In the 1880s Lobengula’s court was besieged by fortune hunters. His father Mzilikazi had given hospitality to the missionary Robert Moffat, David Livingstone’s father-in-law and Lobengula now had Moffat’s son John Smith pushing English interests with the missionary Charles Helm.
It was to Helm that Lobengula said: “Did you ever see a chameleon catch a fly? The chameleon gets behind the fly, remains motionles, advances slowly and gently. At last, within reach, he darts out his toungue and the fly disappears.
England is the chameleon. And I am that fly.”
He was not wrong.
Two groups of Englishmen, the BSAC led by Cecil John Rhodes and the Bechuanaland Exploration Company led by Lord Gifford were competing for mining concessions. Rhodes engineered the Rudd Concession, signed by Rudd, Maguire and Thompson and witnessed by Helm.
To counter it, the Gifford group represented by EA Maund, persuaded KL to send ambassadors to London. The idea was to repudiate Rudd, and have a Lewanika arrangement where L’s territory would be a protectorate. But Helm sneakily changed the paragraph seeking a protectorate.
As he no longer knew which Englishmen to trust, Lobengula chose two trusted induna Mshete and Babiyane as special envoys to carry the letter to the “Great White Queen.” He wrote he could only find out the truth “by sending eyes” to see the Queen. The induna were to be his eyes.
Mshete was about 60 and Babiyane is said to have been 75. They were accompanied by Johann Colenbrander, their interpreter and EA Maund. They sailed from Cape Town to Southampton on the steamship Moor and docked in late February 1889.
While they waited to see the Queen they became the first Zimbabwean tourists in England!
They went to Madame Tussaud’s and to the zoo where Babiyane tried to poke at a lion with his umbrella. They went to musical theater at Alhambra and to the ballet.
They visited the Bank of England and Babiyane tried to charm his way into taking out some gold. Heh.
They were apparently quite smitten with Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s American mother, a noted society beauty.
They were seriously impressed with the telephone - they were separated so they could speak to each other on it and apparently marveled that it could transmit their own language as well as English.
The Aborigines’ Protection Society wrote a letter addressed: “To the Chief Lo Bengula” with the salutation “Dear Friend”, telling him their society existed to protect the weak and to ensure that the strong were also just. They hoped to help him obtain justice if he needed it.
The Aborigines’ Protection Society was a pressure group inspired by the abolitionist movement. It was made up of well meaning but ignorant liberals.
They hosted a breakfast for the envoys who apparently “enjoyed drinking tea”. The writer H Rider Haggard was also at that breakfast
They also heard arguments about how to pronounce their King’s name. Lo Ben Goola.
Lo Ben Gyoola.
Lo Beng Waylo.
And this from Lord McKenzie: Lo Pin Goola.
Each person who spoke had their own version. Nobody seemed to ask them!
And they were shown two sights that must have chilled these hardened warriors to the marrow: they saw part of the navy in action at Portsmouth and inspected troops at Aldershot. They also watched the Queen’s Lancers do impressive military manouvres on horseback and on foot.
Kate Simpson told me recently that H Rider Haggard called the Zulus the “Romans of Africa”. The Matabele were from the same stock.
The military display is what impressed Mshete the most.
“Come and teach us to fight like that and we will fear no army in Africa,” he said.
But it must have chilled their blood to be told that these 10 000 men they were seeing were just a few .... and not the whole army.
I’m sure you can tell I study armies, battles and military strategy. The growth of the Empire’s army and their weaponry are two of my interests.
It took some time for them to secure an audience with the Queen because of the status of Colenbrander and Maund: Victoria’s court did not receive commoners. The emissaries refused to see her without them. And so the Queen had to receive the whole party, breaking Royal protocol.
Their warm reception from the Queen was followed by an official letter from Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State for the Colonies which included a warning to Lobengula not to give all concessions to one group. “A king does not give his whole herd to a stranger. He gives only an ox”
The aristocracy had a keen interest in Lobengula. One of Victoria’s sons-in-law, the Duke of Fife, married to Princess Louise, was a director of the Bechuanaland Company with the Duke of Abercorn & Viscount Gifford. The whole thing was a stitch-up to beat Rhodes not to protect KL
Laden with gifts, including snuff boxes, and a portrait of the Queen, the emissaries departed London.
Their mission, as far as Lobengula saw it, was a success.
But as he himself said, he was dealing with a chameleon that was most cunning ...
Slowly, relentlessly, the Gifford and Rhodes groups negotiated away their differences.
They agreed to combine, set aside the Rudd Concession and go for the jugular.
None of this softly softly stuff.
George Cawston and Alfred Beit raised funds for a new plan
... INVASION.
And so the Pioneer Column marched in. 7 years later, the “Victoria incident” triggered the Matabeleland rebellion, Imvukela.
Within that year, though they conquered Alan Wilson’s Shangani Patrol, the mighty Matabele were decimated.
Thus fell the “Romans of Africa”.
As Hillaire Belloc said:
“Whatever happens, we have got,
The Maxim gun and they have not.”
Lobengula whom Rhodes had initially hoped to maintain as a sort of puppet king, was betrayed, and died in mysterious circumstances which have not been clarified to this day.
When Rhodes was buried at Matopos in April 1902, some of Lobengula’s surviving induna gave him the royal salutation: “BAYETHE!”
For many years, I wondered why they did this. I put my theory to the historian Pathisa Nyathi in 2007.
“You may be right!” he said.
I was delighted!
Babiyane and Mshete both survived. One continued fighting, even after the Great Indaba.
One thing made them sad: that they could not tell of all that they saw in London. Why?
They feared people would think they were crazy.
There’s more but you have to read or watch my play!
For further reading:
P Nyathi, Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage, 2005
EP Mathers, “Zambesia: England’s Eldorado in Africa”, 1891
Illustrated London Times, Feb-March 1889
J O’Reilly, “Pursuit of the King”, 1970
And, fingers crossed, in 2022
“The Chameleon and the Fly”.
... by me!
All images are in the public domain except those I took of my own books.
Just as with Livingstone, I have been interested in M and B to the point of obsession.
I even wrote half a novel, THE EMISSARIES OF THE KING about them. I lost it when a Georgian gang stole my computer!!
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