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The Absent Priesthood: Another Look at the Rhodesian Risings of 1896–18971

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Julian Cobbing
Julian Cobbing
Affiliation:
University of Rhodes, Grahamstown
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Extract

The pervasive co-ordinating role of the Mwari cult in the Rhodesian risings of 1896–7 is illusory. The cult does not appear to have been linked with the Rozvi empire, the attempts to recreate which Ranger saw as one of the objectives of the priesthood in 1896. The priests were Venda from south of the Limpopo, who had arrived in the Matopos during the middle third of the nineteenth century, and who were for the most part out of action during the risings. The Ndebele did not succumb to cult influence, not even between March and July 1896, but maintained their previous coolness towards the priests. They were led all along by their own chiefs who, in June 1896, made Nyamanda king in succession to Lobengula. This and the wish to drive away the Europeans were the inspirations behind the Ndebele rising. The Shona and Sotho groups who rose with the Ndebele in March came in as allies of the kingdom rather than as minions of the cult. The Shona who rose in June did so not in answer to cult bidding, but in response to European pressures and the opportunity provided by European difficulties in Matabeleland. They also were led by their chiefs. A major theme of the risings is disunity and fragmentation, with the Ndebele fighting a civil war, and some important Shona chiefs collaborating with the British South Africa Company. The Ndebele fell short of a united strategy, as to an even greater extent did the Shona: there was certainly no strategic linkage of the two risings. Not only have the co-ordinating roles of Mkwati and Kaguvi been exaggerated, but their places respectively in Ndebele and Shona society have been misunderstood. They were local figures subordinate to local political structures rather than purveyors of a forward-looking millenarianism. Both the Ndebele and Shona fought to preserve existing institutions and alliance structures. It is above all fallacious to seek in the events of those years a surge of Zimbabwean nationalism or proto-nationalism, which was only to develop this century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 61 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

2 Heinemann, , 1967Google Scholar. Although I am here critical of one of the themes of Ranger's writing on southern Rhodesia, I need hardly stress that few of the advances that have been made in the study of Rhodesian African history would have occurred quite so quickly, or possibly at all without his foundation work. Nor is it imagined that what follows will end the debate.

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9 Ibid. 138–9.

10 Ibid. 190, 201–6, 219–20.

11 Ibid. 289–92.

12 Ibid. 237–8.

13 For example, ibid. 352–5, 377–8, 381, 185–6.

14 That is to say Ranger accepts these particular views, which were held by the Company. Revolt is unquestionably critical not only of Company activities, but also of the Company's ‘ill-founded’ notions of African society (see p. x).

15 Ibid., chapters 2 and 3.

16 The phrase appears in Ranger, 's earlier unpublished paper, ‘The Organisation of the Rebellions of 1896 and 1897. Part One: The Rebellion in Matabeleland’ (given at the History of Central African Peoples Conference, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Lusaka, 1963), 1Google Scholar, and comes from Selous, F. C., Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia, (London, 1896), 236.Google Scholar

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52 LO5/6/6, Gielgud to Chief Native Commissioner, 19 Oct. 1896. She was described as ‘a most dangerous and intriguing woman’ by Gielgud to Chief Native Commissioner, 9 Apr. 1897.

53 This grouping emerges clearly from files BA2/9/1–2, BA6/1/1–5, LO5/6/1–7.

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60 Ranger, , Revolt, 150Google Scholar; see below.

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68 Laing, , Matabele Rebellion, 134–44.Google Scholar

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75 The first documentary references to Mwari are from the early 1860s. There are many oral traditions referring to ‘Mwari’ in earlier years, but these are not necessarily, indeed are unlikely to have been, references to the Matopos cult. For the wide spread of the word Mwari in non-cult contexts during the twentieth-century, see Fortune, G., ‘Who Was Mwari?’, Rhodesian History, iv (1973), 1–20.Google Scholar

76 A3/18/28, Thomas, W. E. to Chief Native Commissioner, 5 Mar. 1906Google Scholar; Cockcroft, I. G., “The Mlimo (Mwari) Cult’, Native Affairs Department Annual, x, 4 (1972), 84Google Scholar. The present caretaker of the shrine told me early in 1976 that Njelele's founders were Mbedzi. For another linkage between the cult and the Mbedzi see the poem quoted in Ranger, , Revolt, 21–2.Google Scholar

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96 Ranger, , Revolt, 143–4, 152Google Scholar. The cult appears to have continued quite as before in 1894–5, if the absence of references to it then is anything to go by.

97 BA6/1/3, Chief Staff Officer's Diary, entry for 9 Aug. 1896. General Carrington's exact words: ‘Mlimo has now nothing to do with the revolt, he does not like the Matabele and talks of clearing out of the Matopos,’ are significant in view of Maswabe of Dula's flight.

98 The main evidence for Mkwati is BA6/1/3, Statement of Malimba, 1 Aug. 1896; Hist. MSS W18/1/3, ‘Windram Reminiscences’, Statement of Nganganyoni, 20 Nov. 1938. But see also NB1/1/15, Campbell to Chief Native Commissioner, 21 Nov. 1898: ‘So far as I can ascertain no evidence can be obtained implicating either [Mkwati or his wife, Tenkela] in inciting the rebellion,’ and neighbouring correspondence.

99 Ranger, , Revolt, 152–60, 229–31, 261, 266–7.Google Scholar

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103 LO5/6/2, Statement of Bulawa, no date (Aug. 1896) for example.

104 The Ndebele had their own bullet-proofing ceremonies which had nothing to do with the cult, but this did not prevent them taking cover whenever possible; see Hist. MSS BA10/2/1, Journal of Alexander Bailie, 82–91.

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113 Ranger, , Revolt, 182Google Scholar. Nowhere in the book is the assumption that the risings were co-ordinated by a common leadership more explicit. On pp. 190 the Shona rising is described as ‘Mkwati's counter-stroke’.

114 Cobbing, , ‘Ndebele under the Khumalos’, 411–12.Google Scholar

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121 Ibid. 321.

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124 Ibid. 25.

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127 Heyman, who organized the sales of looted Ndebele cattle, remarked: Company rule ‘without exception was absolutely honest and pure as far as I could discover.’ LO5/6/3, Heyman, to Grey, , 27 Aug. 1896.Google Scholar

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135 A debate contrasting the meaning of Mwari as a high-God and the cave cult has recently begun, which delves over a wide front into the semantic origins of the word ‘Mwari’; possible connexions between the Matopos cave cult and the Raluvhimba cult in the northern Transvaal; pre-cult religious observances in Kalanga country, which persist until today; possible connexions between Rozvi movements and Venda religion; the direction of migration of cult influence; the distribution of cult centres outside the Matopos; and the confusions following the post 1890s spread of the word Mwari by missionaries as a general translation for God into areas of Mashonaland where Mwari— in whichever sense—had never been worshipped.