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39 2 Mapping Cultural and Colonial Encounters, 1880s–1930s Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Introduction This chapter attempts a broadly thematic and chronological account and analysis of the development of Western colonialism on the Zimbabwean plateau between the 1880s and the 1930s. It argues for a more nuanced understanding of the processes that characterised the imposition of European colonial rule and its subsequent consolidation rather than the somewhat simplistic, nationalistinspired ‘domination and resistance’ paradigm that was popular in the 1960s.1 Clearly, the processes were complex and mediated by contestations and conversations , rejections and acceptances, negotiations and complicity.2 The chapter begins with a discussion of the forces and agents of colonialism, particularly the activities of Christian missionaries, traders, concession-seekers and their empire-minded sponsors. Concession-seekers put pressure on African leaders to ‘sign’ the fraudulent Rudd Concession that was used to justify the occupation, conquest and colonisation of Zimbabwe in the 1890s. I then analyse events that led to the conquest of the African people, and their responses, between 1890 and 1897. This period saw the Ndebele resisting imperial forces at the Shangani River, Mbembesi River and at Pupu in what became known as the Anglo-Ndebele War of 1893, or simply as the Matabele War. The 1890s also saw both Ndebele and the Shona reacting violently to the provocative interventions of early colonial rule in what became known as the Ndebele-Shona Rising of 1896-97: the First Chimurenga or Umvukela Wokuqala . The question of whether the reaction of the Ndebele to early colonial rule was co-ordinated or not, and the role of religion in it, provoked intense debate among scholars, pitting Terence Ranger’s pioneering ideas of a united and coordinated uprising against revisionist perspectives of David Beach and Julian Cobbing that disputed the issues of unity, co-ordination and the centrality of religion. 1 F. Cooper, ‘Conflict and connection: Rethinking colonial African history,’ in J. D. Le Sueur (ed.), The Decolonization Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 24. 2 L. Russell, ‘Introduction’, in L. Russell (ed.), Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European Encounters in Settler Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 4-7. 40 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni The making of the early Rhodesian state became a complex enterprise with its own dynamics. These included the consistent attempt by the early white settlers to ‘indigenise’ themselves as well as the early Africans’ various ways of making sense of their new position as a colonised people. Routinisation of early colonial rule became predicated on a delicate balancing of consent and coercion. The pre-colonial chiefly system of governance was reinvented to serve colonial interests, with African chiefs occupying the lowest echelons of the Native Affairs Department. At another level, the British South Africa Company administration pursued policies of social and spatial segregation based on race as part of colonial governance. The ambiguities and contradictions of colonial governance provoked equally ambiguous and contradictory African reactions that are analysed in this chapter. Background to colonisation The colonisation of Zimbabwe was part of the closing dramatic scenes of the European partition of Africa.3 The push factors for colonisation included the dynamics taking place in the West, particularly the economic crisis in Britain that provoked the search for new markets, raw materials and job opportunities elsewhere. These dynamics were well analysed by John A. Hobson, who advanced the thesis of ‘overproduction’ punctuated by ‘underconsumption’.4 The key colonial actors in the territory now known as Zimbabwe were the Portuguese, Afrikaners and the British. The discovery of diamonds, and later gold, south of the Limpopo River set the stage for aggressive expansionism in southern Africa; it also facilitated regional linkages as Africans from the Zimbabwean plateau were attracted to the mines. The Cape Colony acted as the staging post for colonial expansionism into the interior of South Africa and, later, north of the Limpopo River. The contest pitted the British against the Afrikaners. The Portuguese were also threatening British interests; their presence dated back to their relations with the Mutapas in the fifteenth century, but they had failed to establish an effective colonisation of the Zimbabwean plateau. David Beach argued that the Portuguese had succeeded the Muslims and ‘yet the Portuguese were different from the Muslims in one significant way: from 1560 some of them planned to conquer the Zambezi goldfields rather than simply trade with them.’5 In summary, the colonisation of Zimbabwe was a complex affair that involved the capitalist interests of the Cape, Natal...

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