Cecil John Rhodes: Keeping watch over his remains

A story is told of a young Zimbabwean who finds himself in America, finds himself part of a white American crowd. He sticks out, thereby attracting some attention. After a while one white American approaches him to ask where he is from. "Zimbabwe," he responds. "Zimbabwe?" asks the white American, face pensive, eyes rolling out and over rims of geographical memory. "Where is Zimbabwe?" continued the inquisitive American. As the Zimbabwean was gathering himself to answer, the American broke into an intoned realization: "Oh Zimbabwe! Mugabi, he-e? Why does your President take British land in Zimbabwe?"

Your farm on our land Sir!
Another story is told, this time involving a group of aggressive war veterans and an angry white farmer in a standoff on some piece of land near Banket. I hope the gentle reader is aware that land around Banket was reserved for Rhodesia's patrician farming families. You could not have been a German, Portuguese, Afrikaner or Indian farmer and still be found farming in Banket.

So this angry English tobacco nabob was involved in a face-off with a truculent group of war veterans, their numbers swelled double by new interns from a nearby communal village. They wanted to take over the farm from the white man. "Get off my farm or else the law that deals with trespassers will take its course," bellowed the burly, bellicose farmer, hands hairy and caroused.

And his voice carried the echoes of abundant good living. Whereupon a wiry and wizened black figure thrust forward from the other side, as if ready to commit suicide: "Sorry Sir, but your farm is on our land?"

Probing a Great past
I have never stopped asking myself why Cecil John Rhodes would worry about the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. True, he was an empire builder, much like Munhumutapa and all his successors at this great citadel of power. But by the time Rhodes' pioneers invaded our country, Great Zimbabwe is in ruins, well past the zenith of its power and influence,  well past its splendour as an architectural proposition.

The only living tissue around it is its legends, including claims of its mystic powers and its hidden bullion. Adam Renders had ran into its legends, as did Karl Mauch and many others who came after both men. Rhodes had in fact got artefacts from the ruined city. These had been delivered to him by the Posselt brothers. I covered this in my last instalment.

He was happy to keep these in his home, Groote Schur. Yet he developed huge interest in the monuments to the point of engaging at least two archaeologists to probe them in order to rebuild a story around them. Who had erected them? Who had occupied them, ruled from them? Who died inside them? When? Under what circumstances?

What civilisation did they mould, leave behind? Well before the BSA Company had dealt with welfare issues of the occupiers, many of whom had scattered in the veldt, acute need stalking and haunting them all the time, Rhodes still found it worth his while to spend money on probing the Great Zimbabwe and its past.

Much more, once the colony had been established, he speedily made sure the Great Zimbabwe was appropriated by the BSA Company, which by the way was also the Government.

Using us to repudiate our heritage
What followed was a great probe, and in trying to answer the why part of the probe, it helps to look at the findings. The BSA Company-commissioned studies attributed the Great Zimbabwe to the Phoenicians, a non-Zimbabwean, non-African, and people. It was these Phoenicians who toppled the Ophir legend, this narrative of Phoenicians which toppled the African as the creator of that elaborate civilisation whose bold, brittle landmarks have survived for centuries.

After the death of Rhodes and well into Rhodesian settler rule, it became a crime, as Peter Garlake would soon learn, to attribute the authorship of Great Zimbabwe to natives. Writing in 1891, just under a year after the colonisation of this country, one E.P. Mathers, himself a well known Victorian prospector, had this to say about the Great Zimbabwe: "And here it must be observed that the Kaffir tribes at present inhabiting this part of South Central Africa do not construct, and never have constructed, stone huts, and although they may sometimes pile stones together to form an enclosure, they certainly have never been known to hew stones and build them up systematically; therefore these forts and walls, these huts and enclosures of hewn stone, scattered here and there over an immense district, and everywhere thickly overgrown with large trees and bushes, were certainly not the work of any known Kaffir race; but whether their constructors were white or black has still to be determined."

Mathers goes a little further to repudiate any local or African connection to the monuments. He further wrote: "We have seen that it is not possible to obtain from the natives living in and around these ruins any information as to who raised those wonderful buildings, or what purposes they were intended to serve.

Moghabi, the Makalaka chief, declares "they found them there, as did their fathers before them," for the cradle of his people, he says, is further to the eastward. He further informed the Rev. Mr Helm that the native tradition from the olden time was, that these edifices were the work of Mozimo (the Supernatural or Supreme Being), but since some of his people have been to Kimberley, labouring in the diamond mines, and have told of the great stone buildings at that place, they are inclined to think that they may have been the work of white men in some remote period of which they have no knowledge."

White people from Kimberley
Of course "Moghabi" is Chief Mugabe, the chief of the area around Morgenster Mission which although founded by Rev. Louw, was actually pioneered as a site by Father Helm. The Posselt brothers tell us this is the Chief they had to bribe to be allowed to extract artefacts from the sacred Great Zimbabwe, including the missing Zimbabwe Bird which is still in South Africa.

But that is not my interest. My interest is how the poor chief is brought into the whole argument in order to put Great Zimbabwe beyond Indigenous ownership. He locates his people's origins in some nebulous place eastward, away from the monuments, thereby nullifying his claim to that great heritage.

He even gives authorship of the Great Zimbabwe to some Deity, thus putting it beyond his ken or ownership. Or if it's not "Mozimo", then it must be some white people, possibly the same ones who have built Kimberley! And this interpretation is not home grown, grown by minds living within the milieu of the Great Zimbabwe.

It hangs - tenuously - on migrant labourers from the area, but who have to travel all the way to Kimberley to come back with answers to the riddle of the construction of the monuments!

When empires repudiate their predecessors
Under the colonial administration were Native Commissioners. Traditionally largely drawn from Natal, these were whites who would serve in rural outposts throughout the country to ensure the colonial will was felt and fulfilled within native communities under their charge. They were under instructions to "know thy native", which is why their employment home, Native Affairs Department, became a vibrant centre of ethnographic  studies, all of them led by these white Native Commissioners.

The organ or mouthpiece of the NAD was called NADA, or Native Affairs Department Annual in full. One such Native Commissioner was a man called F.W.T. Posselt who joined the Department in September 1908, again from Natal. He spent most of his career time in Matabeleland, but also worked in Marandellas, now Marondera. His prodigious output during those years yielded a book called "Fact and Fiction" whose first facsimile edition was published in 1935.

His take on Great Zimbabwe was that the ruins "were constructed by means of Bantu labour, but under the direction and control of some other race." He makes us a labouring race, never the directing one, the building one. He adds: "If we are to attribute such works entirely to Bantu, that would mean accepting the view of a purely local Bantu civilisation of no mean order.

In that case who was the genius who evolved the ideas of architecture, engineering and technical skill required? And how was it that such civilisation was not perpetuated? Did it die out as rapidly as it was evolved? It is true that we find stone work, mostly of recent date and clearly of Native origin, in the form of defensive works and enclosures of graves, but this cannot fairly be compared with the larger ruins we know."

I think Posselt provides clues to my question about Rhodes and his interest in the Great Zimbabwe. Empires never pay tribute to their predecessors. They repudiate them, whether completely or in part. Or they occupy and appropriate their achievements. I don't need to tell you that Napoleon chose to smash the splayed nose of the Egyptian Sphinx than stand the horror of its acknowledgment as proof that along the Nile sprouted a great African world civilisation.

The commissars of colonialism
Zimbabwe had to be an empty, unkempt land of unmitigated savagery, for it to be regarded as fit for conquest, occupation and colonisation. That could never have been if the settlers had allowed the world to know that colonisation meant overlaying a "purely local Bantu civilisation of no mean order".

That fact had to be suppressed and even missionaries were part of that falsifying narrative. How could it have been otherwise given that Rhodes made sure that men and women of the bible served the empire? The slim Rev. Andrew Louw who eventually founded Morgenster Mission soon discovered that missionary life among Chief Mugabe's people was tough.

He survived on native food, suffered from native indifference. For a long time, there were no converts. His life was lonely, sickly too. He ran out of food. Fortunately hunters and fortune seekers kept visiting his lonely mission. He sent a letter to his father back in South Africa, pleading with him to approach Cecil John Rhodes so good food would come on the wagons of the BSA Company which plied up and down the "Pioneer Road" to Mashonaland.

Upon being approached by the elder Louw, Rhodes responded: "To me, your son is worth fifty police to keep the peace. Certainly I will make arrangements. But I'll do better than you ask. Orders shall be wired to the Commissariat at Fort Victoria to supply your son with all he needs."

Thereafter, Rev. Louw never went without.

Our native land Matopos
Gentle reader, I hope you recognize the Commissariat Department whose slow constitution before May, June 1890, delayed the operationalisation of the occupation plan. Rhodes had to make sure a Frank Johnson had been found. He became the commissar of the column. But from this episode, you also notice the Company Commissariat's corresponding opposite was the church, the missionary.

Could the archaeologists have been part of that Commissariat work? How about the Native Commissioners? We are getting closer to the whole question of why we are so bad when in fact our forebears were so good. One more detail. Why would Sir Robert Tredgold, a whole chief justice of the Federal Rhodesias, spent his precious professional time on the study of The Matopos?

And why would the Federal Department of Information find it worth its while to fund or oversee such an effort? Introducing the hills, Justice Tredgold wrote: "But beyond all these is something more subtle that defies definition and that makes the hills unique. We may talk of one place as the Switzerland of Rhodesia, whilst another suggests some other comparison.

But the Matopos are just the Matopos; our very own, and very near to the heart of our country." Tredgold admits to the hill's deep spiritual association "with the hoary traditions of the African", adding the "oracle of their religion is there". As are also the caves that carry the remains of Mzilikazi, the founder king of the Ndebele Kingdom.

Still, he says, presumably on behalf of all white settlers: "To some of us the Matopos will always be a place apart, a place that speaks of all that is deepest and best in our love of our native land". Our native land, he says! Never mind which part of Europe he came from, never mind. Or where you yourself was born, never mind. Or what feelings you have or don't have for these rocks!

The day we saluted "N'Kosi!"
Rhodes never lived here. He only visited, including when he came much later at the height of the Jameson Raid debacle, to rescue his settlers by brokering peace in the face of near certain defeat. The venue was Matopos. And it was after that indaba with the equally war-weary Matabeles that Rhodes decided he would be buried here in Zimbabwe, there atop the Matopos.

His will was done, following his demise in 1902. White history tells us even our forefathers attended Rhodes' burial, itself a great affair in the Empire. Rudyard Kipling, the bard of the mighty British Empire, composed a commemorative verse for this man out of the travail of whose spirit cities had been bred! But let Kipling be.

I want my own people, am keen to know what white historiography alleges they said or did on the day. As Rhodes' remains were being lowered into the rectangular rock rupture located right on the fontanel of the Matopos, white history says "the watching natives at a signal of their chiefs rose and gave loud vent to the royal salute "N'Kosi!"

Grave hands!
That history goes further to tell us that three weeks later, Rhodes' brother, one Colonel Rhodes, accompanied by Chief Native Commissioner called H.J. Taylor, and a Mr H.M. Jackson of the Matopo District, met the chief Indunas of the Matabele at his brother's grave. He is alleged to have told the Indunas  the following: "And as a proof that I know the white man and the Matabele will be brothers and friends forever, I leave my brother's grave in your hands.

I charge you to hand down this sacred trust to your sons that come after you and from generation to generation and I know if you do this my brother will be pleased."  This record captured in the memorial treatise went on to say about my forebears: "Then the leaders amongst the chiefs advanced, and in their own tongue spoke eloquently of their love for the Great White Chief and of the honour paid to them in asking them to keep watch over his remains .

They were glad to know that his spirit was with them in the Matopos and they and their children's children would keep their sacred trust."

When Independent Economists speak
The first September issue of the weekly Financial Gazette carried a special report titled "Economists on future prospects". It got me wondering whether prospects can be anywhere but in the future. Maybe this is what the white man calls emphasis. The piece carried a quote from what the source of the article, IPS, called "independent economist", a man called Kingston Nyakurukwa.

The "independent" economist was quoted as saying: "Foreign investors are obliged to bring in 100 percent of the capital, bear 100 percent of the risk, provide 100 percent of the technology, and in turn settle for 49 percent of the equity and pay taxes."  Nyakurukwa bemoaned the Zanu-PF policy on indigenisation which he said would blight "future prospects", to use Fingaz tautology.

Few paragraphs in between, the piece introduced us to another economist, again "independent", but this time called Agrippa Ndlovu. He had the following to say: "President Mugabe presided over the seizure of productive commercial farms, rendering a blow to agricultural production. And when agriculture performs poorly, the rest of the economy suffers."

The whole piece is then rounded up by another economist (not independent this time) called Christopher Mugaga who says: "Economic growth may wane if there is no political resolution which identifies a legitimate regime."  Mugaga, as his fellow economists, are speaking over a month after the harmonised elections, possibly implying they do not regard the elections as having created a legitimate political outcome.

Or regard them as an expression of the constructive intent of the Zimbabwean people. It is as if by voting Zanu-PF, and on the strength of its policies which include indigenisation, the people of Zimbabwe opted for mass suicide which can only be averted by these economist-saviours! Of course the article includes the views of white economists like Robertson and Lewis, but these are of no interest to me.

So many questions
Why would an indigenous economist pontificate about 100 percent capital, risk, technology and taxes, while forgetting to mention 100 percent resources which Zimbabweans bring to the investment equation? Surely that is a percentage which the investor's country, or any other country for that matter, cannot provide?

Is that not why he is here or bound for here, and not elsewhere? And it is a 100 percent which is irrecoverable, which leaves behind gullies, dead sand dunes, broken limbs and even lives? Indeed a 100 percent with no synthetic substitutes, however clever, however rich in money or technology, the so-called investor maybe?

Why would an "independent" indigenous economist image land reforms as "seizures" of productive commercial farms? Regard the recovery and return of his alienated heritage as amounting to some "seizure" which creates a situation of no "political resolution", no "legitimate regime"? Why is recovering one's own not a resolution, not a legitimate act itself?

Anyway, why is such action synonymous with dire future prospects?

In the white man's books
But there is a larger question. Why are our prospects as a people, why is the legitimacy of our politics and political outcomes as a people, dependent on the happiness and satisfaction of those foreign investors with 100 percent capital, risk, technology and taxes, but who stand to have a 49 percent shareholding cap according to our policies here? And why are these children of achieving forbears now spokespersons of the 49 percent stake assigned to foreigners, never for the 51 percent assigned to them and their fellowmen and women.

Who speaks for the 100 percent natural resources committed by our country which no amount of capital, no amount of technology can invent? Above all 100 percent of resources which in fact reduces the overall risk to - 100 percent? Why does that not give us clout and claim? Whose economic logic is this? Who profits from it?

The new cape boys
But there is also a larger question. What independence gives us a consciousness which is so sensitive to the needs √¢‚Ǩ‚Äú often unhallowed -  of the foreigner, while deadening us to our own needs and rights, our aspirations and prospects even? And in doing so, we are hailed as "independent economists"?

Independence means thinking, behaving and voting as indentures of the white man? Like Alous, the indefatigable, supremely loyal Basuthu Cape Boy of Stanley Portal Hyatt, the native grain and livestock trader? He sjamboked his fellow blacks for driving hard bargains. He created terror, in the process tilting trade terms in favour of the white man, in the process making the white man the real chief!

Today Alous' equivalents need not come from the Cape, need not wield sjamboks, need not deal with villagers of Chivamba. They are "independent" indigenes who wield economics degree that yield intellectually argumentative whiplashes. Those whiplashes beat us all back from asserting our heritage, from wielding that heritage firmly in our hand against the rest of the world for best advantage.

The Grootbooms who only serve
Behaving as indentures of the white man. Like John Grootboom, the Fingo native who used his colour and language skills to gather intelligence for the settler assault on resisting native armies. He did not fight with his own kind. He chose the side of the invader, and was lethal to the native cause.

Such discordant voices always mumble from the white man's smelly armpits, which is why their take on our futures never stand alone. They have to be appended to white thought always, white reasoning. It is never from such that we can ever hope for the vigilant warrior on the other side of Runde who knew that the white man represented by the Posselt brothers was a spy, an intruder who had to be stopped, who had to pay tribute to a king with ten fingers, with several feet.

They interacted with the white man from a position of strength, and used earthy arguments, full of local wisdom, coloured by local interests. And the warrior forced the Posselt brothers to concede ground. Not this tribe of Grootbooms whose importance is measured by how lucidly they regurgitate white arguments for white interests.

What answer would they give to an American who asks why Mugabe takes British land in Zimbabwe, ask without any sense of irony or absurdity? I am sure they would condemn him, albeit hiding behind clever, rote-learnt economic  arguments that edify the white man. I am sure they can never be relied upon to challenge the white farmer to remove his farm from our land, in the process raising a deep contradiction between legal claims and titles on the one hand, and heritage and inherent, inalienable ownership on the other.

Hark, I hear Rhodes in full laughter!
Today Rhodes sits or lies on top of us, Africans. Below his bed, well below his footstool, lies Mzilikazi, our forbear, decaying, putrefying un-remembered in the caves of Matopos. No one visits him, this lonely, foresakened great-great parent, this forgotten oracle. Rhodes sits, sleeps, on top of him, creating a whole spiritual hierarchy on this very land that Robert Tredgold rightly claims as "our native land".

We visit him, pay to watch him in his opaque, granite grave. We guard his remains, 24/7. If this is not a transposition of national spirit, a deflowering of the spiritual fount of this land, let me hang on a banana tree. And have you visited Matopos? On its access verges you go past an indelibly engraved message which reads: "This ground is consecrated and set apart for ever to be the resting place of those who have deserved well of their country."

Ironically, since Rhodes, Jameson, Coghlan and the grecian memorial of Allan Wilson and his men, no other burial has taken place. No one ever since has deserved well of this country, or so it seems! How would we, a race of mere keepers, a people whose destiny is shaped by how well "we keep watch over his remains"?

And keepers don't build, can't build; they merely keep the watch like the centurions of the bible. Why are we so bad when our forebears were so good? Why? Dear reader, have you not missed the quote from Rhodes' brother? You have. Here it is again: "I charge you to hand down this sacred trust your sons that come after you and from generation to generation and I know if you do this my brother will be pleased." Hark, I hear Rhodes in full laughter of contentment.

Icho!

-------------
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw