Missionaries tricked Lobengula into signing treaties like the Moffat Treaty and the Rudd Concession
without fully understanding them. The treaties ceded land and mineral rights to Cecil John Rhodes.
Rhodes used the Rudd Concession to obtain a Royal Charter from the British government. Thus, due to
extreme pressures from different groups all sent on extracting concessions from him, coupled with
internal pressures from pacifists (who wanted negotiations and peace) and conservatives (who wanted
war) among his own people, Lobengula succumbed to the chicanery and deception of the colonialists.
In 1890, Rhodes unleashed the Pioneer Column to invade Mashonaland, marking the beginning of white
settler occupation of Zimbabwe. The Shona were not quick to respond to the invasion as they wrongly
assumed the column was merely a uniquely large trade and gold-seeking party that would soon vacate.
Soon Rhodes’ invading British South Africa Company (BSAC) established a Native Department that
authorised labour and tax raids on the Shona. Henceforth, constant skirmishes between Shona
communities and tax collectors and labour raiders ensued as the Shona, who had not been conquered at
all, saw no premise upon which the company could demand tax and labour from them. More
significantly, however, the company started appropriating and granting land to the settler pioneers.
By 1893, the invading settlers had failed to find rich gold deposits in Mashonaland. They therefore
decided to extend the frontiers of their new acquisition to Matabeleland. The colonial forces were bent
on the complete annahilation of the Ndebele state and thus attacked the Ndebele in 1893. Despite
spirited resistance at the Battles of Mbembezi River, Shangani River and at Pupu across the Shangani
River, the Ndebele were defeated in October 1893, leading Lobengula to set fire to his capital and flee to
the north, never to be seen again, dead or alive. Superior weapons were the decisive determinant of the
outcome of this Anglo-Ndebele war.
The Ndebele forces were, however, not completely defeated and rose violently again in March 1896
against the excesses of the BSAC. These excesses, which also affected the Shona, included forced labour
(chibaro/isibalo), taxation, raping of local womenand ooting of African resources, notably cattle. The
Shona joined the uprising in June. The heroic Ndebele-Shona Uprisings of 1896, termed the First
Chimurenga, formed the basis of later mass nationalism. An important feature of this uprising was the
purported role of traditional Africa religious authorities that were said to have provided unity and co-
ordination across Ndebele-Shona ethnic divides with two religious figures, Mkwati of the Mwari cult and
Kaguvi of the Shona Mhondoro religions system, prominent. Mbuya Nehanda is another religious figure
who played a pivotal role in propping up the rising in and around the Mazoe area. Other prominent
heroes of the First Chimurenga included Mashayamombe, Makoni, Mlugulu, Siginyamatshe,
Mpotshwan, and Kunzvi-Nyandoro, among others. Stories of the heroic exploits of these early heroes
and the united approach by the Shona and Ndebele became a great source of inspiration during the
Second Chimurenga from the mid-1960s.
In 1898, the Brits officially recognised the name Rhodesia for the colony after promulgating the Rhodesia
Order in Council. The Order in Council was the governing instrument of Rhodesia until 1923 when the
settlers were accorded Responsible Government. The main characteristics of the new settler
establishment were land segregation, segregated governance and political and economic privileges for
the white settler community. Thus, separation of races in the economy, political system and law became
the order of the day. Racial difference was completely institutionalised in all facets of the colonial state’s
institutions. An early challenge for the colonial state was how to rule the Shona and Ndebele in an
exploitative way, but without provoking another uprising. This became what has been termed “the
native question”.
