Treasure Hunters: Mashona Rebellion 1896–7

In his 1898 book, With the Mounted Infantry and the Mashonaland Field Force 1896, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson of The Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), upon receiving deployment orders to Mashonaland to assist with quelling a local uprising in that territory, somewhat prophetically observed,

Apparently no one in Mashonaland had even dreamt it was possible that the Mashonas might rise. . . that the worm might turn did not seem to have occurred too them, and the saying, ‘You only want a sjambok [whip] and a box of matches to take any Mashona kraal,’ has become proverbial. The result of this excessive contempt for the worm was that, when he did turn, the whites, taken completely by surprise and totally unprepared, appear to have gone into an almost equally excessive state of alarm.

In mid-June 1896, in Mashonaland, a name given to a large tract of real estate south of the Zambezi River, in what would become part of the colony of Southern Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe, rampaging Shona-speaking tribesmen attacked isolated mines, farms and trading posts, brutally murdering all white men, women and children they could find. In the space of a week, 117 civilians had been slaughtered.

Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, generally known as Mbuya Nehanda, was a spirit medium of Nehanda, a powerful and revered female ancestral spirit. Idolised for her spiritual prowess, Mashona tribespeople in the Mazoe District, a short distance north of Salisbury, readily answered her call to rise up against the white settlers. She gave a guarantee that the enemy’s bullets would turn to water and prove harmless.

Insurrection in the territory commenced earlier that year when the amaNdebele in the southwest around Bulawayo rose up against the white settlers. Notwithstanding the fact that the Mashona and amaNdebele were historical enemies, actions by the latter galvanised the Mashona to follow suit.

At the time, most of the white population was scattered everywhere: on gold mines and at trading stores. British Army contingents such as the 4th (Queen’s Own) Hussars combined with local volunteer units to establish centralised defensive forts and laagers, and to conduct widespread patrols to quell the rebellion.