found among the bones and rubble.
These early people had definite tastes, for the majority of bones recovered from their deposit were leg bones and skull bones, broken and split to yield their last ounce of nourishment to the hunter. The scraps of shells of a few ostrich eggs had been cast into the heap. It is unlikely that the hunters had far to go in search of the game they devoured. But the variety of the animals whose bones lay scattered through the deposit suggests forcibly that this Hillside area once enjoyed a very different climate from the present.
The Hillside area today is typical thornveld with a rainfall of 20 to 25 inches. The impounded water of the Dams lends a perennial greenness to the surroundings that is absent from similar country in the vicinity.
Yet the bones found in this habitation of early man are the bones of water-loving animals, hippopotamus and waterbuck, puku and reedbuck and pallah, and the marsh wandering sitatunga.
The stream of the Matjesumhlope River that flows now only in the rainy season must once have been a strong and constant current, affording wallows for the buffalo and warthog and water mungoose, and pools where sable and tsessebe, zebra and inyala could come to drink.
When they failed in the hunting of big game, the early inhabitants of this Hillside area would feed upon dassies and ground squirrels caught among the rocks. Rats and hares and meerkats were all food, and once or twice they slew a leopard or cheetah and flung its bones into the midden.
When night fell and the people slept the wild cats and hyenas and jackals came creeping to the midden and gnawed the bones that were scattered there. The long parallel scars of their gnawings are still visible upon the bones.
The site of the deposit was a natural hollow or shelter, and after its abandonment by the tribe who created it, storm water flowing through the hollow carried successive layers of soil to bury the midden. Through centuries of changing rainfall and altering character of the countryside the midden was buried deeper and deeper and kept its secrets.
There is nothing to show what trees or plants grew in this district in an age when rain fell more abundantly and the river flowed continually. Today the vegetation of the Hillside Dams is typical of thornveld elsewhere in Rhodesia, showing an interesting associadon of many different species of trees, several of which are extremely beautiful when in bloom.
In 1934 a young Rhodesian, George Frank Talent, who had been a keen field naturalist from boyhood, began to keep records of the bird life and population of the Hillside Dams. He spent many week-ends watching and photographing the shy wild birds and recording their habits. His enthusiasm for the preservation of wild life, and his untiring efforts to achieve his object were recognized by a sympathetic Town Council, which set aside the area surrounding Hillside Dams as the Bulawayo Bird Sanctuary and Nature Reserve where the natural fauna and flora of the thornveld might be preserved.
In this quiet spot among syenite kopjes, a piece of veld, enhanced and beautified by the long stretches of water of the Hillside Dams, is preserved with all its wealth of plant and bird and insect life. The special interest of this place was further recognized in 1942, when the area was declared a National Monument.
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| Sinoia Cave |
Sinoia Cave
(National Monument Number: 9)
Thornveld and msasa meet and merge in a valley ringed about with limestone kopjes four miles to the west ol the little town of Sinoia. In the valley is the great cave of Chirorodziwa. Saying the word cave, one thinks of holes in the sides of hills, but the Sinoia Cave is really a swallow hole, a funnel-shaped cavity in the limestone, produced by the action of water on the soluble crystalline rock.
A great hole in the vlei, about 100 feet across and 150 feet deep, is fenced off for the protection of men and animals. The cave is entered by way of a long dark sloping passage, whose entrance is about 20 feet below the general surface of the ground.
Light enters the passage from either end, and two small shafts in the roof ventilate and illumine the sloping passageway. On one side of the passage is a large chamber which has been occupied at different times in the history of the cave. The floor of this cave within the passage is covered by a few inches of reddish soil resting upon stalagmite. Scraps of bones and earthenware, and crudely fashioned quartz implements lie in and upon the soil.
The floor of the passage is rough and uneven and blocks of rock litter the way. For generations animals have descended this passage to drink at the pool, and the blocks of limestone are polished smooth by the constant rubbing past of thirsty animals.
At the end of the passage lies the great cave and the pool of water, directly under the swallow hole in the earth's surface. Light shines down upon the pool and the water is intensely blue and very still.
There are fish in the water and sometimes water-lilies bloom upon its borders. Beneath the lily pads myriads of small black tadpoles lash back and forth in search of food.
The pool is roughly rectangular in shape with great stalactites overhanging its surface. For many years it was believed that the pool was bottomless and natives said a dread serpent haunted its depths. At length, however, arrangements were made to sound the pool and its depth was proved to be a little over 300 feet.
The cave is known to the Africans as Chirorodziwa, the silent pool. At the time of the Matabele occupation, when Mzililikazi sent his raiders north and east and west in search of cattle and other booty, and later in the days of Lobengula, whose empire of blood and rapine extended to the Zambezi in the north and to the Sabi in the east, a chief called Shinoyi held office in the Sinoia district. His kraal was set upon the summit of the Hunyani Range, since in those years of terror the Mashona built their kraals on hill-tops for greater security.
In time, not even a kraal set upon a hill was safe against the terrible raids of Matabele impis. Shinoyi determined to seek shelter elsewhere. He descended from his hill-top with his people and built his kraal in the vlei, close to the entrance of the strange cave of Chirorodziwa. About his kraal he set a high wall of poles and outside the wall he planted thornbush as a disguise and a protection. Within this wall Shinoyi's people built their huts and cultivated the ground. Herd boys took the cattle outside the wall to graze and drove them in again at night. When word came from Shinoyi's scouts that the Matabele were in the neighbourhood, the chief gathered his people and led them down into the cave.
The women carried their babies and bundles of food, and the men herded the goats to safety and urged their dogs down into the dimlit passage of the cave. The herd boys drove the cattle into the enclosure and secured them in pens. The gateway in the wall was closed with thornbush, and silence descended upon the kraal. Down in the cave nearly 300 people listened fearfully for the sound of the Matabele warriors. They drank at the silent pool but they never bathed in it for fear of the monster lurking in its depths.
The Matabele never came, and at length Shinoyi's people returned to their normal lives. After the European occupation of the Colony, Chief Shinoyi is said to have taken refuge in the great cave for a second time, during the native rebellion of 1896. When white settlement began to spread through the country, Chief Shinoyi abandoned his kraal in the Sinoia veld and moved away towards Lomagundi.
Ewanrigg Aloe Garden
(National Monument Number: 46e)
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Ewanrigg Aloe GardenThe late Mr Basil Christian on left.
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Arcturus lies in the heart of msasa country, to the east of Salisbury, and in the aloe garden at 'Ewanrigg', Arcturus, there is one of the finest collections of aloes in the world. The aloe garden was created by the late Mr. H. Basil Christian on about three acres of ground. Small kopjes of local granite were carefully built to provide a natural setting for the plants. Among the boulders Rhodesian aloes flourish and flower under ideal conditions. Tall msasa trees cast a thin shade over the clumps and clusters of exotic aloes brought from every part of Africa and Madagascar.
There are always birds in the garden. Long-billed sun- birds thrust their beaks into the flowers and sip the nectar at the base, but short-billed birds are not deterred by the shape of the flowers. They have learned to perch on the stem of the aloe spike and puncture the base of each flower to obtain its sweet syrup.
Many varieties of Aloe cameronii grow wild in different parts of Rhodesia. It was the common form of this aloe whose beauty led Mr Christian to establish his aloe garden at 'Ewanrigg'. Many years ago Mr Christian planned an alpine garden and the space before his house was laid out in spacious lawns as a setting for the alpine plants. There was one boulder too large to be removed and so, to disguise its stark appearance, someone planted an aloe close to the rock. When the aloe bloomed, its beauty so delighted Mr. Christian that he abandoned the idea of alpines in favour of the lovely aloes of the countryside. Besides many aloes common to Rhodesia and South Africa, Mr Christian obtained thirteen species that grow nowhere else except in Rhodesia.
Here and there in the rockeries are rare varieties of aloes seldom seen even in the district in which they grow naturally. The tall tree aloe, Aloe excelsa, is widely distributed in granite country. This is the only tree aloe indigenous in Rhodesia. It grows often to a height of thirty feet and its leaves may be six feet long. One or more branching panicles of flowers thrust upward from the rosette of leaves, the colours of the flowers varying from light orange to deep crimson. These vivid tree aloes bloom among the granite kopjes from July to September, sometimes growing in the shade of taller trees, sometimes standing forth in stark silhouette against the sky.
Aloes hybridize very freely, so that at 'Ewanrigg' many new and beautiful species of aloes are in process of being created through the good offices of nectar-seeking birds and insects.
In later years Mr Christian specialized in the growing of cycads, and assembled at 'Ewanrigg' an almost complete collection of the African species of these interesting plants. The cycad is a curious and fascinating tree with a thick simple stem crowned with a terminal tuft of leaves. (Sometimes the leaves rise from an underground stem, so that the plant appears to be a shrub.) The cycads are survivals of an ancient stock which flourished in remote ages and which were found fossilized in the coal measures.
Pungwe Falls
(
National Monument Number: 12h)
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| Pungwe Falls |
The high central plateau of Central and South Africa is separated from the low-lying coastal plains by a mountainous escarpment which runs more or less parallel to the coastline. Two great rivers, the Zambezi and the Limpopo, have worn a way to the sea through the plateau-land, so that the central plateau of Southern Rhodesia stretches from east to west and is bounded to north and south by the low-lying country through which the two rivers run.
Two other rivers, with their tributaries Sabi and Ruenya, complicate the terrain by cutting deep valleys through the mountainous escarpment that forms the eastern border of Rhodesia. The Sabi, flowing southwards and then eastwards, isolates the district of Melsetter from the main plateau. North of Umtali, the Nuagadzi on its way to join the Zambezi in Portuguese territory, isolates the high ground of Inyanga, where a type of scenery exists that is nowhere else seen in Rhodesia.
This complexity of contours in Southern Rhodesia has brought into being a diversity of climatic conditions in which varying rainfall, heat and humidity, have a profound effect on the vegetation, while the vegetation in connection with the other factors affects the faunal population of each district.
To travel in Inyanga is to enter a new world. The hills are grass-covered and all along the eastern border are patches of dense forest sharply defined. Streams leap and chatter in the grass. It is a land of mists and rain and sudden gusts of wind that tear aside the clouds so that the hills are bathed in sudden sunlight.
The river Pungwe has its source in a swamp high in the Inyanga Hills. The Pungwe, at its source, is a small cold stream. It goes racing down the mountainside, leaping thirty feet downwards at the Upper Falls that are close to the roadway. Further down the cleft in the mountains that form the Pungwe Gorge, the river pours over the main Falls in a cascade of silver. On either side are the dark forbidding mountain shapes, cold mists drift and float about the river, revealing and concealing its beauty by turns.
Rhodes Inyanga Estate
(National Monument Number: 10h)
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| Rhodes Inyanga Estate |
When Cecil John Rhodes acquired the Rhodes Inyanga Estate it was to own the Pungwe Gorge that he chose this piece of land. It was later found that the Gorge lay just outside the Estate, so a further 550 acres were bought to include the Gorge. On his death Rhodes bequeathed this property at Inyanga, and his landed property near Bulawayo (World's View Farm) 'to be cultivated for the instruction of the people' of Rhodesia. In 1918 the administration of the Estate at Inyanga was delegated to the Department of Agriculture and farming operations were carried on until 1933. In that year it was decided to develop the area as a tourist resort. The old homestead on the Estate was enlarged and modernized to form an hotel. Rest camps were erected at various beauty spots. Roads were built so that tourists could enjoy the many notable beauties of the Estates.
The great mountain of Inyangani towers above the sur- rounding hills, attaining a height of 8,517 feet. On the sur- rounding hill-tops are the fortresses of a vanished and forgotten race, and on the slopes of the hills are the terraces and furrows that mark the extent and scope of their agricultural activities, and the stone-built pits besides which they lived.
Among these hills are patches of coniferous forest, where the only indigenous conifer (Callitris whytei) of Rhodesia may be seen to advantage. Besides the famous Pungwe Falls there are two other waterfalls of great beauty on the Estate, the Inyangombie Falls and the Nyamziwa Falls.
World's View Farm
(National Monument Number: 29b)
Cecil Rhodes spent much of his time in Rhodesia at the Matopos, where he was impressed by the rugged grandeur of the country. He owned a farm there, and an estate of about 115,000 acres. The Matopos might be said to extend from about 15 miles out of Bulawayo, 60 miles to the south and about 30 miles to the east and west. Much of historical interest is to be found there. Rhodes himself lies buried at the spot he named 'one of the world's views'; there are relics there of Matabele occupation and of earlier culture
For the tourist the Matopos offers its rugged scenery, its relics of the past, its parks and its wild life. World's View Farm, which is part of the estate, is administered by the Department of Agriculture and Lands. Other farms in the vicinity are held on lease by private individuals and in most cases these leases date from Mr Rhodes's own time. It was at his own request that a number of farmers were settled on the land at the Matopos.
Beyond the dam and the Matopos Dam Hotel the homestead of Rhodes's farm is seen on the right. On the site of the present farmhouse Mr Rhodes was in the habit of spending much time in Rhodesia and it was here that the gun carriage carrying his remains was halted on the night before the final trek to the grave.
His schemes for irrigation have since been put into practice, and at World's View Farm much experimental work takes place, particularly in the field of cattle breeding.
Not far from where Rhodes had his farmhouse the traveller comes across the Rhodes Matopo Park, where there is a collection of Rhodesian fauna, including several species of buck. The Founder wrote: 'I direct my trustees that a portion of Sauerdale property, a part of my said landed property near Bulawayo, be planted with every possible tree, and be made and preserved as a park'.
Chirinda Forest
(National Monument Number: 35)
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| Chiranda Forest |
Great stretches of grassland interspersed with patches of dense forest characterize the mountain ranges that stretch from Nyangui (7,315 feet) in the north to Mapungani (3,599 feet) in the south. It is a long winding mountainous road that leads southward from Inyanga to Umtali and onwards to the unique and lovely forest of Chirinda. The road goes up and down among the mountains alternately thrilling the traveller with the terror and beauty of the winding way.
The districts of Melsetter and Chipinga have the finest natural timber in Rhodesia, and in a corner of Chipinga, close to the Portuguese border, stands the strange forest of Chirinda on Mt.. Silinda. There are actually two forests, separated from each other by a grassy glen. Chirinda is the greater, covering 1,200 acres, and Chipete is the lesser forest, extending over 40 acres.
Chirinda stands in a stretch of open country, a dense green wall across the road. It is only when the traveller comes close to the forest that he sees there is a cavern in the forest wall where the road enters the shade and the silence. It is cool and very quiet among the trees. Africans call this patch of forest 'Refuge', and within its green embrace the world could be forgotten. Great ropes of lianes make a tangle among the branches of the tall trees. The parasite fig (Ficus natalensis) twines itself about a tree and strangles its victim as it spreads its broad shady crown above the dying branches of the tree on which it feeds and clings.
The undergrowth is densely green. Mosses and ferns flourish on the soft floor of the forest. Bracken grows wherever a clearing breaks the high canopy of the forest and sunlight can shine through. Butterflies and bees are busy among the flowers that unfurl their petals in the closed forest world.
The chief trees of the forest are the three great mahoganies, Khaya nyasica, the red mahogany, greatest of all the trees in the forest, Lovoa swynnertoni, the brown mahogany, and Trichelia chirudensis, the white mahogany.
The Big Tree
(National Monument Number: 28)
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| The Big Tree |
The Big Tree of Chirinda Forest is a red mahogany. It stands by itself in a little clearing within the forest. It is judged to be more than 2,000 years old, and still holds its mighty crown proudly to the skies. The circumference of its trunk is more than 50 feet, its height 216 feet. The Big Tree blooms in November, when the small white flowers open to the sun. The fruit, a large capsule full of winged seeds, does not ripen till the following September, when the capsule breaks and scatters its seeds through the forest.
Bunga Forest
(National Monument Number: 54i)
Bunga Forest lies beyond Umtali on the eastern border of Southern Rhodesia. It is on land that once belonged to the late Hon. Lionel Cripps, C.M.G., who was one of the foundation members of the Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics. Mr. Cripps left Bunga Forest to the nation.
The intention is that the forest, which covers about 60 or 70 acres, should be transformed into a nature reserve. Already it is a popular picnic and holiday spot, and is situated amid some of the best scenery of the Eastern Districts. Adjoining Bunga is Manchester Forest, another large preserve of indigenous trees, but this is privately owned and is not a National Monument.
Rupisi Hot Springs
(National Monument Number: 51)
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| Rupisi Hot Springs |
The Rupisi Hot Springs are at the headwaters of the Rupisi river, about twenty miles in a direct line in a south-westerly direction from Chipinga in the Melsetter district. About one acre has been enclosed by a fence, and this contains the eye of the spring.
The water is supposed to have some medicinal property but an analysis of the water does not confirm this belief.
There is a road from Chipinga and the springs can also be reached from the bridge over the Tanganda river. The main interest in the site lies in the scenery, and in the native life.
PART II
Rock Paintings and Engravings
Until some two thousand years ago the inhabitants of this country lived a precarious existence as hunters, entirely dependent on what they could collect in the veld. As their tools were principally of stone they are often referred to as Stone Age Man.
The men of the Earlier and Middle Stone Ages left important relics, but as no National Monuments are specifically concerned with these early people we need not consider them here. Right at the end of the Stone Age and living even today is a group of people whose monuments and relics form an important element in our National Monu- ments. These people are the Bushmen.
When, within the last couple of thousand years or so, more advanced people of a different race, speech and culture arrived, the Bushmen were established as far south as the Cape Province. The pressure of invading forces of people, superior in strength and martial cunning, steadily eliminated the Bushman and forced him from the lands of his forefathers. These invaders were the ancestors of some of our present Bantu tribes.
Those Bushmen who escaped the invading forces en- countered further hardships and evils through the centuries and were a dying remnant of a race on the banks of the Orange River in the nineteenth century. A portion of the once-widespread company, somewhat altered in colour and minor details of physique, through inter-marriage with Hottentot and Bantu, still occupies the Kalahari to the north of Bechuanaland, retaining the language and mythology of the original Bushman and much of his mode of life.
The Bushman whose habits and customs were studied by nineteenth and early twentieth century investigators had suffered pursuit and persecution for centuries. His rock- painting art was not wholly forgotten for there are rock- paintings in the south that depict Boers and their crinolined ladies, horses and wagons and guns. One method of painting was demonstrated to the Rev. S. S. Dornan, F.R.A.I., by a half-caste Bushman who used haematite pulverized between two grindstones to yield a brown or reddish-brown colour. The powered haematite was mixed with boiling fat and allowed to cool into a type of crayon. The artist then took a pebble and rubbed a smooth patch on the granite boulder he proposed to paint. The dust from this rubbing was wiped away and the outline of a three-inch zebra was drawn upon the granite with a burnt stick. Then the lump of paint and fat, the crayon, was rubbed over the figure, roughly filling in the outline. The paint was heated again to a liquid state in a small hollow stone, and the Bushman artist took a small feather brush and painted the liquid colour carefully over the figure and the zebra was complete. The whole painting was quickly achieved, the artist working methodically and without haste.
The different colours used by Bushman artists of different schools were derived from iron oxides, ochres and clays, mixed with animal fat or the latex of euphorbia.
At one time all paintings upon rocks were believed to be the work of Bushmen. But of late years the use of the term rock-paintings for this type of African art has superseded the Bushman paintings, since it is thought that many of the paintings were executed in late Middle Stone Age times. Much of the rock-painting in Rhodesia however, is unquestionably Bushman art.
The oldest paintings, which may ante-date the Bushman and be linked with the Stone Age peoples who occupied the country before the advent of the Bushmen, are of great size and depict strange animals. These paintings are usually much faded and are often overlaid with later paintings.
The truly Bushman paintings show animals singly or in herds, groups of hunters, birds in flight, and in these paintings the humans are of less importance than the animals. The animals are the main theme, the hunters are there merely to complete the scene. Mythological animals are sometimes depicted, and what we know of Bushman legend affords an explanation of such weird forms as the almost- human Mantis and the hilly-backed serpent.
The third groups of paintings are elaborately social and ceremonial in subject. In these paintings man is exalted and any animals present are domesticated or sacrificial beasts, adjuncts to ceremonies we dimly discern as connected with king burial or rain making.
The three types of paintings may be three separate expressions of a national genius, for we do not know enough about the Bushman at the height of his national development to say that he could not have painted the social-ceremonial type of pictures. There are, indeed, signs that the three series of paintings merge into one another, a development that might be due either to a change in national thought or to the adoption of the art by another people with a different outlook.
The fact that some of these social-ceremonial pictures show actions that have their anti types in the life of Bantu peoples today, suggests to some investigators that these pictures have a Bantu origin. Further investigation may provide an explanation of the origin and reason for the pictures but will not alter the inherent artistic expression with which the average beholder is concerned.
It is impossible at present to fix dates to the various types of paintings in Rhodesia. In sheltered caves very ancient paintings retain a brilliance of colouring that is quite lacking in open caves where weathering has affected paintings that are relatively recent.
Many hundreds of caves and rock-shelters decorated with rock-paintings have been discovered in Rhodesia wherever granite formation occurs. Most of these sites are concealed by vegetation and are difficult to approach. Many of the larger caves so decorated command a wide view of the surrounding countryside.
A number of caves and rock-shelters containing paintings of especial interest and artistic merit have been declared National Monuments. Most of these are reasonably accessible to the student of this primitive art. Some of these caves are of great size and contain paintings of different ages and differing types.
Since it would be impossible to declare all known painted caves and shelters National Monuments, the policy of the National Monuments Commission has been to declare such as are easily accessible, in order to preserve them from wanton destruction by unappreciative passers-by.
The painted caves are regarded with awe and reverence by the African, as the abode or meeting place of the Madzimudzangara, or 'forgotten spirits', to quote one interpreta tion of the word. These spirits, which were believed to occupy any opening in the earth—caves, chasms, mines or vleis—were generally of friendly disposition but liable to punish anyone who disturbed their habitat. The term Madzimudzangara came to be used to describe certain caves which were believed to be the meeting place of such spirits, and at times to describe the paintings within the caves.
Gulubahwe Cave
(National Monument Number: 20b)
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| Gulubahwe Cave |
Many of these painted caves occur among the granite hills of the Matopos. The discovery of the strange cave of Gulubahwe was made in 1904 when a party consisting of Mr F. P. Mennell, the Rev. E. Goetz and the Rev. H. P. Steigerwald set out to explore the Matopos.
Travelling from the American Mission the party crossed the wide valley of a tributary of the Umtjabezi River and picked their way through narrow valleys where the sugar bush (Protea abyssinica) was the dominant tree. Travelling onwards through fair wooded country, the three men came, with their bearers and pack donkeys, to a very steep smooth slope of rock. About half-way up the bare precipitous face of rock to the right was the mouth of the cave of Gulubahwe. The opening to the cave is about thirty feet across and fifteen feet high; the cave is about fifteen feet in depth. In- side are many rock-paintings, beautifully preserved and
executed with extraordinary vivacity and imagination.
Chief of the paintings is a tremednous snake fifteen feet long. This awesome creature has ears and teeth and a curly tain, and a suggestion of smoke issuing from its nostrils. The snake had been painted in several colours. The head and tail are red, the body a faded white, underside yellow and outlined in purple. Along its back are twenty-three undulations on which are depicted fourteen human figures, seven baboons, three buck and a baboon with a buck's head.
The native porters who accompanied the three explorers exclaimed that they knew this animal. It had rivers and hills upon its back and men lived upon it.
Behind the great snake in the painting there hover some curious long-legged figures with very high rounded shoulders and tiny heads. These figures have long tails. Mr. Mennell believed them to represent 'Isitokwane', an evil sprite which portends a speedy death to any who behold him. According to Bantu legend, Isitokwane has little or no head, and hops about on a single leg.
Gulubahwe is about twelve miles beyond the Matopos Mission on the Old Gwanda road.
Silozwane Cave
National Monument Number: 19b)
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| Silozwane Cave |
In 1908 the great cave at Silozwane was explored by Mr F. P. Mennell and Mr E. C. Chubb, and travelling by bicycle, the journey from Bulawayo took them three days.
Silozwane, which is approached by a winding pathway up a steep ascent, is 57 feet wide at the mouth, about 45 feet deep and 30 feet high at the dome. On the wall at die back of the cave are a number of large dark red paintings of domestic life—a woman preparing food, a man reclining with his head resting on his arms. Among the drawings is one huge painting of a giraffe six and a half feet high, from which Silozwane takes its other name of die Cave of the Giraffe.
Below these drawings, all round the wall of the cave, are paintings in varying shades of red and a few in yellow. This great frieze depicts all manners of wild animals, lion, rhinoceros, kudu, tsessebe, impala, giraffe, as well as hunters with bows and arrows. There is a great snake here also, seven feet in length, with an undulating back. The snake has a giraffe-shaped head with horns and on its back are large yellow buck standing, grazing and running, and a man painted in red. There are also a number of smaller 'snakes', all with strangely mammalian heads.
Above and below the serpent are fish and birds and small animals. One picture, four inches long, shows a winged termite and another a troop of guinea fowl. The paintings in this cave are probably the best preserved of any that remain to us.
According to native tradition Silozwane is a very sacred cave. Here offerings are made to the ancestors of the Makalanga people. At the time of the full moon a procession of natives goes up the steep winding path to the sacred cave to make an offering to the spirits of the forefathers of the tribe. Wire bracelets and bracelets of twisted grass, beads, and twigs are put in the cave.
But the full explanation of the strange ceremonial is un- known. The Makalanga people who live in the Matopos are known as the Abenyobi. They are descendants of a tribe which broke away from the main stock of the Mashona people many centuries ago and have lived an isolated existence among the Matopos hills until quite recent times. The snake is venerated and feared by these people, who will make offerings of milk to large serpents that live in the rocky kopjes.
Visitors to Silozwane should turn right at the World's View turn-off; they will find the cave about fourteen miles from this point.
Nswatugi Cave
(National Monument: 8b)
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| Nswatugi Cave |
About three and a half miles along a footpath over the hills from the Whitewater Mission Station on the Antelope Mine Road is the cave called Nswatugi.
The cave opens at the end of a steep gully. The entrance is only six yards across but the cave extends fifteen yards into the hill. Some of the paintings inside are very old but others are of more recent date. There are reddish-brown kudu and human beings, and claret coloured giraffe and elephants, a white 'rain' bull, and most beautiful of all, three polychrome giraffes, superbly painted.
Below the painting of the giraffe, on the floor of the cave, there once stood a clay granary where the Matabcle stored their grain during the Rebellion of 1896. This granary has since been destroyed or has fallen to pieces. In the soil and ashes of the floor have been found an abundance of scrapers and points and a number of other implements of fine workmanship.
This cave is the type site of the Rhodesian Wilton Industry (Later Stone Age). To visit it, proceed along the new Mleme dam road from World's View turn-off. The road to Nswatugi is signposted about seven miles beyond the dam, on the left.
Bambata Cave
(National Monument Number: 7b)
The great cave of Bambata, which was discovered by Mr Neville Jones in 1917, is one of the most interest- ing caves yet explored in Rhodesia. Not only are the paintings very fine, but the great variety of implements and tools excavated from the dust and ashes of the deep floor suggests that the cave was among the earliest centres of human occupation of this part of Rhodesia.
Bambata Cave is said to derive its name from an occasion when die Matabele king Mzilikazi ascended the hill but found such difficulty in descending at a chosen point that he was obliged to climb down on all fours. In doing so his hands caressed the hill. The root of the name Bambata is the Zulu verb 'ugubambata', which means to caress or stroke with the hands.
The turn-off to Bambata is about 42 miles from Bulawayo along the Antelope road through the Matopos. The cave is approached from the south by a long climb over great sweeps of granite. To east and west and south are wonderful views of the granite kopjes of the Matopos. Red-painted arrows on the rocks guide the visitor to the tree-grown gully where the cave is situated.
The great cave of Bambata measures 37 feet across the opening, and its greatest depth is 27 feet. The cave is a great semi-spherical hole in the side of the granite kopje, and the lower portion is filled with dust and ash and sand to make a level floor. This floor has been rising steadily for hundreds of years. Each wind that blew, each year that passed, each generation that used the cave, added something to its layers of ashes and rubble and loam. Buried deep in this floor are the stone tools and implements of the men who painted the walls, and made their tools from the stones and pebbles they collected in the valley below. The lower cave earth contains tools made in Middle Stone Age times.
The fresco begins with a peculiar figure bearing a resemblance in its right half to the prow of a boat, but the nature of which has never been explained. This is followed by a group of antelope standing, one of which is in the act of grazing; one on the extreme left is painted in yellow, therest in red. The smaller ones of this group appear to be bush buck. Above them are a few human figures. There then follows a large painting in red and yellow which is probably a granary, since it has the appearance of a number of baskets placed close together. The figures that follow are indistinct until we arrive at a group of three tssessebe, of which the middle one is seated. These are very clearly depicted. Next, and in the centre of the cave, are two large elephants, each figure about three feet long. These stand back to back. The original colour has entirely flaked off the pictures and they stand out merely by contrast with the surrounding rock face. Both animals are shown with trunks upraised and apparently in the act of charging. The basal half of the trunk of the right-hand specimen is obscured by a brownish colour which may possibly be a trace of the original pigment. Between these two elephants is a very fine female stembuck in red ochre, grazing.
Next follows the finest group in the cave—five antelopes. The group consists of a bull eland in yellow ochre and four cows, one in yellow, the rest in red. Possibly a group of eight sharply delineated human figures to the left is intended to represent a party hunting these eland.
The lower half of the fresco begins with a long row of walking human figures, most of them carrying spears and clubs. Beneath these are some partially obliterated figures, one of which is probably female. Further on, a little to the right of and below the elephants, are some rows of semi circular markings which appear to represent water, in association with which are three quiver-shaped drawings, probably fish-traps. Above and to the left of them is a peculiar animal, possibly mythological. From the transversely barred legs and the hoofs it might be likened to the zebra, but the markings on the body are more nearly approximate to those of the leopard; the head is indistinct.Beneath is a smaller animal resembling a mungoose.
From this point onwards, as far as the large group of five eland, there are numerous ill-defined drawings of animals
Ignore warning, with trees between them and human figures below them.
There is then a gap, containing a few seated human figures, which is closed by the fine figure of a wild-boar or warthog. The paintings which close the fresco at the south-west end are very indistinct, but include a well-defined giraffe.
This cave was the first to be excavated in Africa in the interests of the study of prehistory. This work was undertaken by Mr Neville Jones and Dr G. Arnold in 1919.
This site is the 'type site' of the Rhodesian Stillboy Industry (Middle Stone Age).
Mjelele Valley Road Cave
(National Monument Number: 44b)
Close to the road that runs through the Mjelele Valley is a cave diat faces south-east, away from the valley. It contains very few paintings but is easily accessible. The pathway to it lies just beyond the M.O.T.H. Shrine in the Matopos.
This cave also has a painting of a mythological snake twenty-one inches long with ten humps on its back. The body is a purple shade of red and the humps are painted in yellow. Near the head of the snake are two wings painted in brown.
Mtoko Cave
(National Monument Number: 25g)
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| Mtoko Cave |
The Mtoko Cave, known also as Ruchera Cave, is well protected from the weather and is particularly rich in paintings. There are large elephants depicted in white and greenish-grey, strikingly delineated above a medley of paintings of animals and humans. Among the animals are antelope, wild horses, several carnivores, zebra, lizards, baboons, eels and fishes. There are big-bellied men in curious headdresses, graceful hunters and dancers.
The cave contains a painting thirteen feet in length, depicting with great vivacity the herding of a flock of sheep. Both the style of painting and the subject suggests that this is one of the more recent paintings.
On the left of the frieze are shown two men and two women tending and guiding a flock of sheep. The figures are painted in dark red, yellow or brown ochre. Some of them wear a curious headdress, not unlike an Indian brave's crown of feathers, but in these drawings the headdresses may depict tufts of grass bound to the head as a disguise when stalking game. The figures are heavily built, not at all like the slender figures of the Bushmen shown in older paintings. At the end of the frieze comes a troop of five warriors, armed with bows and arrows and accompanied by a dog.
The cave is reached from Mtoko along the Tete road, and by taking the turning to Makaha. The hill can be seen on the right. There is a native custodian.
Domboshawa Cave
The great cave at Domboshawa is a rain-making cave. Many of its fine paintings are blackened and nearly obliterated by the fires of generations of rain-makers, and the paintings have also suffered at the hands of vandals.
Domboshawa Hill is a vast mass of solid granite in the rugged granite country of the Chindamora Reserve, twenty miles north of Salisbury. The great bald-headed hill dominates the landscape, and the smooth slopes that are covered with reddish lichens have gained the hill its name of Dombo (head or hill) and Shawa (rufous or reddish-brown).
Among the paintings in Domboshawa Cave there is a hunting fresco showing four men setting out waving bows and arrows above their heads. Between the first and second figures a smaller figure of a female stands with hands up- raised. High up on the wall is a painting of a baboon hunt. Originally painted in brownish ochre, this scene has faded to a light yellow. Two hunters armed with sticks or spears are chasing three baboons. The paintings of the baboons are incomplete but the attitudes and outlines are unmistakably baboon. The humans are shown in violent pursuit. Were these paintings the work of Bantu people, it would need but little imagination to visualize the raided maize fields from which the humans would be chasing the baboons. But none of our knowledge of the Bushman suggests that he was ever anything but a hunter. He sowed nothing and all he ever reaped was wild fruits and roots. The Bushman owned neither cattle nor lands.
DOMBOSHAWA CAVE
(National Monument Number: 16c)
Under an overhanging rock there is a spirited drawing of an elephant hunt, in dark claret colour. On the same wall are spidery men in black, and an excellent drawing of quagga or zebra in claret.
The other painting, to the right of the main cave, was discovered by Mr A. J. H. Goodwin in 1927. This picture seems to be directly connected with the rain-making legends that are told about Domboshawa. The scene is painted in dark claret and shows a man pouring out rain, which is depicted by a series of dashes, over a tree.
Seekers of rain, who made the pilgrimage to Domboshawa in time of drought, came to the sacred spot bearing offerings to the Rain Spirit. The offerings were laid in the cave and a fire was lighted there. Then the pilgrims squatted down upon the hillside to await an answer from the spirit. Sometimes they had to wait a very long time before the Spirit accepted the offerings and signified that rain would come. The promise of rain was shown by an issue of smoke from the top of the hill. Sometimes the Rain Spirit ignored the offerings of the pilgrims, who had to make another and another pilgrimage bearing gifts, to appease the spirit and elicit the rain-promise.
The physical explanation of the phenomenon is that at the back of the cave at Domboshawa there is a huge crack which leads through the granite to the top of the hill. When a rain wind was blowing, its action would carry the smoke of a fire in the cave up the chimney crack and smoke would be seen to drift up from the bald dome of Domboshawa. When the wind was unpropitious no smoke would issue from the chimney and further attempts to gain the favour of the Rain Spirit would seem necessary.
Mkumbe Cave
(National Monument Number: 21c)
Twelve miles away to the north of Domboshawa is the kumbe cave in the Mawanga Hills. Mkumbe is an immense cave, 300 feet wide by 90 feet deep. It faces north-east and is set high up on a great granite kopje. The approach to the cave is very steep.
Most of the walls and the lower part of the cave ceiling are covered with paintings. There are examples of the very old red and yellow paintings, one of which is a fine red buffalo, eighteen inches long, with cloven hooves and a hairy neck. Owing to the depth of the cave and the slope of the roof, many of the paintings can be seen to advantage only in the very early morning when the sun's rays strike directly upon them.
The frieze in Mkumbe is thirty-two feet long. The under lying painting is of six large elephants, each nearly five feet in length. Two of the elephants appear to be guarding a young one. Superimposed on these huge elephants are many series of paintings. There are rhinos, sable, kudu and baboons. There are vegetable motifs and some curious 'sausages', large ovals with a cap of white or contrasting colour. These 'sausages' occur in many cave paintings, but no one has yet been able to explain their significance.
Above and between the second and third elephants there is a delightful grouping of female kudus, slightly imposed one upon another. Two dark reddish-brown paintings include well-drawn elephant, buck and buffalo. The claret series includes a delightfully lifelike kudu bull as well as other buck and some humans.
Mrewa Cave
(National Monument Number: 24)
This is a huge rambling overhung shelter, with many most interesting paintings. It is situated in the Mangwende Native Reserve on a hill known as Madzinudzangara, and is about four miles from Mrewa. A guide is advisable, and cars can get to within a quarter of a mile of the cave.
One of the features of this site is the variety and quantity of the paintings. Animals, people, plants, trees and other objects have been depicted. Especially interesting are some of the human figures which display unusual headdresses and other items of equipment. Several styles and colours may be noted, often superimposed one on another.
This is a site of considerable importance, particularly for students of prehistoric art. There appears to be some thickness of floor deposit which would undoubtedly yield interesting Stone Age material, but no work has yet been attempted here.
Dengeni Cave
(National Monument Number: 32)
Dengeni Cave is in the Ndanga North Native Reserve on Dengeni mountain, about five miles south-west of Ndanga Native Hospital, but there is no proper road to it.
The cave is of the type formed by negative spheroidal weathering, but in this case is fairly shallow. It is surrounded by thick bush, mainly mahobohobo trees, and cannot be located easily from a distance. The paintings are of great interest both from an artistic and archaeological point of view. There is a remarkably fine frieze of female kudu painted in red and outlined in white. Above these is a mass of human figures, executed mainly in a most unusual style, the bodies being often done in white while the hair and other details are in red. They are of the same category as the paintings examined by the Abbe Breuil near Chibi and Ndanga. The Abbe saw in these peculiar figures proof of the arrival of an intrusive culture different from that of the people of bush type, usually presumed to have been responsible for the more orthodox painting styles. This, however, remains to be confirmed or otherwise by definite evidence. Whatever their true significance these paintings are of great interest and undoubtedly form a category of their own.
Dambarimwa Cave
(National Monument Number: 60g)
The correct name for this cave, situated about eight miles from Mtoko in the Mtoko Reserve, is Gambarimwe. It is well hidden and contains a very fine series of paintings. There is much superimposition and the subjects are varied. Human figures predominate, together with their goods and chattels. Certain figures appear to be symbolic. A feature is the use of white to indicate ornaments (which may be shell beads) on some of the figures.
Makwe Cave
(National Monument Number: 65)
A site of great interest to the student of prehistoric art is the cave at Makwe, Wedza district. It lies on the farm 'Makwe', the property of Mr Swanson, and is reached by taking the Watershed Bridge road from Marandellas. The cave is about mid-way up a granite kopje and is approached by a steep, slippery rock surface. It has the appearance of a long, narrow mouth set in the cliff face, and from its fine vantage point commands an extensive view of the surrounding countryside.
The main cave is about sixty feet long, and has been divided into two inner compartments. The compartments are separated by walls made from small granite rocks, and in some cases these have been plastered over. In and around the cave are a number of small openings, or inner caves, into the face of the rock and some of these, too, have been walled in with stone and plaster.
The cave contains many excellent paintings; indeed, almost the whole of the lower overhanging rock which serves as a roof, and the surrounding walls have been utilised for this purpose. The paintings are in the usual colours of reddish-brown, ochre and dark brown. There are numerous human figures and just as many paintings of buck. Two well defined zebras are included, and there is the large outline of an elephant, done in red. Three long curving white lines, set close together and ending up in a clump or head might indicate a snake. Several of the antelope have been depicted upside down.
Along the face of the kopje, and to the east of the main cave, is another cave, but there are no paintings there. The second cave has an aperture no more than two feet high, and to enter it at all one must slide snakewise.
The opening extends deep into the rock, however, and again there are several small inner caves, some of them walled in. What appear to be pillars have been erected in two places, reaching from the ground level of the cave to the roof only two or three feet above. These pillars have been constructed of stones and plastered over, and are in a good state of repair. In both caves receptacles have been fashioned on the floor, presumably for storing grain. They are constructed simply by laying an outer rim of earth on the floor of the cave to give the required shape and size.
Somerby Cave
(National Monument Number: 22)
Not far from one of Salisbury's most popular picnic spots, Lake Mcllwaine at Hunyani Poort, is Somerby Cave, an immense rock formation set amid some delightful natural scenery. The cave, on Mr J. E. Corser's farm eighteen miles from Salisbury, contains some Bushmen paintings of only minor importance, but the site is well worth a visit.
The cave, at the top of a well-wooded kopje, is formed by gigantic granite boulders, which give it a height inside of about thirty feet. The southern wall, which contains the paintings, jut's out at right angles at the top to form a natural, pavilion-like roof. The cave is well protected from the weather and was an admirable hideout for its earlier inhabitants.
There are three main sets of paintings, all on the one wall. To the left is a group consisting mainly of antelopes and human figures; in the centre is a large unfinished painting of an elephant, done in outline only, and on the right is the largest group, consisting mainly of antelopes again, and of a wide variety of human figures. The most interesting paintings are those of three hippo, and two, done in black, of galloping buck. There are two serpents painted in reddish-brown. Many of the paintings of human beings depict hunters with their bows and arrows.
Muromo Rock Paintings
(National Monument Number: 40i)
Some little known paintings are to be found near the Muromo Reserve on the Birchenough Bridge road about 35 miles from Umtali. The kopje is reached by turning off the main road at the Chimenga store at Kingsbrook Halt 32 miles from town, and following the Wengesi Valley road towards the Mshamhuru river. This road runs through the White Waters section of Kingsbrook farm, where Mr B. Close lives. Just over a mile from the turn off a right turn is taken, and half a mile along that road, bearing left all the time, there is a native kraal. The kopje with the paintings is then due south.
There are about fifteen different sets of paintings or traces of paintings, the best being under an overhanging rock at the south-west end of the two humps which form the kopje. There one sees the usual animals such as rhino, sable, kudu, elephant and baboon and groups of figures in various attitudes. Two figures, drawn upright and next to each other are like 'match-stick men', being just two feet long and half an inch wide at the widest point. Just above this pair is a very interesting maze design, the general effect being circular and looking like a child's game. It is said to be intended to represent Zimbabwe, but that is extremely unlikely. Three distinct colours are in evidence—dark red, red and orange.
Several other groups are easily accessible on the kopje. One shows the pot-belly of the Bushman very plainly, and another includes pictures of small buck. It appears that the artist had spilt the paint pot at one place, and there is just a single figure under another small overhanging rock.
Echo Farm and Borrowdale Farm
(National Monument Numbers: 18e and 23e)
Echo and Borrowdale Farms lie fourteen miles to the north-east of Salisbury, and are adjoining. They form part of the Borrowdale Estate. Both contain many granite hills and a number of shallow shelters which were used until quite recently as burial places by the Bantu people. These graves are in the usual Bantu style, being closed by carelessly built walls of loose stones. In the kopjes there are some good Bushman sites and the usual graves.
The farms have been proclaimed National Monuments mainly because of the pottery and ancient tools found there, but there are also some painted rock shelters. These, however, are mostly situated in inaccessible comers of the kopjes, where bushes and tangled creepers disguise the entrance.
Some of the pottery found in the caves was classified by Mr J. Schofield, A.R.I.B.A., as being of early Sotho culture. The date is doubtful but it may, so far as Southern Rhodesia is concerned, be as early as the fifteenth century, or even earlier. The many inter-tribal wars that have raged through the country from the sixteenth century probably meant that these places were used as hideouts in times of peril.
Three iron implements were found at Echo—an assegai head, a leaf-shaped hoe and a triangular hoe. The leaf-shaped hoe, in particular, resembles one found at Zimbabwe.
Surtic Rock Paintings
(National Monument Number: 52e)
Some remarkably good examples of Bushman paintings are to be found on Surtic farm, which forms part of the Mazoe Citrus Estates, twenty-five miles beyond Salisbury. The paintings are worth a visit by anybody interested in prehistoric art, as they are very clear and depict numerous varieties of animals, unusual human figures and flora. Of special interest is a series of paintings done in black, a colour not common in most parts of the country.
The paintings are on a hill named Chiwariza, near what is known as Harry Hayes's old mine.
To visit the monument, however, a permit is necessary from the B.S.A. Company, and it is advisable for visitors to employ a guide.
Diana's Vow
(National Monument Number: 64)
Photo: Mr. A. Cuthbertson
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| Diana's Vow |
An outstanding example of the 'social-ceremonial' type of painting, which is believed to have the ritual of obsequies for its subject, is the colossal painting in the cave at Diana's Vow, near Rusape. This extraordinary picture shows the huge recumbent figure of a man with an antelope mask. The figure is painted in reddish-yellow with white dots and markings on mask and body. Close by is a smaller recumbent figure in dark claret, also with white dotted patterns on the body. Beneath these two outsize figures is a vast concourse of small figures painted in red and yellow and claret. These figures are shown in strange attitudes. Many of them wear masks of hideous and awe- inspiring shapes. Some of them are armed with bows and arrows, others carry objects that do not suggest any known tool or utensil. There is no visible pattern in the picture. Men, women, hens, dogs, cattle, baskets with two handles, a snake, various meandering lines, skins pegged out to dry, and a mass of unrelated detail make up the glorious jumble.
It is a magnificent picture, whether it means anything or not to the beholder. The late Professor Leo Frobenius, who made an exhaustive study of Rhodesian rock paintings about 1929, considered it to represent the preparations for the burial of a king. It is difficult to read such a meaning into this single painting, but when a number of others such as exist in various parts of Southern Rhodesia are studied, Frobenius's interpretation does not seem nearly as far- fetched.
The paintings are about twenty miles north of Rusape on Diana's Vow Farm. The homestead is near the road on the left and directions can be obtained from there to the site of the paintings, which is quite close.
Engravings
The technique of painting was an easy one compared with the laborious pecking and chipping necessary to make a rock engraving. Yet the art of rock engraving was by no means despised by the patient sculptor-Bushman, and some examples of his work have been declared National Monuments.
There were two forms of rock-engraving practised by the sculptors, each created bysteady chipping at the chosen rock surface with a small piece of hard stone with a definite point. Some of the engravings consist of a groove that outlines thepicture. Others take the form of a hollowed surface in therock. In certain engravings this type of pocking wasreversed, and the picture stood up in relief against a background uniformly pocked away.
Though rock engravings are fairly common in the Union of South Africa they are extremely rare in Rhodesia.
Petroglyph of Giraffe
(National Monument Number: 26)
Six miles to the north-west of the old Native Department camp at Mtetengwe in the Beitbridge area is a fine petroglyph of a giraffe. The outline of the animalis deeply grooved, and within the outline a grid of crossing lines indicates the spotted markings of the giraffe's hide.
The engraving of the giraffe is on a flat rock close to a stream, whose waters flow over the stone when the stream is in flood. The giraffe is nine feet in length.
Bumboosie Ruin and Rock Painting
(National Monument Number: 59)
(The National Monument of Bumboosie consists of two distinct parts—a stone building now ruined, and a series of rock engravings—but for the sake of convenience, and to avoid confusion, both are incorporated in this section.)
When the Nguni, under Zwangendaba of the Kumalo clan, invaded the country of the Rozwi at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they put to death the Mambo, the great chief, at his fortress of Ntaba ka Mambo. But the Mambo's son, Zanke, escaped and fled westward. Zanke, with some of his father's people travelled until he came near Bumboosie. There he built a fortress.
Bumboosie river flows through a valley about six miles long and half a mile wide. On the south side of the vlei are sandstone kopjes, on the northern side are basalt kopjes. Bumboosie was built on the southern kopjes, and slabs of sandstone were used to build its walls. The workmen chose an elevated site and levelled the ground, then built their walls round the outer edge. The walls were three to four feet thick and the interior of the walls was rammed full of rubble and small stones. No mortar was used, for the men were drystone builders, and native tradition relates that there were three classes of men employed in the building. The trimmers used an adze to shape the stones, the carriers conveyed the stones from the trimmers to the builders, who placed the stones in position.
Inside the girdle wall numerous dividing walls partitioned the enclosure. Traces of circular wood and dagga huts within the thick stone walls may still be seen amongst the vegetation that has sprung up.
At the highest point of the fortified kopje a huge baobab tree casts a shade over Zanke's kraal—a specially fortifiedenclosure at the top of the hill, with space for one or two huts only. The sole approach to this fortress within a fortress was along a narrow ride enclosed by high walls, topped with small towers. The passage was wide enough for only one man to pass at a time.
The project was enormous and time limited, and because fear stalked behind every workman the building wascrude and hurried. Today the fortress stands ruined and desolate.
When the final blow fell upon Zanke and his tribe it came not at the hands of Zwangendaba of the Kumalo clan, chief of the Nguni, but from another Kumalo, the great Mzilikazi, the Lion of the North, whose story forms another chapter of Rhodesian history.
The Bumboosie rock engravings were discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century. These carvings have been made on the face of great blocks of sandstone. In each case they are more or less protected from the elements by an overhanging slab of rock. There are three sets of rock engravings at Bumboosie, the first 200 yards from the ruins, the second half a mile away and the third about one and a half miles away. The engravings all show spoor of game and other wild animals, and some human footprints. The carvings are life-size and very distinct. It has been observed that the lion spoor depicted show the animal with five toes. Most lions have a four-toed spoor but just occasionally five-toed lions are encountered and so the engraving records something that is unusual but not unknown.
The spoor of the extinct quagga is shown on these rocks, as well as the spoor of kudu, impala, wildebeeste, waterbuck, roan and sable antelope, eland, giraffe, buffalo, rhinoceros and warthog. Most of these animals still roam the Wankie Game Reserve that lies a few miles to the south of Bumboosie.
PART III
Ruins
In the study of the history of Rhodesia we are compelled to construct a vast jig-saw puzzle of which we have so far discovered but a tithe of the pieces. Nevertheless, that which is known is of romantic and absorbing interest. We owe much to the Portuguese chroniclers who commented on the state of Monomotapa and its peoples, in the days when Portugal was establishing herself upon the sea coast of East Africa. We owe much to Dr G. M. Theal, whose untiring efforts for more than nine years made these Portuguese chroniclers available to the student of Monomotapan history.
There is no need for romantic imaginings about the Queen of Sheba or the gold of Ophir. Phoenicians and Egyptians and Sabaeans belong to the ancient world. Romance lies under our hands when we touch the stones of our ruined fortresses. The pit-circles, the great temple at Zimbabwe, the relics that come from the ruins and the ancient workings, scraps of Chinese pottery, bright Venetian beads, African soapstone figures, are all pieces in the puzzle and serve to fill small corners of the great picture of Monomotapa.
Though it is impossible to give exact dates to the ruins that are scattered through Rhodesia, the mute evidence of relics unearthed in their environs and other factors serve to indicate approximate ages.
The chief's kraal of Bumboosie, near Wankie, is known to have been built in the first half of the nineteenth century. From archaeological evidence Dhlo-Dhlo was in full occupation about 1700. We know from the record of a lonely Portuguese explorer, Antonio Fernandes, who travelled far into the lands that lie between Zambezi and Limpopo, that the Monomotapa was building a fortress of stones without cement at a place called Mbiri, in 1514. Recent work shows that Inyanga forts may go back to the sixteenth century but that most of the Inyanga ruins are much later. The radio carbon date of a piece of timber found in the Zimbabwe Temple suggests that these ruins are possibly as much as 1400 years old.
The Inyanga district once supported a very dense population. Much of this country is uninhabited today. The Africans find it too bleak for most of the year, and there is a legend that a great battle was once fought here, and ghosts still haunt the lonely hills. In this wild mountainous region anyone could believe in ghosts. On a hundred hills stand ruined and deserted fortresses. Stone terraces engirdle the hills, and round their slopes are the old aqueducts that tapped the water from the tumbling streams.
In 1905, Dr David Randall-MacIver was invited by the British Association and the Rhodes Trustees to undertake an investigation of the ruins of Southern Rhodesia. It was no easy task that confronted him. Since the publication of the existence and situation of Zimbabwe by Carl Mauch in 1871, popular opinion had been steadily building up the romantic myth of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon's mines, in connection with the stone buildings of Rhodesia.
Arab legend, retailed to the Portuguese traders at Sofala and Mozambique in the sixteenth century, was in the main responsible for attributing the ruined cities of Monomotapa to the ancient world. Learned men ransacked the Bible and the ruins of other lands for clues to the identity of the people who built Zimbabwe. All who saw the ruins or who pondered on them seemed reluctant to allow them a purely African origin. It was as though they could not admit that anything good might come out of Africa.
Dr Randall-Maclver made a wide and careful survey of the ruins of Inyanga, Umtali, Dhlo-Dhlo, Naletale, Khami and Zimbabwe and declared positively that the buildings were medieval and post-medieval, that their character was unmistakably African, and that all the arts and manufacturers exemplified by objects found within the ruins were typically African, except where the objects were imports of well-known medieval or post-medieval date.
In support of the arguments for an African origin of the ruins, Dr Randall-MacIver cited the Portuguese chroniclers of the sixteenth century: 'The Portuguese writers give no hint of any domination of the negroes by an alien race. On the contrary, De Barros and De Goes explicitly state that the inhabitants of the district round the Monomotapan capital were woolly-haired negroes.'
Zimbabwe Ruins
(National Monument Number: 2)
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| Zimbabwe Ruins |
The discovery of Zimbabwe by Adam Renders in 1867 was a great moment in the history of Rhodesia, yet it passed unmarked. No word of the ruins reached the world until Carl Mauch published an account of what he had seen, in 1871. Carl Mauch spent several months in the company of Adam Renders.
In a letter (September 1871) to the Rev. Mr. Gruetzner, Mauch describes Zimbabwe in these terms:
'The ruins may be divided into two parts: the one upon a granite rocky eminence of 400 feet in height, the other upon a somewhat elevated terrace. The two are separated by a gentle valley, their distance apart being about 300 yards. The rocky bluff consists of an elongated mass of granite, rounded in form, upon which stands a second block, and upon this again fragments smaller but still many tons in weight, with fissures, chasms and cavities.
'The western side of this mountain is covered from top to bottom by the ruins. As they are for the most part fallen in and covered with rubbish, it is at present impossible to determine the purpose the buildings were intended to serve; the most probable supposition is that it was a fortress impregnable in those times, and this the many passages— now, however, walled up—and the circular or zig-zag plan of the walls would also indicate.
'All the walls, without exception, are built without mortar, of hewn granite, more or less about the size of our bricks----Best preserved of all is the outer wall of an erection of rounded form, situated in the plain, and about 150 yards in diameter. It is at a distance of about 600 yards from the mountain, and was probably connected with it by means of great outworks, as appears to be indicated by the mounds of rubbish remaining----
'Inside, everything excepting a tower nearly 30 feet in height, and in perfect preservation, is fallen to ruin, but this, at least, can be made out: that the narrow passages are disposed in the form of a labyrinth.'
Mr Theodore Bent, who studied the ruins in 1891, inclined to the idea of a foreign origin for them but he was not ready to accredit them with stupendous age, nor to link them positively with the Queen of Sheba.
Early visitors to Zimbabwe comment on the almost impenetrable jungle that possessed the Temple ruins. This jungle has been cleared away to a great extent, so that such shape and form as remains to the ruins may be seen clearly. Tall trees still cast their shade upon the ground, adding to the strange beauty of the scene, and their branches are a refuge for doves and hornbills, and the grey squirrels.
Between 1891 and 1905 the legend of King Solomon's Mines and the Queen of Sheba grew steadily. When Dr Randall-Maclver expressed his conviction that the ruins were built by Africans there was a storm of protest from those who had based their belief in a more ancient origin, upon an Arab legend retailed to Portuguese merchants three centuries before.
The objects recovered from the ruins have been preserved in various museums. Some of them can be seen in the Queen Victoria Museum in Salisbury, and in the National Museum in Bulawayo, where the soapstone bird which provided the motif for the crest of the Rhodesian coat-of-arms as well as for the Rhodesian shilling can be seen. It is estimated that at least 1,000 ounces of gold ornaments were found in and taken from the Ruins, and the other finds have invariably been objects generally similar to those in use by present-day Africans, with the exception of certain imported articles which alone afford evidence of age: none of them is remotely ancient.
About 1912 it became necessary to take steps to prevent further disintegration of the ruins, and under the direction of Mr H. B. Douslin of the Public Works Department, the work of reconstruction was carried on for many years by Mr St C. A. Wallace, Curator of Zimbabwe.
In 1929 Miss Caton-Thompson was invited by the Council of the British Association, supported by the Rhodes Trustees, to undertake a further 'examination of the ruins at Zimbabwe or any monument or monuments of the same kind in Rhodesia, which seems likely to reveal the character, date and source of the culture of the builders'.
Miss Caton-Thompson made her first excavations at Zimbabwe. Commenting on the known age of imported articles, such as Persian glazed ware of the thirteenth century, Chinese glazed ware of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Arab glass, plain, enamelled and engraved, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all of which were found on the original floor level of the buildings, and on imported South Indian and Malayan glass beads of the eighth and ninth centuries, which were found below the original floors, as well as upon other factors equally weighty,
Miss Caton-Thompson expressed her belief that the buildings date from not earlier than the ninth or tenth century. She thus confirmed Dr Randall-MacIver's contention that the stone buildings of Rhodesia were the work of Africans.
A more recent theory is that the ruins were built in the region of a.d. 500. This determination arose after a piece of timber, found at Zimbabwe in 1950 and which had apparently been used as a support for a drain, was subjected to the latest American cosmic method of age determination.
Two independent tests by an American physicist dated the wood (in 1952) as being between 1264 and 1494 years old. Two pieces of timber were found, and the second is in the National Museum at Bulawayo.
Critics of the new theory remark, however, that the timber is from the tambootie (or urbane) tree, and that, since it is termite-resistant, the possibility exists that it was already considerably aged before being used, as has been suggested, in the construction of the Temple. It has also been suggested by archaeologists that the Temple may have been built after the rest of Zimbabwe was complete.
Whatever its secret, Zimbabwe keeps it well. Situated seventeen miles south-east of Fort Victoria in the Zimbabwe National Park, it is one of Rhodesia's foremost tourist attractions. It is here that visitors come from all parts of the world to ponder on the mystery of 'The Great House', to seek an answer to a riddle which nearly three-quarters of a century of speculation and limited investigation has failed to find.
Guide books to Zimbabwe may be obtained from the Curator's office at the ruins, from the Bulawayo Museum or from any of the Publicity Associations, at a cost of 2s. 6d.
Van Niekerk Ruins
(National Monument Number: 53h)
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| Van Niekerk Ruins |
The Van Niekerk Ruins, named after Major P. van Niekerk, who guided Dr. Randall-MacIver to this strange and ancient settlement, lie to the north-west of Inyanga. They stretch over an area of more than fifty square miles, and within this area there are nine or ten well defined hills, each ringed with from thirty to fifty girdle walls. Each hill is divided at the bottom, from its neighbouring hill, by a boundary wall. Within these walls are the ruins of forts, pits and enclosures of various sizes, obviously used for a variety of functions.
Of these ruins Dr Randall-Maclver wrote that 'they were inhabited by a people who must have lived in perpetual apprehension of attack, and therefore protected themselves behind one of the vastest series of entrenchment lines to be found anywhere in the world----The people who built here were of African origin and evidently akin to the race from which the present inhabitants have sprung, for their dwellings show the same fundamental ideas of construction, and many of their implements and articles of daily use are identical with those found among the modern inhabitants of the country. They were not affected by either Oriental or European influences, for no single object of other than genuinely African character has been found where they lived, and all characteristics of European or Saracen architecture are conspicuously absent'.
Dr Randall-MacIver later abandoned his fortifications theories and agreed with all other commentators that the terraces at Van Niekerk Ruins were for cultivation.
Jumbo Ancient Workings
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National Monument Number: 45f)
All along the Mazoe valley there are ancient workings whence the Africans obtained the gold they traded with the early Portuguese explorers. In order to preserve one of these, the ancient workings at the Jumbo Mine were declared a National Monument in January 1943.
When Mr. Bent visited the Mazoe Valley in 1891 the Jumbo Mine was newly opened. In its vicinity fragments of old Delft pottery and Nanking china had already been found. Large Venetian beads were still barter goods among the natives, who must have had them in their possession for two centuries or more.
The method of gold extraction from the ancient workings at the beginning of the sixteenth century was reported by Diogo de Alcacova in a letter to the King Dom Manuel of Portugal: 'They dig out the earth and make a kind of tunnel, through which they go under the ground a long stone's throw, and keep on taking out from the veins the ground mixed with gold, and, when collected, they put it in a pot, and cook it much in fire; and after cooking they take it out and put it to cool and, when cold, the earth remains and the gold all fine gold ... and no man can take it out without leave from the king, under penalty of death.'
The methods of extraction in Chikanga's kingdom of Manica were thus described: 'The Kaffirs have three methods of extracting and collecting this gold. The first and most usual manner is to make deep holes and mines, from which they dig into the earth along the veins which are known to them, and bring out the gold, washing it with water in bowls, and thus freeing it from the earth with which it is mixed.
'They do this at the great peril of their lives, for very often the mines collapse and bury them and many are killed in this employment, but such is their keen desire for the cloth which the Portuguese give in exchange for gold that they brave every danger to extract it from the bowels of the earth.
'The second method of collecting the gold is practised when it rains, for then the Kaffirs see it in all the springs of the mountains and plains, when it is laid bare by the torrents and currents of water in which many nuggets and pieces of gold are found.
'Thirdly, the gold is extracted from certain stones which are found in particular mines. These stones contain many veins of gold, in order to extract which they break and grind them to powder which they afterwards wash in bowls and all that is not gold melts in the water and is carried off, the gold remaining at the bottom of the bowl.'
Alluvial gold was extracted all the year round, but more abundantly in the rainy season and when the rivers were going down. The gold was also extracted from the mines in Manica all the year round, but in Mokaranga only in August, September and October, because of moderate rains to wash and sift the gold. In November the rains increased and the mines were flooded so that the miners could dig no more.
The Jumbo ancient workings are situated on Amatola farm, Jumbo, the property of Mr Smith.
Khami Ruins
(National Monument Number: 6)
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| Khami Ruins |
The ruins at Khami, a National Monument situated about twelve miles from Bulawayo, are exceptionally interesting. When Mr J. Withers Gill read a paper to the Rhodesia Scientific Association in 1900 he maintained that the ruins were of the same era and built by the same people as the ruins at Zimbabwe. Later students were inclined to deny that Khami belonged to the Zimbabwe era, and attributed it to the Dhlo-Dhlo-Naletale period with which it has undoubted links.
Recent excavations at Khami have revealed walls of Zimbabwe type deep buried beneath an infilling of soil. Parts of the buildings at Khami are almost certainly contemporary with the buildings at Dhlo-Dhlo, but the excavations would seem to indicate a greater antiquity for Khamithan was previously allowed, and set the date of the first buildings there after Zimbabwe but before Dhlo-Dhlo.
A century or two makes little difference to the intrinsic fascination of this scattered city that lies upon the jutting granite kopjes about the Khami River. Well-defined paths and stone staircases lead the tourist from one building to another.
The chief ruin, generally the first to be visited, is the Hill Ruin. The path leads up and down between wooded kopjes and on the right the high stone walls make a precipitous side to the kopje on which the ruins stand. From the summit of the Hill Ruin kopje magnificent views of the wooded country of Khami are to be seen. Far below, the river shines through the interlacing branches of the trees that thrust up from every crack and crevice in the granite.
Near to the Hill Ruin is the Cross Ruin. Many years ago someone discovered a cross of stone laid out upon a great flat slab of rock on the summit of the Cross Ruin. A fine wall almost surrounds this little kopje, and a steep staircase of stone leads up to the Cross that is believed to mark the site of one of the 'churches' established by the Portuguese missionaries in the kingdom of Monomotapa. There are no records in the known Portuguese chronicles of any church so far to the west as Khami, but some of the Portuguese missionaries are known to have travelled very far afield in Monomotapa, and some of them did not live to report the extent of their wanderings to headquarters.
The Cross has been repaired and preserved by the National Monuments Commission.
The Precipice Ruins, overlooking a wide stretch of water of the Khami Waterworks Dam, is a fine piece of building and shows to advantage the chequer pattern so often used by the builders of Rhodesia's ancient stone cities.
The Passage Ruins, down in the valley, are more intimate and enjoyable than the stark ruins upon the hills. Ferns grow in the crevices of the walls, which are independent walls that stand forth boldly as walls to enclosures and not as precipitous sides to a terrace.
To reach Khami from Bulawayo take ninth Avenue as far as Green Gables Convalescent Home, turn right and proceed about one mile.
Dhlo-Dhlo Ruins
(National Monument Number: 5d)
About eighteen miles to the south of Insiza station stand the ruins of Dhlo-Dhlo, believed to date from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.
Dhlo-Dhlo is one of the most interesting ancient buildings in Rhodesia. Much care and skill went into its creation. Early seekers regarded the little city as a gold mine, and from the graves they found there and from other excavations took a considerable amount of gold in the form of beads, wire, tacks, chain work, bangles and nuggets. The excavations of later seekers (after knowledge) revealed such varied items as a blue and white Ming bowl, and a Dutch gin bottle of translucent green glass, an Arab candlestick of brass, many beads and some native-made pottery, practically intact. Most of these finds are on exhibition in the National Museum at Bulawayo.
But the most striking thing about Dhlo-Dhlo is the excellence of the walls. Dr. Randall-MacIver's description of Dhlo-Dhlo ruins is to the effect that 'general arrangement and details of construction alike prove them to have been a fort, or perhaps it would be more correct to say a fortified town ... the natural disadvantages of the ground have been in a great measure remedied by the resourcefulness of the builders, who have introduced a novel feature into the architecture of the citadel on its exposed northern and north-western sides. In place of a single rampart they have made a formidable front of three walls, rising one behind the other in tiers.The defensive walls are built of small granite slabs, very regular in size and shape, but not dressed, except in so far as the trimming of projecting ends with one or two blows may be called dressing. Mortar has been used throughout in the more carefully constructed parts. The upper tiers are ornamented with bold patterns inserted in the courses, Chevron, cord, chequer and herringbone patterns occur on these walls in different combinations.
Miss Caton-Thompson could not agree with the suggestion that Dhlo-Dhlo was a fortified town: 'One can imagine nothing more helpful to enemies swarming over the girdle wall than the excellent footholds provided by the chequer pattern', she wrote.
In one series of excavations made on the site of Dhlo-Dhlo, relics of a Portuguese mission were found on a low granite elevation near the main ruin. Parts of a bronze censer, a portion of a bronze bowl, bronze oil lamps, a bell, a priest's private seal, three feet of gold chain and sections of embossed silver plate provided evidence that Dhlo-Dhlo was the site of one of the many 'churches' established in Monomotapa by the Portuguese in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Portuguese relics among the ruins of Rhodesia are not so abundant as might be expected, but Dhlo-Dhlo yielded two Portuguese cannon as well as the ecclesiastical relics. One cannon was a bronze breech-loader, the other an iron muzzle-loader, and both bore the Portuguese coat of arms. These cannon are not, of course, evidence of Portuguese military occupation of the fort. There are several records in the Portuguese chronicles of arms and ammunition being supplied to friendly Africans to aid them in their wars with hostile tribes, and some records, too, of the capture of arms from the Portuguese by marauding armies of Africans.
Mtoko Ruins
(National Monument Number: 61g)
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| Mtoko Ruins |
The Mtoko Ruins are about five miles due east of Mtoko to the south of the road to Tete. They are situated on the summit of a small hill, behind which is the huge mass of bare granite known as Mtemwa, which is said to be haunted by the solitary huntsman and his dog.
Local natives believe the ruins were built and occupied by Makati, a man who exercised considerable power over the surrounding country. Eventually he was overcome by a neighbouring chief named Cerewa, who obtained the rain medicines by means of one of his daughters, who became the wife of Makati. It seems probable that Makati was in some way or another connected with the Zimbabwe culture, as has been demonstrated by Wieschoff in 'The Zimbabwe- Monomotapa Culture in South-East Africa'. ITALICS
The ruin itself is picturesquely situated near a giant baobab tree, and commands an extensive view over the surrounding country. Wieschoff did a considerable amount of damage to the walling but there is still a short section of chevron pattern to be seen. The general pattern consists of a circular enclosure raised on granite boulders. Leading up to this is a narrow passage with a square entrance. The passage is forty-two feet in length and resembles passages at Khami Ruins. Originally it was probably fitted with some form of wooden gate, as a post slot is still visible in the wall of the first entrance to the passage. A second entrance is about half-way along the passage, where there are two rounded buttresses.
The style of the stone work is similar to that of Zimbabwe dressed stone blocks, measuring about six inches by four inches by nine inches, laid in courses without mortar. The remains of dagga and pole huts are still visible within the enclosure.
There is a native custodian in charge of the ruins, and of the cave, which is a mile or so away (see page 51). Visitors should get in touch with this man through the Department of Native Affairs, or through the nearby store, or they may have difficulty in finding the place.
Naletale Ruins
(National Monument Number: 3d)
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| Natele Ruins |
About 16 miles to the east of Dhlo-Dhlo stands the beautiful little ruin of Naletale. This building commands a fine view of the country and is one of the most architecturally satisfying of all the ruins.
The building is contained within an elliptical wall of about 150 feet in diameter. The decoration of the outer wall, chevron, herringbone, cord and chequer patterns, is extensive and is not confined to the principal wall, as in other ruins. The main feature is the variety of decoration on the wall flanking the main entrance.
Matendera Ruins
(National Monument Number: 31)
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Matendora Ruins
(Correct spelling is Matendera) |
This comparatively well preserved ruin lies about thirty-four miles south-east of Buhera in the Sabi Native Reserve. It is best reached by taking the track from Buhera to Mandambiri cattle dip and dam, and there obtaining a local native to act as guide to the ruins, which lie about six miles south of the dip. Roads are of the usual veld variety and care is necessary; the trip is not advisable in the rains.
The ruin lies on the summit of a low granite hill, more or less bare of vegetation, and consists of a roughly oval enclosure bounded by a substantial stone wall built of granite blocks (similar to Zimbabwe) laid without mortar. The wall is continuous except to the north-east where there is a considerable gap which appears to have formed the entrance. On the south-western face of the girdle wall are good examples of wall decoration. The area within the outer walls is divided into separate enclosures and the remains of dagga hut foundations may be noted.
An interesting feature of this ruin is the fact that several original gateways have been walled up. Work was done here by Miss Caton-Thompson, who dated the ruin about a.d. 1700, on the evidence of the beads mainly.
The surrounding country is attractive bush veld and ideal for camping during the winter months. Two other small ruins (not proclaimed) may be visited in this area, Mchuchu and Chiwona.
Half-Way House Ruin
(National Monument Number: 36)
This is a small ruin situated about two and a half miles beyond the Half-Way House Hotel on the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls road, going towards the Falls, and about a quarter of a mile from the road on the left. A side road leads to the ruins.
This is a very small building of the Khami ruins type and is not of great interest but makes a pleasant break in the journey.
It is said that Mambo, on his annual journey to the Wankie area, built the site as a camp.
Mtoa Ruins
(National Monument Number: 42)
Mtoa Ruins are situated within the Wankie Game Reserve and can be reached by road. This is a small ruin built on the top of a rounded granite rock, and consists of a circular stone wall with two entrances. The wall is roughly built of thin stone slabs without any regular coursing, and is in an excellent state of preservation except that some of the internal walling has fallen. Monoliths are set upright in the outer wall. The remains of a hut foundation can be traced within the enclosure and on the outer face of the wall are several poor examples of the chevron pattern decoration done in white quartz.
The ruin is probably connected with the Bumboosie group near Wankie, but no archaeological work has yet been attempted on any of these north-western ruins. Native tradition seems to attribute them to a son of Mambo named Siawanka who was probably in his prime at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Chumnungwa Ruins
(National Monument Number: 62)
The Chumnungwa Ruins were referred to as Umnukwana by R. N. Hall. They are reached from Masase Mission, at Belingwe, by taking the road from the mission to Mutebaidzi cattle dip. Chumnungwa hill is three miles beyond the dip on the left.
Situated on the top of a granite kopje facing the north west, there is a wall bounding this side of the hill about 300 feet in length but much fallen. Hall reported a burial associated with gold from this ruin, and 72 oz. of gold were recovered by early prospectors. A decorated soapstone bowl was also reported to have been discovered.
The walling is of the Zimbabwe type and is free standing and does not form terraces, as at Khami or Dhlo-Dhlo, but the interior was originally divided into a number of enclosures. A point of exceptional interest is the presence of an entrance with a stone lintel. There is chevron pattern decoration on an inner south wall. No serious work has been done on this ruin and as yet the date of its origin is uncertain.
Ntaba Za Ka Mambo
(National Monument Number: 68c)
This, one of the most recent sites to be proclaimed a National Monument, is situated on the farm Mambo, about thirty miles north-east of Inyati.
The site consists of a large granite hill whose summit is sprinkled with huge rocks which form cliffs. Over the whole area of the hill top may be seen stone platforms which formerly supported huts, and a little walling of the Khami ruins type. Unfortunately, much damage was done here in the early days and the result of this may be clearly seen, as nearly every hut site has been dug into, and there is no doubt that much walling has been destroyed. In spite of this, the site is of great interest and may yet yield important results when properly investigated.
That the hill has a long history is certain. It is supposed to have been occupied by the last of the Rozwi Mambos, who may have been skinned alive there by the Swazis (see 'Fact and Fiction', by Posselt). There seems to be good reason for believing that the hill was occupied prior to the Rozwi period but there can be no certainty on this point until excavations have taken place.
Roughly in the centre of the hill top is an enclosure formed by large rocks and some revetting. This is probably the place where formerly rain-making ceremonies took place during Matabele times, possibly a relic of the Rozwi period.
This site is considered of great importance from the archaeological point of view.
PART IV
The Matabele Invasion and Occupation
The Mzilikazi Memorial
(National Monument Number: 39a)
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| The Mzilikazi Memorial |
Not far from the city of Bulawayo, on Sauerdale Estate, there stands, beneath an old umgugutu tree, a memorial to Mzilikazi. Here was once the site of Mzilikazi's royal town of Mhlahlandlela, which became his capital after he had given up Inyati.
This memorial to the founder of the Matabele nation, the Lion of the North, was unveiled on June 18, 1941. The cost was met by subscriptions collected by the Bulawayo Rotary Club from Europeans only. The great slab of granite that stands in the shade of the indaba tree under which Mzilikazi was wont to sit in council and in judgment, bears the inscription: 'Mzilikazi, son of Shobana, the Matabele hail you. The Mountain fell down on September 9, 1868. All nations acclaim the son of Shobana. Hayete.'
By these words a number of Europeans declared and acknowledged the greatness of the Zulu chief who founded and established his kingdom by blood, fire and rapine. The work of erecting the Memorial was done by an African, Joe Ndhlovu.
In his epilogue to Miilikaii, or the Rise of the Amandebele (Fact and Fiction), Mr F. W. T. Posselt wrote of the Lion of the North: 'More than seventy years have passed since
Mzilikazi was laid to rest at Entumbane. Great have been the changes during that period which have taken place in his former dominion. At this interval of time we can view dispassionately his life and the stirring events that filled it. We can visualize an intrepid leader, a great commander, an able ruler honoured by his people, befriending with kingly courtesy his European visitors, members of that very race who vanquished the nation he had created, and now rule his fair country. Yet his name must for long ages loom large in the history of Rhodesia, for he too was a pioneer, founding an empire; his spirit still broods over the land.'
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of the country between the Limpopo and the Zambezi consisted of various tribes of the Makalanga of the ancient Monomotapa kingdom, now dominated by the Barozwi whose kings bore the title of Mambo. These people, under successive Mambos, were the builders of many of Rhodesia's stone buildings.
Meanwhile, far to the south, the cruel and terrible rule of Tshaka was beginning to have its inevitable repercussions. Tshaka was a Zulu chief of unparalleled ferocity. Within a few years he and his impis laid waste the whole coast area from Delagoa Bay to Pondolond. Whole tribes were blotted out, their cattle stolen, their children enslaved and forced to become as evil and cruel as their conquerors.
No man's like was safe. Tshaka was as ready to order the execution of his own brothers as that of the meanest slave in his kingdom. He would allow no one power in his land save himself, and as one chief after another realised that he had cause to fear the jealousy of Tshaka, portions of the Zulu people broke away from the tyrant's rule and sought new lands beyond his reach.
But they took with them all that they had learned from Tshaka of despotic and brutal military rule.
About 1820 certain of the Kumalo clan, under the leadership of Zwangendaba, left Zululand and settled in Swaziland. Two years later Mzilikazi, another of the Kumalo clan, followed Zwangendaba into Swaziland. The country was too small for two such chiefs and Zwangendaba and his allies travelled northwards.
A portion, later known as the Shangaans, went north-east and settled in the Melsetter district of Southern Rhodesia; the rest, following Zwangendaba, travelled to the north-west where in 1834 they overcame the Barozwi at a battle on the Inkwinkwisi river, close to the present town of Inyati. Some of the Zulu warriors, known as the 'Swazi', were later incorporated in the Matabele nation. The remainder went northward and settled in Northern Rhodesia.
Many conflicting tales are told of Mzilikazi's breakaway from Zululand. The following version is based on Matabele tradition.
Mzilikazi was the son of Mateshobana, a chief who owed allegiance to Zwide of the Ndwandwe people. Mzilikazi married two of Zwide's daughters. When Tshaka conquered Zwide. Mzilikazi pretended to become Tshaka's man and established himself in a town called Bulawayo, near Eshowe in Zululand. There he began to amass wealth of cattle and many people allied themselves with him.
Seeing how strong Mzilikazi grew, Tshaka announced: 'The hour is approaching when I, Tshaka, son of Senzangakona, shall sweep away all the Kumalo clan from Zululand.'
Tshaka enlisted the aid of many of Zwide's people and launched an attack on Mzilikazi. The fight that followed was a desperate one and did not cease until Mzilikazi had gone with his people outside Zululand. Mzilikazi at first made for the Drakensberg Mountains and after a brief sojourn in Swaziland settled at Marico, near Zeerust. Here Mzilikazi heard tales of the missionary Dr Robert Moffat, and grew curious to see this man. In 1829 Dr Moffatt, invited by two of Mzilikazi's headmen to visit the chief's kraal, spent ten days at the court of Marico and was hospitably entertained.
Moffat described Mzilikazi as 'below the middle stature, rather corpulent, with a short neck, and in his manner could be exceedingly affable and cheerful. His voice, soft and effeminate, did not indicate that his disposition was passionate; and happily for his people, it was not so, or many would have been butchered in the ebullition of his anger'.
According to Matabele tradition Dr Moffat advised Mzilikazi to take his people to the fertile and relatively unoccupied country north of the Limpopo River. After his defeat at Gabeni in 1837, by the Boers whose cattle he had raided, Mzilikazi decided to follow the advice of Dr Moffat and divided his army into two sections for the long northward trek.
One section of the army was under the command of Gundwane Ndiweni. Mzilikazi's heir, Nkulumana, was placed in the care of Gundwane. This section of the army reached the place to which Dr Moffat had directed them and in 1840 Gundwane built a town and waited for the arrival of Mzilikazi. The king, with the other section of the army, went north-west, raiding and plundering the peoples through whose lands he passed. His army missed the way and arrived at last in the country of the chief Zanke, who had built himself a stone fortress at Bumboosie.
Meanwhile, since Mzilikazi did not arrive at the appointed meeting place, some of the chiefs urged Gundwane to declare Nkulumana king. Gundwane discussed the matter with them but decided to send messengers to seek for Mzilikazi before he took further action. These messengers, after much travelling, discovered the Matabele army and the king returned with them. Mzilikazi was well satisfied with the land he now occupied. But certain spies came to him with a trumped-up charge against Gundwane and others of the indunas, that these men had plotted together to make Nkulumana king in place of his father.
Terrible in his wrath, Mzilikazi ordered the trial of these men on the hill that is now called Ntaba yezinduna. He would listen to no explanations and ordered the execution of all the chiefs. The executioners took them away into a place of little hills called Emputjini near the Ncema River and there killed them.
Mzilikazi settled at Inyati, but towards the end of his reign established himself at a town which he called Mhlahlandlela, the site of which is today marked by the memorial erected to his memory in 1941. He divided the country between the army of the Mhlope, whose chief, Magqekeni Sitole, ruled over the districts of Bulalima-Mangwe and Nyamandhlovu; and the army of Mnyama-Makanda. whose chief, Majilili Gwebu, ruled over the Gwelo and Inyati districts as far as the Abanyai country on the Koce River.
Mzilikazi proceeded then and there to establish his power and extend his kingdom. Annual raiding parties visited the lands of the Mashona, and tribute of cattle and children was extorted. The slightest resistance to the demands of the Matabele resulted in the wholesale destruction of the resisting tribes. Within a few years the Mashona were com- pletely cowed and beaten.
But though Mzilikazi appeared as a terrible and inhuman monster to the peoples whose land he had seized ar.d whose wealth of cattle he coveted, he was to his own people little less than a god. The Lion of the North, who had fled from Zululand with a few thousand followers, had created a mighty nation and a great kingdom. He had led his people into a land that yielded them a good living and by the strictness of his rule he ensured the good physique and high morale of the nation.
In 1867 the discovery of gold in Matabeleland, by certain white men who had been exploring the country under the pretence of hunting, caused Mzilikazi great perturbation. Fearing that the discovery of gold would lead to the invasion of his country by the Boers and others, Mzilikazi, whose health was failing fast, ordered his headmen to defend the country against all comers and retired himself into the fastness of the Matopo hills. Here at the kraal of Emanxiweni, a place where he had been wont to seek respite from the cares of government, Mzilikazi died in September 5, 1868.
The secret of the king's death was kept by his chief councillors and some of his queens who were with him at Emanxiweni. A cart was brought at nightfall and the king's body was placed in it and taken to Mhlahlandlela. On September 9 the death of the king was proclaimed.
For two months the king's body lay in the royal dwelling guarded by twelve queens. Mzilikazi was then buried at Entumbane, in the Matopo hills. His memorial stands about sixteen miles from Bulawayo, along the Old Gwanda road.
Mzilikazi's Grave
(National Monument Number: 41b)
Early on the morning of November 2, 1868, the funeral procession of Mzilikazi, king of the Matabele, set out from Mhlahlandlela. The king's body and some of his personal belongings were placed on two wagons. It is Matabele custom that the body of a king must rest in a cave, and suitable caves for Mzilikazi's burial had been found at Entumbane in the Matopo hills.
His remains and his personal effects were laid in one cave and the entrance was closed up with a wall of stones. The wagons were taken to pieces and laid in another cave nearby. Black oxen were sacrified to the spirits of the dead king and his ancestors. Armed warriors stood on guard at the entrance to the cave as the mourners moved away and returned to Mhlahlandlela.
The guards and their families built a small kraal close to the grave and settled there as custodians of the sacred spot. It was their duty to see that the grave was not disturbed. But when these people began, in the fashion of the African, to burn the high grass to prepare the ground for their sowing, a wind arose that sent the fire raging up to the kopje so that the flames licked at the king's grave and burnt the wood of his dismantled wagons.
When Lobengula, the new king, heard of this mishap, he ordered the instant destruction of all in the kraal at Entumbane. Even the dogs and chickens were slain.
Mzilikazi had three sons who by reason of their mothers' position, were considered worthy of heirship. First of these was Nkulumana, son of the eldest daughter of Zwide; secondly, Ubuhlehlo, son of a younger daughter of Zwide; and lastly Lobengula, son of a Swazi chieftain's daughter.
After the trial of the chiefs at Ntaba yezinduna, it was put about that Mzilikazi had sent his son and heir, Nkulumana, to be educated at a distant kraal as was the custom of Zulu peoples. But when, after the death of Mzilikazi, his close friend and confidant, Umcumbata, was made regent until the heir could be found, this man revealed that he had been instructed by Mzilikazi to encompass the death of Nkulumana and his half-brother Ubuhlehlo.
So firmly did the people believe that Nkulumana still lived that Umcumbata remained regent for two years, from 1868 to 1870, while search was made for the lost princes. At last, when it seemed obvious that there was no one but Lobengula to succeed to the throne the indunas of the Matabele went to invite him to be their king.
After upbraiding them for doubting that he was the rightful heir, Lobengula agreed to become their king and entered the royal city of Mhlahlandlela at the head of 7,000 dancing and singing warriors. One of the new king's first acts was to sacrifice black oxen and he-goats to the spirits of Mzilikazi his father, Matshobane his grandfather, Ulanga his great-grandfather, and to all his ancestors as far back as their names could be remembered.
From the beginning of his reign Lobengula was handicapped by two things: the fact that he was regarded by his people as an elected king rather than as a king of hereditary right (for many of the Matabele believed fervently that Nkulumana still lived), and the fact that the great mineral resources of his country had been discovered and explored by white men. From the first day of his reign Lobengula was courted by Europeans who sought to obtain mining concessions from the African potentate.
Some of those who sought to obtain gold concessions were business men of integrity who purposed to deal justly and fairly with Lobengula. Some, however, were unscrupulous adventurers who saw a chance to get rich quickly. Lobengula sensed that someone was trying to impose upon him, but he could not decide where to place his trust. Many of his indunas urged him to destroy the white men who were coming into the country in increasing numbers, but Lobengula preferred to remain friendly with the Europeans.
Among those seeking gold concessions from Logenbula were three men sent by Cecil John Rhodes in 1888. Charles D. Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire and Frank Thompson had many consultations with the king and his chiefs, and Charles Rudd was granted a concession for minerals over the whole of Lobengula's territory and dependencies in exchange for an annual subsidy of £100 a month, a gunboat on the Zambezi and a thousand rifles.
In 1889 Queen Victoria granted a Royal Charter of Incorporation to the British South Africa Company, which was to carry into effect concessions and agreements made by chiefs in the region of South Africa lying to the north of Bechuanaland and to the west of Portuguese East Africa, and to promote trade, commerce, civilization and good government in those territories. The condition of the natives would be materially improved, the slave trade would be suppressed and the territories would be opened up for European immigration.
Ignore warning
No sooner were the terms of the Charter published than rumours began to spread that Lobengula had no intention of honouring his agreement with Rudd, Maguire and Thompson. It was common talk that he would massacre anyone who attempted to carry out the terms of the contract.
In 1890 the Pioneer column entered Mashonaland. The expedition, numbering 500 British South Africa Police and about 200 others who formed the Pioneer Column, crossed the Tuli River on June 10,1890, and occupied the country in record time and without firing a single shot. Fort Salisbury was reached on September 12,1890.
Lobengula's Matabele impis, sent out to intercept the Column, never came to grips with the expedition. In comparatively short time the European occupation of Mashonaland was thriving in a rough and ready pioneer fashion. But the Matabele indunas could not be still. Daily they urged Lobengula to throw out the white men.
In July 1893 Lobengula directed them to raid the Victoria District. A horde of warriors descended on the district and slaughtered hundreds of Mashonas whose only crime was that they were working for the white farmers and miners. The European settlers realized that war was inevitable. Next time the Matabele would descend to slaughter the white men. Lobengula had 15,000 fighting men; the settlers were but a handful.
Forces of Europeans from Salisbury and Victoria met at Iron Mine Hill and advanced towards Bulawayo. The first big battle did not occur until Lobengula's strongest regiment, the Nsukamini, launched an attack on the column at the Shangani River on October 25, 1893. The Nsukamini, to their shame and surprise, were beaten off and the column continued towards Bulawayo. Then Lobengula launched a greater attack against the Europeans. He sent the Ngubu regiment and the Mbezu regiment, and those remaining of the Nsukamini to overcome the advancing column.
On November 1 these crack regiments were routed by the British force at Bembesi and the advance on Bulawayo condnued. The site of this battle, on the high ground crossed by the Gwelo-Bulawayo road some thirty miles from Bulawayo, is being marked by a cairn to be erected by the Pioneer and Early Settlers' Socicty and in the keeping of the National Monuments Commission.
Throughout the disturbance Lobengula extended his protection to the handful of white men who were settled at the royal kraal at Bulawayo.
Lobengula now had to face defeat. His best regiments were beaten and the enemy was only twenty miles away from Bulawayo. In despair he ordered that the kraal be set on fire.
Lobengula fled by wagon, accompanied by some old indunas and a few young men. When news came to him of yet more defeats, he and an old friend and counsellor, Magwegwe, committed suicide by drinking poison. The poison took a long time to act but four hours after they had drunk from the bottle both men were dead. Magwegwe was buried by the river, but the king's body was taken secretly to a cave and there laid to rest.
None but the old men knew where the king was buried. Word was sent to Bulawayo that the king was dead.
Lobengula s Grave
(National Monument Number: 48)
For many years men talked of Lobengula's secret grave, and of the treasure that was said to be buried with him, but none knew where it was. Many years afterwards a Rain Goddess, an African woman called Shoko, who travelled about the countryside blessing the crops, asked the Native Commissioner at Bulawayo for a sikonzi (native messenger) to go with her to a certain district to count her cattle. The sikonzi returned to Bulawayo to report that the woman had no cattle. Another African soon after supplied information that suggested that the woman was looking for Lobengula's grave.
Accompanied by relatives of the dead king Lobengula, the Native Commissioner, Mr A. J. Huxtable, travelled to the kraal at which the Rain Goddess was staying. On October 2, 1943, Lobengula's grave was entered by the Native Commissioner and Manga Kumalo, whose father
was Lobengula's cousin.
The cave had been entered by animal as well as human robbers, but though it had also been recently entered by the Rain Goddess it seemed obvious that no valuables had been removed on that occasion. Lobengula's treasure was no more, if it had, indeed, ever rested in this cave.
The Native Commissioner ordered that the cave be closed up and on his return made urgent representations that the king's grave should be declared a National Monument and suitably protected from further fortune-hunters. This was done by proclamation on November 12,1943.
The king's grave is in a lonely spot, difficult of access. The kopje is shunned by those Africans who know it for the last resting-place of a king, yet the Native Commissioner who was the first white man to visit the grave in an official capacity wrote this of the departed king: 'The King was called Ndhlovu (Elephant). I feel he is not lonely at nights. There are elephant signs everywhere in this locality.'
PART V
The European Occupation
The lot of the missionaries who established the first permanent European settlements in Matabeleland during the years when Mzilikazi and Lobengula reigned, was arduous and disappointing. The despotic heathen kings did not forbid the missionaries to teach and convert the people, but they did much to nullify their work by stressing the point that slaves and women and outcasts might become Christians, but the King and all his mighty warriors still adhered to the savage heathenism of tradition.
Mzilikazi had a strong liking for Dr Robert Moffat and, at his request, consented to the establishment of a mission station at Inyati, where he was living in 1859. After the death of Mzilikazi, when Lobengula had established himself at the first Bulawayo at Sauerdale Farm, the mission station of Hope Fountain was founded in 1870 by the Rev. J. B.Thomson.
When Lobengula was elected to kingship in 1870 a few European traders established themselves on the outskirts of the town. But Lobengula was a man of moods and caprices. Suddenly he decided to move his capital. Orders were given that Bulawayo was to be destroyed, the king had no more need of it. The Matabele packed their goods, the king's ivory was loaded on to wagons and taken away. In September 1881 the chief induna of the doomed kraal and his men set fire to the huts, the empty granaries and the cattle kraals.' They paid a last visit to the astounded Jesuit missionaries, and departed, leaving the missionaries to face a burned and
wasted veld.
Today the only signs of Lobengula's old city of Bulawayo are the three walls of the king's stone wagon shed and the ruins of the missionaries' house. The tree under which Lobengula held his indabas still stands, and a stone commemorating this fact has been erected on the site of Old Bulawayo. After abandoning Old Bulawayo, Lobengula built himself a new Bulawayo on the site now occupied by Government House, and this was his official home for close on fourteen years.
While Lobengula regarded the country of Mashonaland chiefly as a place for his impis to raid, British, Portuguese and Boers were aware of the mineral wealth and agricultural possibilities of the territory and sought to obtain concessions to exploit the rich and fertile land.
Rhodes did not want a purely military occupation of the territory. He wanted the country occupied by a body of young men who would set about the development of the territory as quickly as possible. But it was obvious that it would be necessary to ensure the protection of such a body of men by training them to arms and providing also a force which would garrison and defend the territory.
Col. Frank Johnson came forward with an offer to train and equip a corps of 200 'Pioneers', who would build a road into the country and a further force of 500 mounted police who would garrison a chain of forts and act as a permanent defence.
There was no difficulty in enrolling young men for the corps of Pioneers and on June 27, 1890, the Pioneers and Police, under the command of Lieut-Col. Pennefather, and led by Frederick Selous, forded the Macloutsie River and crossed the border into Matabeleland on July 11 The spot where the Pioneer Road crosses the Beit Bridge Bulawayo road has been marked by the National Monuments Commission.
Lobengula was considerably perturbed by this expedition towards Mashonaland and though he did not want to fight he had great difficulty in restraining his impis, who demanded the instant annihilation of the forces cutting their way through the bush towards Mount Hampden in Mashonaland.
After crossing the Tokwe River the European expedition came upon a forested pass, where they spent one night and which they named Providential Pass. Fourteen miles further on, 'C' Troop of the Police remained to build Fort Victoria, while the rest of the Column pressed on to Salisbury, which they founded on September 12.
Old Fort, Fort Victoria
(National Monument Number: 17)
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| Old Fort, Fort Victoria |
In September 1890, 'C' Troop of the Police Force, raised for the purpose of occupying Rhodesia, was busy with the erection of the fort at Fort Victoria, which was to guard the first part of the long road from Bechuanaland to Fort Salisbury in Mashonaland. In 1891 it was decided to move the fort to a new site and establish a township. A new fort was therefore erected, bearing the same name of Fort Victoria, and the township soon began to grow outside the walls.
'The fort', to quote the Rev. A. A. Louw, one of the Pioneers who knew it in its first years, 'consisted of a square enclosure with high walls all round and two towers at opposite corners. On each of these towers was posted a Maxim gun, and on the inside of the walls scaffolding erected to within five feet of the top enabled men standing on it to point their rifles over the wall and aim at the enemy.'
The first tower to be erected was the Bell Tower, and the second tower was erected in 1893.
On Sunday, July 9,1893, farmers to the east of Fort Victoria were horrified to find that Lobengula's impis were in their midst. These Matabele warriors were on one of their annual raids, butchering, burning and mutilating the terrified Mashonas. Many of the warriors, contemptuously sparing the Europeans, said: 'We have been ordered not to kill you yet, but your day is coming.'
At the same time that Lobengula sent his warriors out upon this raid he sent a message to Dr. Jameson, then Administrator of Mashonaland, making no excuses for doing so, but claiming his right to raid when, where and whom he chose.
Farmers, hunters and missionaries in the Victoria district made their way to the Fort. Wagons, laden with household goods, drove through the strong wide gateway in the northern wall. About 200 men, women and children gathered in the enclosure. The great gate was closed and for three months the garrison and their families remained in the Fort, suffering much sickness and a gradual diminution of rations, while the Matabele hovered about the countryside.
Dr Jameson, meanwhile, hastened to Fort Victoria from Salisbury, and on his arrival, summoned the indunas of the Matabele to an indaba. Knowing Lobengula's faith in Dr. Jameson the indunas agreed to return to Matabeleland and most of the impis set out and crossed the border that night.
It was feared, however, that Lobengula's next step would be to order the massacre of the white settlers in Mashonaland, so the programme of a punitive expedition was drawn up. A military force of 750 mounted men from Victoria, Tuli and Salisbury were to march on Bulawayo, where Lobengula was living.
They found the King's kraal at Bulawayo in flames. A great explosion, consisting of 80,000 rounds of MH ammunition and 2,000 lb. of powder left behind by Lobengula when he fled, destroyed the royal quarters and the king's great store of ivory.
Lobengula was in flight to the north. It was perhaps his intention to cross the Zambezi with such of his people as would follow, and there establish another Matabele kingdom beyond the reach of the white men. Three hundred men of the Salisbury, Victoria and Tuli Columns were organized to pursue the fleeing Lobengula.
When he reached the Shangani River and knew that the white men were pressing hard upon his trail, Lobengula decided to surrender. He handed a bag of gold to one of his indunas and told him to take it to the white men, saying: 'White men, I am conquered. Take this and go back.'
Two messengers were sent to deliver the gold to the pursuing force. When the troops halted the messengers approached two troopers who were a little to the rear of the main body and handed them the gold with Lobengula's message. The two men concealed the gold (probably £1,000) and suppressed the message. This dastardly action was indirectly responsible for the tragedy of Allan Wilson's last stand, for had the message reached Major Forbes there would have been no further pursuit of the Old Matabele king.
(At it happened, the two men did not come under suspicion until some time later when they began to gamble heavily with the gold. They were arrested and sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment by the Resident Magistrate of Bulawayo. Two years later they managed to get the conviction quashed by the High Court on the ground that the evidence against them was insufficient and the sentence ultra vires of the Magistrate's jurisdiction.)
The Shangani Battlefield
(National Monument Number: 13)
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| The Shangani Memorial |
When the column that was pursuing Lobengula in 1893 heard that the fleeing king was on the bank of the Shangani River, they decided to attack. There was a force of between 2,000 and 3,000 Matabele in the vicinity, though the king himself was travelling with a very small retinue. Major Allan Wilson, of the Fort Victoria Column, was told to take the twelve best horses and push on after the king as fast as possible.
Hours later, two men came back to urge the Column to attack the king at dawn. Since it was impossible for the entire force to move on at such a speed, Captain Borrow and twenty men were sent out as reinforcements for Major Wilson's party.
The main body of the force was attacked by Matabele and had great difficulty in holding its own, though the commander, Major P. W. Forbes, had every confidence that his men would win through.
Major Allan Wilson and his party meanwhile picked up the king's spoor and followed until they could dimly see the royal wagons. So small a force could not hope to capture the king, who was surrounded by well-trained soldiers, so the patrol withdrew to wait for reinforcements. Major Wilson was then joined by Captain Borrow with eighteen mounted men. When day dawned it was decided to make a dash to capture Lobengula and the little force of thirty-four men set out.
They were surrounded by a great crowd of Matabele. For two hours the battle raged, until all lay dead or dying save one who stood erect firing again and again upon the advancing Matabele. At last he too fell dead, and after a little there was silence.
A monument in the form of a granite obelisk guarded by railings, stands in a clearing in the bush where the battle took place. On the plinth is a plate engraved: 'To the memory of Allan Wilson and party', with the names of the men below. This memorial was declared a National Monument in 1937.
The remains of these heroic men were buried at the foot of a large mopani tree by Mr James Dawson, who was led to the spot by some Matabele two months after the battle. He cut a cross upon the tree-trunk and the words, 'To Brave Men'.
Many years later the portion of the trunk so inscribed was removed and placed in the National Museum at Bulawayo. Some time after Mr Dawson's visit to the battlefield the remains were taken to a new grave near Zimbabwe, which was considered a more fitting resting place, since the columns had set out from Fort Victoria.
In 1904, at the expressed wish of Cecil John Rhodes, the remains were moved once more to their present resting- place in the shrine at World's View, Matopos. Here, most fittingly, they rest at last, in the hallowed spot that is set aside to be a burial ground for those who have deserved well of their country.
The Rebellion Memorials
Filabusi, Pongo, Mambo and Fort Rixon
(National Monument Numbers: 56,33d,57c, 58
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| Pongo Memorial |
The principal causes of the Matabele Rebellion in 1896 were the incomplete conquest of the Matabele nation in 1893 and the incapacity of the warlike and aristocratic race to give up their old habits and conform to life in a settled and civilized community.
Three powerful regiments had been defeated in the Matabele War but the other regiments, which formed the greater part of the nation, had never been beaten and had accepted white rule only because their king Lobengula was
The years following the death of Lobengula were years of plague and pestilence. A great drought, unprecedented swarms of locusts that devoured every green thing that had survived the drought, the rinderpest that destroyed the cattle and the game, were all attributed to the white man.
Now, when the Matabele arrived in the country under the guidance of Mzilikazi they encountered a strange god, 'Mlimo', who dwelt in the Matopos hills, and who spoke through the agency of a high priest of the Makalanga. Mlimo was a god of peace and plenty, and the Matabele learned to propitiate him with offerings that they might enjoy good crops. But when the Matabele people fell upon evil days, when drought and rinderpest and locusts threatened their existence, they persuaded themselves and the priests of Mlimo that the god was wroth and that he bade them destroy the white man.
'Until the blood of the white man be spilt', said the Mlimo, 'there will be no rain.'
On March 23, 1896, a prospector called Thomas Maddocks was murdered by some Matabele near Filabusi. Within a few days the rains, long overdue, began to fall. To the Matabele it was proof positive that the Mlimo had spoken truly and the Rebellion was well launched.
One hundred and forty-five settlers were murdered during the Rebellion. Cement obelisks, bearing the names of those murdered by the rebels, have been erected here and there in the veld, on or near the scene of death. The Filabusi, the Pongo, the Mambo and the Fort Rixon Memorials, all of which have been declared National Monuments, bear the names of settlers murdered by the rebels. These memorials are all made of red sandstone.
Old Mangwe Fort
(National Monument Number: 50)
After the outbreak of the Matabele War in 1893 troops on their way up from the south were called upon to build a fort at Mangwe, at the western end of the Matopos. The fort was built to guard the coach road that led through the Matopos towards Bulawayo.
The fort was an underground structure roofed with mopani poles and covered with sandbags and earth. A stout pillar of earth, about twelve feet high, rose from the centre of the circular underground chamber and supported the weight of the roof.
After the defeat of the Matabele in 1894 the fort was used as a storage bin for grain, with the result that when it was needed as a refuge and fort in 1896, on the outbreak of the Matabele Rebellion, it was found to be infested with rats, bats and weevils.
The Rebellion sent men, women and children from the surrounding districts crowding into the Mangwe Fort. The settlers' wagons were drawn up in a circle about the fort, the disselboom of each wagon resting under the wagon in front.
There were about 150 refugees within the fort, of whom 42 were children. Six babies were born in the fort. For many months the people in Mangwe laager endured privation and the constant fear of attack, living in an uncomfortable, over- crowded and vermin-infested stronghold. Despite all fears, however, Mangwe was never attacked, for when the Rebellion broke out, the Mlimo, or 'Oracle', who spoke from a cave in the Matopos, ordered that the road to the south should be left open so that the white men could flee along it. The road was left open and a constant stream of soldiers, arms and ammunition made its way north to achieve the final defeat of the rebellious Matabele.
Fort Ingwenya
(National Monument Number: 67)
Fort Ingwenya (or Ingwenia) was built after the 1896 Rebellion and is on a hill 200 yards north of the Ingwenia river and 28 miles from Gwelo on the lower Gwelo road. The old Hunter's road, cut by Thomas Baines, runs around the foot of the hill.
The fort acted as a concentration point for the white population of the district and as a stoppnig place for travellers going to Salisbury on the Hunter's road. Fort Ingwenya was one of a chain of forts which included Tuli, Fort Victoria, Gibbs, Gwelo Laager and Kopje, Que Que (or Kwe Kwe) River Fort and Salisbury.
It occupies a good position, having a very steep slope on three sides and a flat open space on the fourth. The fort is built of stone and is roughly a square of 60 x 60 feet. It has a bastion, or turret, at both the northern and southern ends. These turrets are semi-circular and have a radius of six feet. There is a firestep two feet wide and a foot high on the inside of the bastion and around the north-west, north-east and south-west walls. The walls of the fort are three feet thick and five feet high. The whole structure is still in fairly good condition.
Nearby is a Pioneer cemetery containing six graves and a wooden memorial. It is probable that some of these people were murdered during the Rebellion, but others are believed to have been policemen who died while garrisoning the fort.
Blakiston-Routledge Memorial
(National Monument Number: 55f)
Shortly after the outbreak of the Matabele Rebellion the Mashona also rebelled and waged war upon the white settlers with unprecedented ferocity and cunning.
The Mashona Rebellion broke out in the Lomagundi district in the middle of June 1896. On the 15th, two white men were murdered by Mashonas and Matabeles at the Beatrice Mine. The next day a Native Commissioner and two other white men were murdered on the Hartley road. On the 17th, a farmer and his family who lived on a farm at the Hunyani river were most brutally done to death.
With these dangers closing in upon the town of Salisbury the townspeople and settlers from the surrounding districts prepared to go into laager. In the meantime, the inhabitants of the Mazoe district had rallied to the Alice Mine, about twenty-seven miles from Salisbury. The manager of the mine telegraphed to Salisbury asking for advice and assistance.
Mr Blakiston, of the Telegraph Department, and a volunteer, Mr Zimmerman, set out from Salisbury in a wagonette. to bring in the three women who had taken refuge at the Alice Mine. A laager had been made on the summit of a steep kopje close to the mine, but on the arrival of Mr. Blakiston and Mr Zimmerman, it was decided to make a dash for Salisbury. Some of the men set off, followed by the women in the wagonette. They were heavily attacked by the Mashona rebels and driven back to the laager, three men of the party being killed in the running fight. The plight of the survivors at the mine was serious. Supplies were short, there was no water, the besieging
savages kept up a constant fire.
At this point, Thomas Routledge and John Blakiston announced their intention of going to the telegraph office, which was about two miles away, to wire to Salisbury for help. The two men set out, one riding, the other on foot. They reached the telegraph office and their broken, dramatic message reached Salisbury: 'We are surrounded Dickenson Cass Faull killed for God's sake'
An hour later those who watched anxiously from the laager saw the two men returning. About 1,700 yards away Blakiston fell from his horse which was shot under him by the rebels. He tried to stagger to the shelter of some bushes but was shot down. Routledge made for the bush but was hotly pursued and killed.
Reinforcements were sent to the besieged settlers and had to fight their way through the whole of the Mazoe Valley to reach the laager. Further reinforcements reached the laager on the 19th and the whole party returned, fighting their way back to Salisbury through a force of 1,500 Mashonas well supplied with rifles and ammunition.
The Blakiston-Routledge Memorial that stands close to the Mazoe Dam, in a shady grove of trees, is a granite obelisk, commemorating the gallant action of John L. Blakiston and Thomas G. Routledge, who gave their lives on June 18,1896.
Rhodes Indaba Site
(National Monument Number: 63)
When news of the murders committed during the 1896 Rebellion reached Bulawayo, the Bulawayo Field Force was organized and patrols were despatched to apprehend the murderers. Colonel Plumer left Mafeking with the Matabeleland Relief Force on April 12 to reinforce the Bulawayo Field Force. On June 3 Sir Frederick Carrington took over the military command of all troops in Matabeleland and under his generalship the rebels were quelled in many places.
Just before carrying war into the Matopos hills where the rebels had ensconced themselves, news came to Sir Frederick Carrington of the Mashonaland Rebellion and about 500 men were sent to Salisbury to deal with rebels in that district.
After much skirmishing, it became obvious that it would be impossible to drive the Matabele out of the Matopos and the Administrator, Lord Grey, requested Mr Rhodes to open negotiations with the rebel leaders with a view to achieving by diplomatic means what could not be achieved by arms.
After a series of messages had been exchanged with the rebel chiefs it was arranged by Mr J. P. Richardson that an indaba should be held in the Matopos, and at great personal risk Mr Rhodes, with Mr. Colenbrander, Dr Sauer and Mr. Stent, and a friendly native, John Grootboom, went unarmed into the Matopos hills to confer with the rebel chiefs.
As a result of this indaba, which took place on August 21, 1896, Mr Rhodes convinced the chiefs that if they would give up their arms and return to their kraals, there would be no retaliations. But those Matabele who were guilty of murder must be punished. The indunas agreed to surrender upon these terms and the Matabele Rebellion was over.
The anthill upon which Mr Rhodes sat at this indaba is now a National Monument. The shortest route to it is by the Essexvale road from Bulawayo. After fifteen miles a signpost will be seen on the right. The site is twenty-one miles further on. In the rainy season a longer route from Essexvale should be taken.
Thomas Moodies Grave
(National Monument Number: 27)
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| Thomas Moodie Memorial |
The occupation of Mashonaland encouraged many people to seek to establish themselves in this new land, and one of the earliest settlers to travel north from the Orange Free State was Thomas Moodie.
In 1891 Mr Dunbar Moodie travelled through Gungunhana's country of Gazaland, on the borders of Portuguese East Africa, and reported it the finest country he had seen. The Chartered Company secured a concession from the Chief Gungunhana to allow settlement of European farmers in Gazaland. In his desire to effect white settlement of the country, Mr Rhodes made an offer of 3,000 morgen of land to every man and boy who would trek to these eastern districts of Mashonaland.
When Thomas Moodie began to organize his trek to this part he received more than 500 applications to join. But the party that set out at last in May 1892 consisted of 37 men and 31 women and children, with 17 wagons and 350 horses and cattle.
The trek was an arduous one. The Moodie party was held up at Macloutsie by foot and mouth disease among their cattle. Many of the beasts were too weak to stand up and were devoured alive by the hyenas that prowled around the camp. The trek went on eventually to Fort Victoria, where Dunbar Moodie joined the party.
When he began to tell of the long and difficult journey still ahead of them, certain members of the trek decided to go to Salisbury rather than to Gazaland. But Thomas Moodie was determined to reach the mountainous country of Gazaland and he led his party onwards through the unexplored and difficult country.
He was told that he could never ford the Sabi river. But he led his people on and they crossed the Sabi river. They came to a mountain so steep that it took three span of oxen to drag each wagon to the summit, but they conquered Threespanberg and journeyed on.
At last the grassy uplands of Chipinga came in sight and the weary travellers looked upon their promised land. On January 3,1893, Waterfall Farm was reached. Here the trek ended and the trekkers settled to the development of the land they called Melsetter.
But though the Melsetter pioneers had settled in the most beautiful part of the country they were so far removed from the other centres of settlement that their circumstances were among the hardest and their struggle for existence the greatest of all the early settlers of Rhodesia.
Thomas Moodie had brought his family and his friends into a land that was at once beautiful and terrifying. But he was not long to enjoy its beauty or wrestle with its hardships. He was taken ill in his fifty-third year and died in 1894. His grave, which has been declared a National Monument, stands beside the road on Waterfall Farm in the district of Melsetter.
Indaba Tree and Fort Hill
(National Monument Numbers: 38i and 34i)
About 400 yards north-west of the Imbeza river bridge on the Old Umtali-Penhalonga road stands the IndabaTree. This fine old fig tree casts its shade upon the slope of a rocky kopje (Fort Hill) that is richly historic.
Under this tree Machera we Hondo, the Leader of the War, Chief of Staff to Mutasa, Chief of the Manicas, made war medicine in the days before the European occupation of Mashonaland and Manicaland. Mutasa was one of the last of the old-style chiefs who ruled his country without advice or hindrance. He haggled and bargained with the Portuguese who sought gold concessions, fought with his neighbours, and when he was successful, attributed his victories as much to the good medicine brewed beneath the Indaba Tree as to the cunning and courage of his soldiers.
When Mutasa walked abroad a herald went before him crying: 'Here comes Mutasa! Lord of the Sun and Moon! The Dog that prowls by night!' Another man carried before him a battleaxe made of black polished wood, cunningly wrought with brass.
For many months before the British occupation of Mashonaland, the Portuguese, under Senhor Paiva de Andrade, had been negotiating with Mutasa for certain concessions. When the Pioneer Column occupied Mashonaland in 1890 several disputes arose between British and Portuguese over the exact limits of the border between the British and Portuguese spheres of influence.
On May 3,1891, the British received reports from natives that considerable Portuguese forces were assembling at Macequece and that they were contemplating a punitive expedition against Mutasa for his temerity in allowing British forces to occupy territory that was rightfully Portu-
guese.
Captain H. M. Heyman, who was in charge of a small British force assigned to protect Mutasa, was stationed at Umtali.
At this time negotiations were in progress for the making of a coach road through Portuguese territory from Fontes-villa on the Pungwe River to Umtali. This road would greatly assist in the development of Mashonaland, and the Portuguese commandant, Colonel Ferreira, informed Captain Heyman that if he would withdraw to the west side of the Sabi river, Ferreira would facilitate the opening of the coast route. Captain Heyman refused to withdraw and immediately marched from Umtali to the vicinity of Macequece where he took up a position on Chua Hill, which overlooked the approaches to Umtali and Mutasa's kraal.
An account of what followed was written by Sister Rose Blennerhassett, who arrived at Umtali shortly after the event:
'The Portuguese troops were nearly all coloured men, either natives or half-castes. They did not fight well, and after one or two futile attempts to storm the English camp, they all ran away. No artillery was used by the storming party. Twice the European Portuguese officers, who are said to have behaved splendidly, tried to rally their men, beating them with the flats of their swords; but, finding it futile, they all three walked slowly away at a more than funeral pace. Two or three volleys were fired at them, bullets ploughing up the earth around them. It was found afterwards that one, I think Monsieur de Bettincourt, was wounded in the neck rather badly, and another in the arm. They made no sign, however, until just as the rising ground was about to hide them from view, they turned, took off their hats to the English, and strolled slowly back to the fort. Convinced that a large force must be behind Captain Heyman, Masse-Kesse surrendered.'
After this fight Mutasa's Indaba Tree was no longer the scene of war medicine manufacture.
In May 1891 Sister Rose Blennerhassett, Sister Lucy Sleeman and Sister Beryl Welby had arrived in Port Beira seeking a way to Mashonaland to inaugurate a hospital. Their only route was up the Pungwe river in a small steam launch called the Shark. At last they reached the fort of Macequece, now restored to the Portuguese, where they were received with great kindness. A message was sent to Umtali to inform Bishop Knight Bruce that his nurses were
on their way.
Eventually they reached the encampment under the
enormous fig tree where they were to establish the first official hospital upon Rhodesian soil. Exactly fifty years after the gallant nurses arrived at the Indaba Tree a memorial of grey stone, semi-circular in shape, with a bronze plaque let into the back of the low seat, was unveiled on the site of Rhodesia's first hospital. The memorial bears this inscription:
'On this spot Bishop Knight Bruce's nursing sisters, Rose Blennerhassett, Lucy Sleeman, Beryl Welby, after an arduous up-country walk from the east coast, and within one day of their arrival in Mashonaland, opened a camp hospital and thereby inaugurated nursing services in the Colony. 14th July 1891.'
Two Cypress Trees
(National Monument Number: 66c)
In the grounds of the Department of Agriculture and Lands, Salisbury, stand two cypress trees (Cupressus torulosa), which were planted in 1895 or 1896 by the Rev. Mother Patrick, a Pioneer of Rhodesia. The buildings now occupied by the Department of Agriculture and Lands were originally the Salisbury hospital, and it was here that Mother Patrick laboured, with a handful of other women, to care for the sick and wounded.
Mother Patrick planted many trees in and around Salisbury, and these two cypresses are among the finest. They are the progenitors of most of the Himalayan cypresses now growing in Southern Rhodesia and are regarded as excellent specimens. Foresters from other parts of Southern Africa have been much impressed with them, because it seems that such high quality trees are not to be found everywhere. Himalayan cypresses hybridize very easily, and this may account for varieties found elsewhere being of an inferior quality.
The two trees are enclosed by a fence and are about 50 feet apart. Both are over 88 feet high; the diameter of the taller is 30 inches and that of the lesser 25½ inches. The Cypress Trees were declared a National Monument in June 1950, and are under the control of the Forestry Department. It is hoped that, one day, a suitable plaque may be erected giving particulars of their history.
Old Jesuit Mission
(National Monument Number: 47a)
The Old Jesuit Mission station is situated on the edge of what was Lobengula's first Bulawayo, on Sauerdale farm, eleven miles as the crow flies from the present city of Bulawayo. It stands on the site of a store kept by a Greek which was bought on November 26, 1879, by Father Prestage, S.J., for the purpose of founding a mission. The roofless stone buildings are still fairly intact. Adjacent to them is a small graveyard where there are two graves. One of these is that of Father Bartholomew Kroot, S.J., who arrived at the Mission on May 10, 1885, and died there from cancer on June 21 of the same year, at the age of thirty-eight. The other grave is that of a native leper who accepted the Catholic faith, in which he was confirmed.
In 1881 Lobengula transferred his town to its later site, where Government House, Bulawayo, now stands, and all the buildings at the mission station, with the exception of those belonging to the Catholics, were destroyed. In 1887 the Mission was transferred to Mpandeni, where it is still carried on.
Portuguese Fort, Makaha
(National Monument Number: 69)
This old fort is situated on Lawley's Concession to the left of the road leading to the Ruenya river, about three miles before striking the river.
The building was nearly obliterated many years ago, and only the north and east sides are at all clearly defined. The fort consists of a rectangular enclosure measuring forty yards by forty yards bounded by a stone and mud wall about five feet in height. This was loopholed. At the corners on the eastern side are two bastions.
So far no evidence has been obtained to prove a Portuguese origin for this structure but the style of building certainly suggests this.
Memorial Cross, Umtali
(National Monument Number: 49i)
The unhappy order of things that decrees that history shall be largely a record of wars finds no exception in Rhodesia. Most of the National Monuments of historic times are linked with war in some fashion or another, and many are there because of war between Europeans and Africans. It is fitting, therefore, that there should be one which commemorates bravery and devotion to duty on the part of the African.
The Memorial Cross that dominates Umtali from a granite kopje was erected by Europeans in commemoration of the African soldiers who died in the German East African campaign of the First World War.
The Cross, which stands on a massive boulder on Baboon Kopje, is thirty feet high and four feet thick. It owes its existence to the generosity of Colonel J. A. Methuen, D.S.O., T.D., V.D., and his brother, the late Captain S. A. Methuen.
'
The Cross was solemnly dedicated by the Rt. Rev. F. H. Beaven, the Bishop of Southern Rhodesia, before its unveiling by the Governor on August 25,1924.
World's View Hill
(National Monument Number: 4b)
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| World's View Hill |
While Rhodes and his party were waiting in the Matopos for the submission of certain defiant indunas in that district, Lord Grey, the Administrator of the territory, arrived at the camp to discuss certain important matters with Rhodes. One morning the two men went riding into the hills and returned in high spirits.
Rhodes said: 'Grey and I have made a wonderful discovery. We have found a hill from the top of which a marvellous view is to be seen, and the ascent is so easy that an old lady of eighty could walk up without assistance.'
That afternoon Rhodes took his party to see the hill he had discovered. As the men gathered at the top of the hill Rhodes suddenly said: 'I shall be buried here, looking in that direction', he pointed to the north' and the remains of Allan Wilson and his party must be brought here also and put inside the memorial I shall put up to their memory. Now don't forget that, the remains of Allan Wilson and his men are to be put here.'
Rhodes sat down in the shade of the great boulders and said: 'The peacefulness of it all; the chaotic grandeur of it. It creates a feeling of awe and brings home to one how very small we all are.' Then he turned to Lord Grey and said: 'I call this one of the world's views.'
All unwittingly Cecil John Rhodes had chosen as his burial place a hill called Malindidzimu, a sacred place venerated by the natives as the dwelling place of benevolent spirits.
Six years later Rhodes returned to his hill for the last time. He died in his little cottage at Muizenberg on March 26,1902, and his body was taken by night to Groote Schuur where it lay in state in a coffin of Rhodesian teak. Arrangements were hastily made to carry out the last wishes of the great man as expressed in his last Will and Testament:
'I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matopos in Rhodesia and therefore I desire to be buried in the Matopos on the hill which I used to visit and which I called a 'View of the World", in a square to be cut in the rock on the top of the hill, covered with a plain brass plate with the words thereon: "Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes".'
On April 10, 1902, Cecil John Rhodes was buried at the 'World's View'. After the burial Colonel Frank Rhodes met some of the Matabele chiefs beside the grave. 'Now I leave my brother's grave in your hands', said Colonel Rhodes, 'as a proof that I know the white men and the Matabele will be friends and brothers for ever.'
Some Suggestions for Further Reading.
JONES, N.
The Stone Age in Rhodesia, 1926
(Oxford University Press)
LIVINGSTONE, D.
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 1857
(J. Murray)
Native Affairs Department Annual (Generally)
Publicity Publications (Generally)
Rhodesian Scientific Association, Proceedings and Transactions
(Generally)
JONES, N.
The Prehistory of Southern Rhodesia, 1950
(Cambridge University Press)
NOBBS, DR E. A.
Guide to the Matopos 1924
(Maskew Miller)
BENT, T.
The Ruined. Cities of Mashonaland, 1902
(Longmans)
CATON-THOMPSON, G.
The Zimbabwe Culture, Ruins and Reactions, 1931
(Clarendon Press, Oxford)
HALL, R. N. and NEAL, W. G.
The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia, 1902
(Methuen)
MATHERS, E. P.
Zambeiia, England's Eldorado in Africa, 1891
(King Sell and Railton)
POSSELT, F. W. T.
Fact and Fiction: A Short Account of the Natives of Rhodesia, 1935
R ANDALL-M ACI VEK, D.
Mediaeval Rhodesia, 1906
(Macmillan)
Guide to Zimbabwe Ruins
Guide to Khami Ruins
BOGGIE, J. M.
First Steps in Colonising Rhodesia
(Philpott and Collins)
MHLAGAZANHLANSI
My Friend Kumalo: Sidelights on Matabele Tradition, 1944
WILLS, W. A and COLLINGRIDGE J.
The Downfall of Lobengula: The Cause, History and Effect of the
Matabele War, 1894
(Argus)
MACDONALD J. G.
Rhodes, A Life, 1928
(Chatto and Windus)
GALE, W. D.
One Mans Vision, 1935
(Hutchinson)
WIESCHOFF
The Zimbahwe-Monomotapa Culture in South-East Africa, 1941
(Menasha, Wis., U.S.A.)
Registered Numbers of National Monuments
See Map below
1: Victoria Falls
2: Zimbabwe Ruins
6: Khami Ruins
9: Sinoia Cave
13: Shangani Battlefield
17: Old Fort, Fort Victoria
22: Somerby Cave
24: Mrewa Cave
26: Petroglyph of Giraffe
27: Thomas Moodie's Grave
28: The Big Tree
31: Matendera Ruins
32: Dengeni Cave
35: Chirinda Forest
36: Half-Way House Ruin
42: Mtoa Ruins
48: Lobengula's Grave
50: Old Mangwe Fort
51: Rupisi Hot Springs
56: Filabusi Memorial
58: Fort Rixon Memorial
59: Bumboosie Ruin and Rock Painting
62: Chumnungwa Ruins
63: Rhodes Indaba Site
64: Diana's Vow
65: Makwe Cave
67: Fort Ingwenya
69: Portuguese Fort, Makaha
Under Initial 'a'
39: The Mzilikazi Memorial
43: Hillside Dams
47: Jesuit Mission
Under Initial 'b'
4: World's View Hill
7: Bambata Cave
8: Nswatugi Cave
19: Silozwane Cave
20: Gulubahwe Cave
29: World's View Farm
41: Mzilikazi's Grave
44: Mjelele Valley Road Cave
Under Initial 'c'
57: Mambo Memorial.
68: Ntaba za ka Mambo.
Under Initial 'd'
3: Naletale Ruins.
5: Dhlo-Dhlo Ruins.
33: Pongo Memorial.
Under Initial 'e'
16: Domboshawa Cave.
18: Echo Farm.
21: MkumbeCave.
23: Borrowdale Farm.
46: Ewanrigg Aloe Garden.
52L Surtic Rock Paintings.
66: Two Cypress Trees.
Under Initial 'f'
45: Jumbo Ancient Workings.
55: Blakiston-Routledge Memorial
Under Initial 'g'
25: MtokoCavc.
60: Dambarimwa Cave.
61: Mtoko Ruins.
Under Initial 'h'
10: Rhodes Inyanga Estate.
12: Pungwe Falls.
53: Van Niekerk Ruins.
Under Initial 'i'
34: Fort Hill, Penhalonga.
38: Indaba Tree, Penhalonga.
40: Muromo Farm Rock Paintings.
49: Memorial Cross, Umtali.
54: Bunga Forest
End
Comments are always welcome, please either enter them below as a comment or mail them to Eddy Norris at
orafs11@gmail.com
(Please visit our previous posts and archives)
Extracted and recompiled b Eddy Norris for use on the Our Rhodesia Heritage site.
Material made available by my son, Paul.
Thanks to daughter Denise (Taylor) for her assistance.
Ref. Rhodesian
Labels: Memorials, Relics
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