HOW EFFECTIVE WERE THE STRATEGIES USED BY LOBENGULA TO RESIST EUROPEAN PENETRATION BETWEEN 1870 AND 1893? 1. The question requires a simple identification of the various strategies employed by Lobengula in response to the encroachment of Europeans onto his territory 2. The candidate should then measure the effectiveness of those strategies in resisting the Europeans 3. The most reasonable conclusion should be that those strategies completely failed in the long term because the European penetration continued to grow until colonisation was finally achieved in 1890 SOME OF LOBENGULA’S STRATEGIES INCLUDED THE FOLLOWING: 1. Granting mineral concessions to Europeans- Karl Mauch and Henry Hartley were granted a concession to mine for gold at Tati in 1870 (the Tati Concession, 1870). Thomas Baines was also granted a mineral concession in 1876. The most important of these was the Rudd Concession that was granted to Charles Rudd, Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson in their capacity as agents of Cecil Rhodes (the Rudd Concession, 1888) 2. Granting hunting concessions- European hunters like Frederick Selous and Henry Hartley were granted permission to hunt animas including big game like elephants which were highly prized for their ivory. They were even given permission to construct a road linking Mashonaland and Matabeleland in order to facilitate the transportation and movement of the hunters and their goods 3. Granting trading concessions- European traders like George Westbeech, Leask, Tainton and Philips were all granted trading concessions. Lobengula evidently hoped to control the influx of Europeans by granting these concessions to these few Europeans but this strategy clearly backfired as these Europeans went on to sell their concessions to the powerful Cecil Rhodes who consolidated them and used them together with his own Rudd Concession as a basis for requesting a Royal Charter from the British queen to enable him colonise Lobengula’s kingdom on behalf of Britain 4. Granting land concessions- various groups of Europeans were granted land. First it was the missionary organisations such as the London Missionary Society who were granted land to open a second mission station at Hope Fountain in 1870. Powerful individuals like Edward Lippert also received land grants (the Lippert Concession, 1890). Lobengula’s plan in granting the land concession was to make it difficult or impossible for Rhodes to operate his mineral concession without coming into conflict with Lippert. It was clearly a desperate attempt to cancel out the Rudd Concession granted to Rhodes’s agents. However it ultimately failed because Lippert conspired to sell his concession to Rhodes whose hand was strengthened by the addition of a land concession to the mineral concession already in his possession. 5. Permitting and accommodating missionaries- Lobengula continued Mzilikazi’s policy of accommodating and co-operating with missionaries like John Moffat and Charles Helm. He granted Helm permission to open the second mission station in the country at Hope Fountain in 1870. Lobengula also took the missionaries’ advice to deal exclusively with Rhodes’ agents. That proved disastrous as it led to the granting of the Rudd Concession in 1888 6. Signing “protection” treaties- a good example of such a treaty was the Grobler Treaty with the Transvaal government in 1887. Lobengula singed this treaty in the hope that this would act as a deterrent to other European countries and prevent them from seeking concessions or to control Lobengula’s kingdom. Instead of stemming the flow of Europeans Lobengula’s strategy only succeeded in bringing in the British who sought to outdo the Transvaal. They eventually persuaded Lobengula to repudiate the Grobler Treaty and sign the Moffat Treaty and Rudd Concession in 1888. 7. Diplomacy with the British government- having realized the disastrous implications of the Rudd Concession, Lobengula decided on a diplomatic offensive that involved writing letters and sending emissaries to the British queen. Apart from a sympathetic “a king gives a stranger an ox, not his whole herd” response from queen Victoria, Lobengula’s diplomatic initiative failed to prevent the queen from granting Cecil Rhodes the Royal Charter to colonise Lobengula’s kingdom in 1889. Even Lobengula’s quiet diplomatic strategy of restraining his restless army from attacking the so-called Pioneer Column only succeeded in postponing but not preventing the Anglo-Ndebele conflict which eventually erupted in 1893. 8. Peaceful co-existence- having tried and failed in everything else, Lobengula decided to live in peace side by side with the nascent British state in Mashonaland. It was however an uneasy peace and the three years from the British occupation of Mashonaland in 1890 were filled with tension and deliberate provocation of the Ndebele by the British settlers. It was only a matter of time and Lobengula’s strategy was shattered by a quarrel over the Shona which led to the Anglo-Ndebele war of 1893-4. 9. Playing off the Europeans against each other- this strategy had tried by various African rulers with mixed results. It ultimately proved a failure for Lobengula as the Europeans he tried to set against each other often co-operated against him instead. Edward Lippert who had been granted a land concession in the vain hope of getting him into a conflict with Rhodes decided to sell it to the latter. The traders and prospectors also sold out to Rhodes and consequently strengthened rather than weakened him.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 13:16:55 +0000
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