Mzilikazi
Among
the languid hills of Zululand, not even the diviners predicted that
Mashobane,
chief of the insignificant Northern Khumalo clan, would sire a child
in 1795 who would rise to become the conqueror of 1.3 million square
kilometres of southern Africa. His name, however, was portentous, for ‘Mzilikazi’ means
the ‘Great Road’.
Shaka. Proving himself a fearless warrior, Mzilikazi soon became one of Shaka's
advisers. Shaka's trust, however, was misplaced. Mzilikazi dreamed of
being a potentate himself. Dissatisfied with a life of subservience,
he plotted to free himself and his people from Shaka's influence. In
June 1822, Shaka sent Mzilikazi's regiments to attack the Sotho chief
Ranisi (Somnisi). They pounced on the Sotho chief's defenceless rabble
and drove away their herds. Defying Shaka, Mzilikazi refused to give
up the spoils of battle and in June 1822, he bolted with his followers. The Matabele. During the early
years of their migrations Sotho-speakers of the highveld called Nguni-speakers ‘maTebele',
a name they used for all people who came from the coast, whereas the
Nguni-speakers
called themselves
Ndebele. After the arrival of Mzilikazi on the highveld, the name Matabele
became especially attached to his fearful hordes, and historians later
wrote of this period referring to the Matabele wars. While living among
the Ndzundza, Mzilikazi subjugated the old baPedi kingdom of Chief Thulare,
killing five of his nine sons, but one son, Sekwati, fled north to the
Soutpansberg Mountains, where his people were able to repulse Mzilikazi's
attacks. Mzilikazi settled for a while along the Vaal River until Korana cattle
raiders became a threat. In the winter of 1827, Mzilikazi decided to
move northwards. The Matabele army swept through the Magaliesberg via
Kommandonek near the present Hartbeespoort Dam. Mzilikazi established
temporary settlements near present-day Rustenburg, then launched into
action against the baKwena, roasting some alive, clubbing most to death,
and piling the infants onto mounds of brushwood, which were set ablaze.
After falling on the Kwena at Silkaatsnek the Matabele turned on the
Po who were easily overwhelmed. Kgatla Chief Pilane fled to the hills
that now bear his name. Mzilikazi ruthlessly, massacred the remaining
Tswana groups in the area. Using the Magaliesberg as his centre, Mzilikazi
expanded his kingdom, which by then stretched from the Vaal River in
the south to the confluence of the Crocodile and Limpopo Rivers. Between 1827 and 1832, Mzilikazi built himself three military strongholds.
The largest was Kungwini, situated at the foot of the Wonderboom Mountains
on the Apies River, just north of present day Pretoria. Another was Dinaneni,
north of the Hartbeespoort Dam, while the third was Hlahlandlela in the
territory of the Fokeng near Rustenburg. By 1829, the total Matabele
population numbered about 70,000, consisting of the Matabele elite and
a vast number who had been enslaved. Most of the Tswana settlements were
desolate. A strange friendship. In May 1835, Mzilikazi
was overjoyed when he heard that Moffat wanted to visit him again,
this time accompanied by a group
of explorers who
were undertaking a scientific expedition led by Dr Andrew Smith. Hoping
to stay on good terms with the British and to learn more from them about
the use of firearms, Mzilikazi gave the expedition permission to enter
his country. The party's journey from Kuruman took them around the northern
tip of the Magaliesberg, teeming with game. There, they encountered some
Tswana survivors who had built grass huts on scaffolds within a gigantic
tree as a safeguard against nocturnal visits of some rather bold lions.
This old Ficus ingens, with long, massive branches drooping to the ground,
where they have struck root, is now known as ‘Moffat's Tree' or
the ‘Inhabited Tree'. It was identified in the 1960s and can be
seen on the farm Bultfontein at Boshoek, a farming area between Rustenburg
and Sun City. The doting king feted Moffat. He allowed him to lecture him about his
cruelty and ungodly ways. When Moffat said he was looking for timber
for his new church at Kuruman, the king personally assisted him in finding
good wood for his church, travelling with him in his wagon, enjoying
the company of his esteemed friend and the surprising comfort of the
mattress on his bed. During this visit, Moffat gained Mzilikazi's permission
for missionaries of the American Board to settle at Mosega. Soon after
Moffat's visit, in 1836, Mzilikazi welcomed William Cornwallis Harris,
a captain in the Indian Army, who was hunting and sketching in Africa.
His paintings and his diary became prized Africana. The Voortrekkers. The Battle of Vegkop. The Rout of Mosega. The destruction of eGabeni. Matabeleland. The remarkable friendship between Robert Moffat and Mzilikazi was resumed
when Moffat visited the king at Nyathi in 1854, 1857 and 1859. Moffat
surveyed the old king's swollen body and palsied legs with shock. He
was saddened to note that though the king still enjoyed the devotion
and respect of his followers, he was no longer the mighty Bull Elephant,
the fearsome ruler of the past. As before, these visits opened the way
to British hunters, traders and missionaries. The king allowed Robert
Moffat's son John to become a missionary in Matabeleland. John Moffat
and missionary colleagues were useful translators, but they achieved
no converts because they refused to repair firearms and make bullets.
After Mzilikazi's favourite wife Loziba died in 1861, Mzilikazi left
Nyathi and moved to a new great place that he called Hlahlandlela after
his previous stronghold. Then followed a hard period for his people: they endured a great drought
and were stricken by smallpox and measles; while lung-sickness, brought
in by the infected cattle of missionaries and hunters, killed off the
Matabele cattle. In 1863, prosperity returned to Matabeleland. Rains
fell, harvests were plentiful, and the raiding Matabele regiments returned
with large herds of cattle. Gold fever. Death Source: Her sources were:
On the death of Chief Mashobane, who had been murdered by Zwide, Mzilikazi
was duly installed as chief of the Northern Khumalo clan. But, after
Dingiswayo's death, instead of siding with Zwide, in exchange for the
protection of his people, Mzilikazi swore allegiance to Shaka, who
had risen to power as a commander of Dingiswayo's army and had usurped
the Zulu chieftainship and taken over the Mthethwa confederacy after
Dingiswayo’s death.
Moving north and north?west, as he pillaged and slaughtered, Mzilikazi
rounded up the strong men and women, turning the men into army recruits
and the women into concubines for his warriors, his possessions increasing
with his power and prestige, and his followers numbering, in due course,
more Sotho youths than Zulu. Having cleared for himself a wide area,
in about 1822-23 Mzilikazi temporarily joined forces with Nxaba, a
chieftain of the Nguni-speaking Ndzundza Ndebele community who lived
in the Middelburg area. Here, he built the royal kraal ekuPhumuleni
(Place of Rest). By then, the size of the Khumalo clan was swollen
by other Nguni-speakers who had settled in the area.
In 1830, Mzilikazi received a visit from Robert Moffat (1795-1883), the
Scottish missionary who worked among the Tswana from 1821 to 1870.
Moffat's friendship with Mzilikazi is one of the most remarkable stories
to emerge from Southern Africa. Moffat described the king as charming,
dignified, good-looking, with a ready smile; and added, had he not
himself been present at some executions it would have been hard to
believe the man's terrible reputation. Mzilikazi admired Moffat so
much that he honoured him with the name of his own father, Mashobane,
and called Moffat the King of Kuruman'. Henceforth, ordered Mzilikazi,
all traders and hunters had to enter his country on the road that led
from his friend Moffat's mission at Kuruman. In the spring of 1830,
Dingane's Zulu regiments advanced on the Matabele. On the upper reaches
of the Sand River, they fell on each other. Three Zulu regiments were
wiped out before they fell back.
Early in 1832, the Matabele razed the Rolong villages. Matabele raiding
expeditions conquered the Hurutshe, whose capital Mosega became the king's
most southern military headquarters guarding the route to Kuruman. At
Tshwenyane, he built another military stronghold, and near the Great
Marico River, he built the colossal settlement of eGabeni (Kapain).
Early in 1836 Louis Trichardt's company and the Van Rensburg trekkers
moved into Matabele territory and were wiped out by fever and by hostile
warriors. Hendrik Potgieter's party followed. They trekked north across
the Vaal searching for a permanent place to settle. Captain Cornwallis
Harris was still at the royal headquarters in August 1836 when Mzilikazi
heard that the Voortrekkers were crossing the Vaal without his permission.
Moffat records that Mzilikazi saw this as a threat to the Matabele
state. When he heard they were poaching his game, his warriors were
ordered to expel them as bandits. Mzilikazi's warriors butchered the
Erasmus party, but were repulsed by the Steyn and Botha families in
their laagers. The Liebenburgs were not so lucky, although the Matabele
spared two girls and a boy who were carried off as gifts for Mzilikazi.
Potgieter laagered the trekker wagons at Vegkop, between the Wilge and
Renoster rivers, and waited for the Matabele to attack them. On 16
October 1836, the Matabele, led by Mzilikazi's general Kalipi, encircled
the wagons. At noon, they charged; only to be met, repeatedly, with
a viciously accurate fusillade. At length the Matabele called off the
attack and retreated, taking with them all the trekkers' cattle. The
Rolong eventually rescued the stranded trekkers and brought them to
Thaba Nchu, where a large group of trekkers had assembled under Gert
Maritz. Meanwhile, Cornwallis Harris was exchanging gifts with the
king and was discreetly refrained from mentioning that he had heard
about the massacre of the trekkers. His party had not continued far
on their journey when they came upon a section of the Matabele army
returning from the battle at Vegkop. The meeting was tense until Harris
explained they had been the personal guests of the king himself.
While the Matabele army was away in the north, Potgieter's trekkers fell
upon Mosega at dawn on January 17th, 1837, and destroyed it. Dingane,
the Zulu king, seized the opportunity of attacking the weakened Matabele
forces. But again, they were beaten off, though this time the Matabele
suffered heavy losses. Mzilikazi then decided to move to eGabeni.
In November 1837, Potgieter, Maritz and Uys launched another attack on
the Matabele. In a battle lasting nine days, they destroyed eGabeni
as well as other Matabele camps along the Marico River. Fearing utter
destruction at the hands of the Boers who had gained dominance in the
Transvaal, Mzilikazi decided to move much further north. His people,
now numbering some 15,000, streamed out of the Marico valley, and after
crossing the Limpopo River into the present Botswana, they split into
two groups.
It was nearly two years before Mzilikazi's group met up with the other
section, who having arrived in about 1837, had subjugated and incorporated
the Shona, Kalanga and Rozwi. Believing they had lost sight of Mzilikazi
forever, they appointed as successor, Mzilikazi's senior son. Meanwhile,
Mzilikazi had halted his journey and established himself in the centre
of the old Rozwi kingdom, at Nyathi, giving his new headquarters in
the Matopo Hills the Zulu name kwaBulawayo. When Mzilikazi heard that
his councillors had appointed a successor, he summoned them to Bulawayo,
accused them of treason and had them all executed. Then he ordered
the execution of all his own sons. But Fulatha, the daughter of a Swazi
chief, managed to hide her son, Lobengula, who escaped death. Having
killed his rivals, Mzilikazi reorganized his army and proceeded to
subjugate the neighbouring tribes, most of whom in time adopted the
Ndebele language and culture, which was in turn influenced by the conquered
groups.
Only white hunters who supplied the king with firearms and ammunition
were allowed to hunt in the east of his territory. The big-game hunter,
Henry Hartley became a good friend of Mzilikazi after treating the
ailing king with success. During 1865, while hunting in Mashonaland,
Hartley accidentally discovered gold. Soon afterwards, Hartley, Adam
Renders and the geologist Carl Mauch, while exploring north of Great
Zimbabwe, realized the extent of gold present around the old African
mining villages along the Mfuli and Tati Rivers. At Potchefstroom,
in December 1867, Hartley and Mauch announced the extent of gold present
in Mashonaland, thus beginning the first gold rush as prospectors and
miners from Europe and Australia began the long trek northward up the
missionaries' road. The Transvaal Government did its utmost to get
hold of the Tati goldfields, but the ailing king, remembering old enmity
with the Boers, steadily refused to allow them a grant.
In 1868, Mzilikazi died and Lobengula was installed as king in 1870,
but strife between contesting groups led to civil war that weakened
the Ndebele Empire. British imperial expansion later caused the collapse
of Ndebele power, but the Zimbabwean Ndebele language and culture survived.
Howcroft, P. (undated). South Africa Encyclopaedia: Prehistory to the
year 2000, unpublished papers with SA History Online.
Bhebe, N. (ed)(1989). Junior Certificate History of Southern Africa:
Book 1
Bergh, J.S. and Bergh, A.P. (1984). Tribes and Kingdoms.
Caruthers, V. (1990). The Magaliesberg.
Edgecombe, R. ‘The Mfecane or Difaqane', in Cameron, T. and Spies,
S.B. (eds). (1986). An Illustrated History of South Africa.
---- (1972). The Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa.
Parsons, N. (1983). A New History of Southern Africa.