The Road to Zimbabwe

By Brian Igoe

This is the story of Zimbabwe - told as a series of dramatised adventures interspersed with just a little history. It covers the period from around 1000 AD to the current year, 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Igoe
• Release date: Oct 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536518504

Brian Igoe

You don’t need to know much about me because I never even considered writing BOOKS until I was in my sixties. I am a retired businessman and have written more business related documents than I care to remember, so the trick for me is to try and avoid writing like that in these books…. Relevant, I suppose, is that I am Irish by birth but left Ireland when I was 35 after ten years working in Waterford. We settled in Zimbabwe and stayed there until I retired, and that gave me loads of material for books which I will try and use sometime. So far I have only written one book on Africa, “The Road to Zimbabwe”, a light hearted look at the country’s history. And there’s also a small book about adventures flying light aircraft in Africa. And now I am starting on ancient Rome, the first book being about Julius Caesar, Marcus Cato, the Conquest of Gaul, (Caesar and Cato, the Road to Empire) and the Civil War. But for most of my books so far I have gone back to my roots and written about Irish history, trying to do so as a lively, living subject rather than a recitation of battles, wars and dates. My book on O’Connell, for example, looks more at his love affair with his lovely wife Mary, for it was a most successful marriage and he never really recovered from her death; and at the part he played in the British Great Reform Bill of 1832, which more than anyone he, an Irish icon, Out of Ireland, my book on Zimbabwe starts with a 13th century Chief fighting slavers and follows a 15th century Portuguese scribe from Lisbon to Harare, going on to travel with the Pioneer Column to Fort Salisbury, and to dine with me and Mugabe and Muzenda. And nearer our own day my Flying book tells of lesser known aspects of World War 2 in which my father was Senior Controller at RAF Biggin Hill, like the story of the break out of the Scharnhorst and Gneisau, or capturing three Focke Wulfs with a searchlight. And now for my latest effort I have gone back to my education (historical and legal, with a major Roman element) and that has involved going back in more ways than one, for the research included a great deal of reading, from Caesar to Plutarch and from Adrian Goldsworthy to Rob Goodman & Jimmy Soni.

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INTRODUCTION.

PART 1. ZAMBEZIA

Chapter 1. 1190 AD - Chief Hungwe,

Chapter 2. Great Zimbabwe.

Chapter 3. The Portuguese.

Chapter 4. The Mwenye Mutapa.

Interchapter.

Chapter 5. SoShangane.

Chapter 6. Robert Moffat.

Chapter 7. Cecil Rhodes.

Chapter 8. Lobengula.

Chapter 9. The Pioneers. 

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PART 2. RHODESIA.

Chapter 10. The Missionaries.

Chapter 11. 1929. Rhodesia.

Chapter 12. Rhodesia sleeps.

Chapter 13. War.

Chapter 14. President in waiting.

PART 3. ZIMBABWE

Chapter 15. President in fact.

Chapter 16. Our Business.

Chapter 17. Politicians.

Chapter 18.Decline.

Chapter 19. And Fall?

Historical Note.

INTRODUCTION

I was lucky in my schooling, in that history played a big part in it and was ably told by Mr. Roger Ellis, M.A. I say told, not taught, because he always went to great lengths to impart the subject as a wonderful story, not a dry list of facts and dates.

So what follows is a story. Save for well known figures either historical or current, such as Cecil Rhodes and Mugabe,  a large number of fictional characters have been introduced to make the story flow. My object is to portray the origins of today’s Zimbabwe only insofar as those origins relate to, and culminate in, Zimbabwe. So the original Bantu immigrants are part of the story. The Portuguese and Arabs and their thirst for ivory and gold are part; the Nguni are part; and so, of course, are the English.

Everyone today knows where Zimbabwe is, and has heard of the hyper-inflation there and the trials and tribulations of the people, and Robert Mugabe. Yet not so long ago, around 1985 perhaps, outside Southern Africa only the English had really heard much of it. But it was my home, and I well remember my surprise when on a business trip in Minneapolis USA I was asked where I came from and I replied

‘Zimbabwe, you know, it used to be Rhodesia’, my questioner responded with a broad smile, ‘That’s somewhere near Brazil, right?’.

It is, of course, in Southern Africa. And this is the story of the thousand years or so which have culminated in the Republic of Zimbabwe today. But in fact little is known of what happened in the region before the 19th. century, and less before the 16th. century. Much can be guessed at from Arab and Portuguese records, and much has been surmised by archaeologists who have had little to work on except pots. As the late Professor David Beach, Professor of History at the University of Zimbabwe, once wrote: ‘too many archaeological texts in the past have given me the impression that the country was inhabited by pots rather than people’. He did not mean to decry the work of archaeologists, and nor do I. I simply make the point that there is very little known, and so for the first hundred pages of this book, Part 1 entitled ‘Zambezia’ covering the period 1200 AD to 1890, I have written what I think might have happened. I owe much to the works of David Beach and to his great friend and my brother Mark, and also to those of one of his students and a later Professor of History at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr. Innocent Pikirayi. For a very readable and extremely erudite survey of the entire subject, I recommend his book ‘The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States’ (AltaMira Press, 2001).

Part 2, entitled ‘Rhodesia’, relates events which by and large happened, but told from the perspective of my family. So things which happened during the Liberation Struggle period from 1970 to 1980 are told from my (Irish) perspective, not that of the Freedom Fighters. Parts are stories still, parts memoirs.

The final part, Part 3, which takes us up to the end of the last millennium and beyond, ‘Zimbabwe’, is another story, but my own. Memoirs, really. I was in what may have been a unique position in that I was well acquainted and well connected with the conservative business establishment, but also very close to the corridors of political power from Independence in 1980 on. I am firmly convinced that had Sally Mugabe, Robert Mugabe’s first wife, not died when she did, the next fifteen years would have been very different indeed.

So this a story book, with three separate but linked stories which together make – a history?

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PART 1. ZAMBEZIA.

Before the advent of Cecil Rhodes from whose name the word ‘Rhodesia’ was coined, this Southern African region was usually called Zambezia. Zambezia technically refers to the area drained by the Zambezi River, and the word ‘Plateau’ is used by a number of historians to distinguish Zimbabwe from Zambezia. Both appear in my book.

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Chapter 1. 1190 A.D. Chief Hungwe.

It was a summer’s day in 1190 AD. In the burying place on the hill in South Africa called Mapungubwe (see map before this chapter. Floreat +/- 1075 - 1220 AD.). The Great Chief gazed down on the herds below. Their Sanga, their cattle, grazed peacefully in the lands, herded by the !Kung, the little apricot-skinned people with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes who did the manual work for his people. They made good herders because they seemed themselves to have no desire to own cattle, but a great feeling for the beasts in their charge. They had always lived here, even before his ancestors had come down the river in their canoes and seen this hill and built this town with its great stone walls.

Further off he could see the fields of millet and sorghum and cotton which his people cultivated. The cotton was a recent discovery. It came not like so much else that was new in their lives from the Swahili traders, who paddled their great canoes up against the current to reach his town, but from upstream. It came from peoples like his own who had brought the skills down the Great River with them when fleeing from their enemies. His women now produced cloth which although not as fine as the traders’ cloth, was much more supple than the skins and furs they were wont to use.

The river was their life. It was the artery up which those traders came from far beyond the sunrise, with their fine porcelain and their beautiful beads and down which they returned with gold and elephant tusks. In the other direction there were two rivers which met below the town. One they called the Salt River, because salt traders came down from the salt pans in the dry lands where the sun set. The other was the Iron River, because down this came the product from the iron ore workings in the hills. Traders from there also brought cattle, and the chert  stone which they used for making fire. And the River was the source of fish, an abundant source of fish which formed part of almost every meal, and was very important to his people. It fed them, and it fed their totem the great Fish Eagle whose haunting cry he could hear even now as it soared high above the river.

He gazed down on the villages in the hollow below and smiled to see the vast expanse of humanity there, the huts with their cooking fires sending smoke up to the sky, the children running and shrieking and laughing around their parents legs, the women pounding the millet. He could see the fishermen on the river and the canoes hauled up on the banks.

The Chief had just buried his father. It was a sombre time, this time of burying, but not a sad one. For his father had gone to join his ancestors and would be happy now. He had been accompanied by his tools and his weapons and his favourite gold covered ornament, his little rhinoceros. Beautifully made by the tribe’s best goldsmith, the rhinoceros symbolised the power and the might of the Chieftaincy, and would ensure that he was recognised and honoured by the ancestors. It was the Swahili traders who had made the yellow metal popular for decoration, because it never tarnished and was pliable and easy to work.

The burying place was on the top of this high hill, the highest for miles around. His people always buried their dead in the highest place available so as to be nearer their ancestors in the sky and so shorten their journey. Before they came here, in the days of his ancestors, they had left their dead out on a raised wooden platform for the birds of the air to devour, so taking them closer to their ancestors in the sky, but now they buried them. Lying prone for commoners, standing upright as was only fitting for the Chiefs.

He was a tall man, the Chief. Well over six feet tall in a time when the average was nearer five feet. It ran in his family, and was one of the reasons he was revered as the Chief. Gazing down in his reverie, considering all the implications of his new position, his eye was distracted by an unexpected sight. He saw the messenger trotting up the path to the burial place. He would not have been disturbed as he bid goodbye to his father without good reason. He stared intently at the rivers, the cattle, the houses, the market place looking for signs of trouble, but saw nothing. The messenger approached. Keeping his eyes respectfully on the ground, the exhausted man panted:

‘I seek the Fish Eagle’. He had clearly run a long way to come here, probably from Bambandyanalo, Hill, a full day’s march across the Great River.

‘N’di Hungwe’ the Chief responded, looking down on the prone man. ‘I am the Fish Eagle. Rise, and speak’.

‘Your pardon, Ishe. I was told to look for an old man, with white hair’.

‘He lies there’ replied the Chief, pointing up he hill to the burial place. ‘I am now the Chief. Why do you seek me?’

‘I come from Bambandyanalo, Ishe. Our city is being attacked, and we need help. Food inside the walls is almost exhausted, likewise water. I was able to crawl out last night, like a snake, to find you’.

Bambandyanalo, was, like Mapungubwe, walled, a Zimbabwe, a place of stone. But it would not hold out long against determined attackers. Determined attackers were rare here. Unprecedented in fact.

‘And who are these attackers? Do you know them?’

‘They are not of our peoples, Ishe. They are like the traders who come with beads and cloth. They have been raiding villages around for two weeks or more, and apparently just taking prisoners who they keep. Why, we do not know.’

‘Slavers’ breathed the Chief. He had heard of these pale skinned people who came not to trade but to capture people to take away and sell. The concept was alien to his people, but he understood it. And understood the danger if it were not ruthlessly dealt with, and quickly.

‘Go, eat, drink, sleep’ he said to the messenger. ‘Before dawn tomorrow we shall set out with all our warriors, and we shall kill your attackers’.

The messenger went down the hill where he was given food, drink and a place to sleep. The Chief lent on the parapet overlooking the river bed, and gazed over the land and watched the sun set, and thought. The sun went down in its time, and the Chief too went down the hill to the big meeting place, the Dare, where the elders of the people were assembling. The messenger’s words had spread around, and they came to the Dare to discuss them. But first the Chief went to his own rooms and sent for the chief trader.

‘What do you know of these people like you who come to steal men and women and children?’ he asked his guest, after explaining the evening’s developments.

‘Slavers’ said the trader. ‘It has been common among the Arab people on the coast for centuries, but usually the slaves are defeated enemies of another tribe who sell them rather than kill them. To attack a people without provocation and enslave them is a new departure, and contrary to the laws of our people and our God. They must be stopped.’

‘And how would you attack them?’ asked the Chief.

‘At night’ replied the Trader immediately. ‘They fear the dark, these people, and see spirits abroad, which they call Djinn. They will not be expecting an attack. And probably they do not know of your existence, otherwise they would have come here first, and not left you at their backs.’

‘If they do not know of our existence, then they do not know of yours, either?’

‘That is so, Ishe. Undoubtedly.’

‘Would you risk coming with us, when we go to kill them? For that we must. And I have a plan in my mind.’

The Trader thought for a moment. Slavery was recognised by Islam, but not this method of taking slaves, common though it might be. The Koran clearly stated that since all human beings were naturally free, slavery could only arise under Islamic law from being born to slave parents or being captured in a jihad. Besides he wanted no interference in what was a lucrative market for his cheap goods exchanged for ivory and gold. This was a much more profitable and less dangerous trade than slaving. These strangers represented a threat to his trading monopoly here. And this Chief could muster many more men than the slavers could possibly have. The risk would not be great. He decided.

‘I will come, Ishe. And so too will my three sons.’

The Chief thanked the Trader, and moved out into the Dare where torches had been lit and the Elders were gathered round waiting for him. They sat in a large oval on the ground, and at one end there stood the skull of an elephant, cunningly worked into a seat, a throne almost. The Chief’s place. His father’s place, thought the Chief as he slowly sat there for the first time. The elders clapped rhythmically, three times, repeated three times, nine claps, the welcome for the Chief.

‘My people’ boomed the Chief in his deep, melodious voice. ‘I come before you for the first time as Chief, and at a time of crisis. You have all heard the Messenger from Bambandyanalo,. Clearly we must assist our cousins. But we must do more than that. We must so frighten these people that they do not return, otherwise they will be an increasing threat to our people over the years to come’.

‘Now, I have questioned the Trader. He confirms that these people are slavers, and he calls them ‘Arabs’, and says that they are afraid of the dark. They fear Djinns, which seems to be their name for Tokoloshe, and we can use this fear’, and he went on to describe his plan.

An hour before the sun rose the following morning the men of the tribe assembled outside the walls and set off in a long line to the crossing place over the Great River. The four Swahili traders were there too, standing by the Chief. There were almost a thousand of them, and they made a most impressive sight, each with their iron tipped spear and their shield of cow hide. They were divided into groups of a hundred men, each with their own leader whom they knew well. They were accustomed to this arrangement, for they frequently marched up river to collect the cattle due to the Great Fish Eagle every year, although they seldom had to fight. They relied on their numbers and their ferocious appearance, and it was usually enough.

It was a long march to the Hill of Bambandyanalo,. The Messenger led the way, and shortly before dusk, when the hill could be seen clearly in the distance, he led them off to the left, to a river bed, dry at this time of the year.

‘This river bed leads all the way to the Hill area’ he said, ‘and passes right round the back, so it is possible to encircle the enemy camp without being seen. It was along this bed that I escaped. I pray we are in time.’

‘We are’, said the Chief, ‘You can see their camp fires at the foot of the hill. So now, we eat. And then we sleep, but not for long. Half way through the night, we move’.

In the Arab encampment a few hours later all was quiet, save for the muted tones of the still wakeful sentries as they gazed out into the starlit night. Such light as there was came only from the stars, there being no moon that night. They were tired, these sentries, but bored rather than tense. They had been here for two weeks now, but they intended to make a major assault on the walls in the morning. This was not the easy campaign they had been promised, with primitives inside mud huts waiting to be captured. This was more like a military campaign, with soldiers armed with iron tipped spears behind walls of stone. There were over two hundred of them, but spread thinly now, all round the city of stone on its hill, to ensure no tribesmen escaped them.

‘What was that?’ gasped Mahmoud, jerking fully awake at his post. It sounded like the cry of a Fish Eagle, nothing unusual here. But at night? It was repeated, but louder, and closer, it seemed.

‘Just a night bird’ his companion yawned. ‘They are different here to those at home’.

‘Mahmoud’ came a haunting cry, ‘Mahmoud, come to us’.

‘It spoke, it called me!’ cried Mahmoud. His friend too was seriously alarmed.

‘And in Arabic!’ he said.

‘Djinn’s’ they thought together, but said nothing. They strained their ears. There it was again: ‘Come to us!’.

‘We’d better go and investigate. The cry seems to be coming from that dry river bed.’

Although they didn’t know it, the same thing was happening a few hundred yards away, just out of earshot, all around the sleeping Arabs. Mostly Fish Eagle cries, but in four places cries in Arabic, for the Swahili could speak Arabic. Slowly sentries all round the encampment went to investigate the cries of the Djinn’s. Some, the braver souls, pressed their investigation as far as the source in the dry river bed where the last thing they ever saw was a grinning trader with his hands cupped around his mouth and calling into the night. Most melted back into the safety of the camp, silently afraid to admit their fear, to wait until the spirits had tired of taunting them and gone. None stayed at their posts.

Silently too the Fish Eagles rose from their positions and crept towards the sleeping encampment. It was a well coordinated, disciplined attack, of the kind which was to make their people invincible in years to come. Half of the Arabs died as they slept, and the others were ruthlessly dispatched, all but four men. Their prisoners, their slave stock, were freed and sent back to their villages, their dead left for the vultures. The four Arab prisoners were brought before the Chief, and told that they were free to go.

‘And if you reach your homes’ intoned the deep booming voice of the Chief, ‘Tell them of my powers. Should any more of your kind reach here, they will be treated like your comrades and fed to the vultures. They will not be as lucky as you.’

So ended the first, and only, slave raid into the land for centuries to come. But the incident was to have another effect hardly noticed at the time but significant. It affirmed the rule of this branch of the Bantu people of the Hungwe totem over all the people of that part of the Limpopo Valley, for such would the Great River be one day named. So when the next season the rains failed, not for one year but for five, there was a single authority to whom the people looked for salvation. They had seen the clouds and the rain storms on the far distant horizon.

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The Chief, who seemed to have had nothing but troubles with which to contend since his father had died, had been studying the weather with great care for the last two years. With so little rain, they could not long survive here, he knew. But there were clouds in the distance, beyond Bambandyanalo,. So in the second year he sent out four parties of warriors, each in different directions, to seek and find a place where the rains had not failed. They all returned, months later, and one of them, who had gone in the direction of Bambandyanalo, and carried on for many weeks, returned with good news. There were hills to climb, he said, but beyond them the land was fertile, the rains came, and there was one place so like their own home hill that it seemed to be a copy. There was iron ore in the hills, there was grazing and good soil in the land, and above all there was rain!

And so it was that the Chief took one of the more momentous and far reaching decisions in the history of the African continent. He and some of his people, perhaps half of them, and their cattle followed the rain. For weeks they followed it, climbing the hills to the plains above. In fact it took a year before they reached the land with rain, and with stone, and iron ore. These were the essentials of their way of life, and so here they settled. Their Sanga cattle