The Making of Rhodesia by Hugh Marshall Hole

Author:Hugh Marshall Hole [Hole, Hugh Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136909498
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

[Photo by the Author

Mashukulumbwe Natives: N.W. Rhodesia

[To face p. 211.

remain unnavigable except by clumsy native “dug-outs,” whose thick solid keels allow them to be manoeuvred with impunity over places where no European craft could live. Both the Kàfue and Zambesi run, for portions of their course, through low flat country bordered by sand-hills, and these districts are subject, in consequence, to annual inundations. Round Lialui, the native capital, a vast tract is thus flooded in the rainy season, and acquires a fertility which resembles that of the Nile valley. The denizens of this part, which is the exclusive reserve of the real Barotse, are compelled every year by the floods to migrate en bloc with their cattle to the neighbouring hills, returning when the waters recede. The swampy nature of the Barotse valley renders it anything but a health-resort for Europeans, but the natives seem to thrive uncommonly, and their physique and intelligence are above the general level of Bantu races.

Lewanika’s sovereignty in 1889 embraced some twenty tribes1 with many subdivisions. These varied immensely in character and pursuits. Between the cultured, if somewhat indolent, Barotse aristocracy on the west, and the wild, naked Mashukulumbwe east of the Kafue River—the latter hardly a tribe at all, being split up into innumerable septs, with no tie but a common language and a common enmity against strangers—there was a wide gulf. These extremes were linked up by a miscellaneous collection of peoples differing in speech and in degrees of advancement, the hardiest and the most tractable being the Batoka, who may have gained some superiority of character by closer intercourse with the Makololo, and by their proximity to the Matabele and other southern tribes, against whom they were constantly on the defensive. The Makololo influence survived in their language, which was a lingua franca along the river, and was in use even among the Barotse proper, only a few of the chiefs and members of the royal family retaining their ancestral speech (Sirozi or Serotse) for private intercourse. The difficulties of governing so heterogeneous a group of peoples must have been enormous, and it is a surprising proof of Lewanika’s king-craft that he had succeeded in consolidating them sufficiently to be able to hand them over as one nation to the British Protectorate.

In 1886 the northern tribes of Bechuanaland were brought under the Queen’s protection. Lewanika was deeply interested in this. He was in constant and friendly communication with Khama, and quickly grasped the advantage of the British alliance, which would safeguard the Bechuanas for ever against Matabele aggressions. To Lewanika also the fierce hordes of Lobengula were a cause of incessant anxiety, and he began to cogitate on the possibility of a similar arrangement for himself and his people. In 1887 he received a definite warning that the Matabele were contemplating a raid across the Zambesi and that they were being encouraged by some of the Batoka, who were preparing canoes and inviting them to come to their assistance against the Barotse. In face of this threat he turned to Khama for advice.

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