The Baronet And The Savage King

By David Hilton-Barber

The concession to mine gold at Tati was granted to a British baronet,
Sir John Swinburne, by Lobengula, last king of the Matabele. Although
called by colonial imperialists as a “savage king” and a “native despot”,
Lobengula was “exceedingly wellmade (in height about 6 ft 10 inches),
corpulent, with a commanding presence and, when in a good temper,
having a kind heart and a full appreciation of humour”.

The gold at Tati, which was discovered by the geologist Carl Mauch,
was actually on the site of prehistoric diggings that had been mined
there 400 years previously by the Makalanga people. Tati lay on the
missionary road to the north, used by Livingstone and Moffat, and
it was part of Cecil Rhodes’s dream of a continuous tract of British
imperialism from Cape to Cairo. The annexation of Bechuanaland
was a direct result of the confl icts between the tribes within the area
and the threats from President Kruger and from Germany which had
recently colonised Angra Pequena.

Gold from the early diggings here found its way to Great Zimbabwe
and the famous golden rhinocerous from Mapungubwe was probably
fashioned from gold mined at Tati. This forgotten corner of the subcontinent
encapsulates a chapter of our history involving fi ve countries,
powerful men, much subterfuge, a botched invasion, a rebellion, land
annexation, prospectors, hunters, traders and adventurers. It is a story
begging to be told.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Hilton-Barber
• Release date: Dec 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780620593588

David Hilton-Barber

David Atherstone Hilton-Barber is a fourth generation member of 1820 settler stock. After completing his BA Hons degree at Rhodes University, he trained as a journalist following in the footsteps of his maternal great-grandfather, Frederick York St Leger, founder and first editor of the Cape Times. He later became a public relations consultant and for 15 years was involved in a wide range of programmes for the private and public sector. He retired to Tzaneen in 1989. He has written four books, a history of Tzaneen, a history of Haenertsburg, a history of the Tati Concession (the first gold rush in Southern Africa) and a biography of Len Hobson. he is presently researching two other historical projects. He also writes for local and national media on conservation and local government.

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The Baronet And The Savage King

By

David Hilton-Barber

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*******

Published by

David Hilton-Barber

The Baronet And The Savage King

Copyright 2013 David Hilton-Barber

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ISBN - 978-0-620-59358-8

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Ophir - the Legend

Pre-Concession Mining

The Concession

Exploration of the Limpopo

Missionaries

The Hunters

Thomas Baines

The Rev SJ du Toit

Founding of the Ndebele Nation

Bamangwato

Francistown

Occupation of Mashonaland

Annexation of Bechuanaland

The Jameson Raid

Stellaland and Goshen

The Tati Company

The Glazer Brothers

Tati and the Anglo-Boer War

The Railways

Posts and Telegraphs

The Stamps

James Haskins

References

Foreword

The Baronet of the title is Sir John Swinburne (1831 – 1914). He was a British aristocrat and Liberal politician. He served in the Second Burmese War 1852, in China, and in the Baltic in 1854. Immediately prior to his foray into gold prospecting in Southern Africa, he was High Sheriff of Northumberland and soon after his return to his home country he was elected as member of Parliament for Lichfield, Staffordshire from 1885 to 1892.

And the the uncivilised king of a savage race of the Matabele was Lobengula, variously described as exceedingly well-made (in height about 6 ft 10 inches), corpulent, with a commanding presence, and when in a good temper, having a kind heart and a full appreciation of humour.

British imperialists called King Lobengula a savage king and a native despot in many of their colonial dispatches.

Sir John Swinburne

It was the unlikely relationship between these two men that underpins my account of this forgotten corner of the sub-continent which encapsulates a chapter of our history involving five countries, powerful men, much subterfuge, a botched invasion, a rebellion, land annexation, prospectors, hunters, traders and adventurers. It is a story begging to be told.

The book describes the characters involved, the missionary Robert Moffatt, who had formed a close friendship with Lobengula; the explorers Henry Chapman and artist Thomas Baines; the hunters, Selous , Hartley and others, and the gold miners, Samuel Edwards and Daniel Francis.

The founding kingdom of the Amandabele comes into the picture, as does the land of Chief Khama and the Bamangwato.

Tati lay in the path of Cecil Rhodes’s dream of a continuous tract of British imperialism from Cape to Cairo. Close by is Tuli where the Pioneer Column crossed over the Limpopo en route to Mashonaland following the signing of the controversial Rudd Concession.

Lobengula by Ralph Peacock, based on a sketch by EA Maund

The annexation of Bechuanaland was a direct result of the conflicts between the tribes within the area and the threats from President Kruger and from Germany which had recently colonised Angra Pequena.

The Jameson Raiders entered the Transvaal from Macloutsie, down the road from Tati.

Tati had a role to play in the Anglo-Boer War that followed.

The Baronet mounted on his trusty pony

At Capheaton Hall, the seat of the Swinburne Baronetcy,

Acknowledgments

The idea for this book was sparked during research into early gold mining activity for my previous book. Not far from my home in Limpopo Province, South Africa, lies the ghost town of Leydsdorp where a similar gold rush took place. This was some years after the Tati discoveries but the circumstances were surprisingly similar - a remote area where big game abounded, where malaria was rife, where the prospectors faced the same hardships.

There was also the fact that I attended school at Plumtree, up the railway line and just across the border in today’s Zimbabwe, and we played cricket against the lads in Francistown. In any event, the idea took shape and in less than a year the manuscript was all but completed. Many people helped me to maintain the necessary momentum. On my first fact-finding mission to Francistown, the geologist Charles Byron introduced me to several sources of valuable information. Prime amongst these was Catrien van Waarden, archaeologist and historian who kindly gave me free access to her material. Then there was the indefatigable Stella Rundle, curator of the museum, who produced rare documents and photographs from the early days. Gaisie Khama, CEO of the present-day Tati Company and his staff were generous their time and assistance.

Jennifer Kimble, librarian at The Brenthurst Library in Johannesburg could not have been more helpful in locating archival mate-rial from that splendid institution. Also in Johannesburg, Mike Barter was a mine of information, especially on the early history of local philately (the Tati Concession minted its own stamps). Denise Munnion gave me access to her late husband’s collection of Rhodesiana, as did John Dewar and Peter Williams.

The Internet, as ever, yielded up its huge repository of information. This is recorded under the chapter headed References. The spelling of names and places is retained in the original documents but in the text, the current usage is preferred – Mzilikazi, Lobengula, Ramaquabana, Shashe etc.

Introduction

The white man’s penetration into the land of the Matabele began in the old peaceful way. First came the missionary Moffat, the friend of Moselikatze, and other missionaries. Then came the traders, bartering, for ivory or cattle, guns and wine and beads and blankets. Then came sportsmen, allowed, for the gift of a gun, to shoot elephant, buffalo, hippo, rhino, lion, leopard and deer. Then came the discovery of the Tati goldfields, and the concession hunters.’ (Sarah Gertrude Millin, in her book Rhodes.)

Tati, scene of the first gold rush in Southern Africa, is a distant memory. However, this forgotten corner of the sub-continent encapsulated a chapter of our history involving five countries, powerful men, much subterfuge, a gold rush, a botched invasion, a rebellion, land annexation, prospectors, hunters, traders and adventurers. It is a story begging to be told.

Sarah Gertrude Millin, one of the most popular novelists in South Africa of her day

I have endeavoured as far as possible to relate the events through the eyes of the observers at the time in order to reflect the prevailing attitudes of the period. In the mid-1850s, David Livingstone, one of the first explorers to make a transcontinental journey through Africa – from Luanda on the Atlantic coast to Quelimane on the Indian Ocean - defying malaria, dysentery and sleeping sickness in the process, had drawn back the curtain over some regions of the unknown interior. Such was the public interest in his journeys that the British government agreed to fund his Zambezi Expedition from 1858 to 1864 to explore the natural resources of the Zambezi River. His reputation was somewhat tarnished when his physician, John Kirk, wrote in 1862: ‘I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader. Expedition members recorded that Livingstone was an inept leader incapable of managing a large-scale project. He was also said to be secretive, self-righteous, and moody and could not tolerate criticism which severely strained the expedition. Never the less his exploits continued to seize the public’s attention.

Then there were the missionaries, notably Robert Moffett, who had penetrated from the Cape northwards to the countries of the Matabele, who brought to light the conditions of the interior. And even more so, Thomas Baines, an indefatigable traveller and artist of the 1860s, brought back pictures of the Zambezi and of the territory between it and the Limpopo which fired popular imagination.

And of course there were the early hunters who also deserve credit for furthering our knowledge of those areas. They were obliged to provide Lobengula with generous gifts, firearms and ammunition being the most acceptable, but they still had endure long periods of patient waiting before being allowed to hunt in the east of his territory.

This map by an unknown artist showing Livingstone’s journeys in Southern Africa was published by the London Missionary Society in the late Nineteenth Century

Information filtering through to Europe, it may be assumed, laid the groundwork for the ensuing Scramble for Africa. Prior to this unseemly burst of colonisation, only small portions of the continent were under European rule, largely restricted to the coast and a short distance inland along major rivers such as the Niger and the Congo.

The Scramble for Africa had more to do with events in Europe than in Africa

Information filtering through to Europe, it may be assumed, laid the groundwork for the ensuing Scramble for Africa. Prior to this unseemly burst of colonisation, only small portions of the continent were under European rule, largely restricted to the coast and a short distance inland along major rivers such as the Niger and the Congo.

Britain had Freetown in Sierra Leone, forts along the coast of The Gambia, a presence at Lagos and the Gold Coast protectorate; France had settlements at Dakar and St Louis in Senegal, the Assinie and Grand Bassam regions of Cote d’Ivoire, a protectorate over the coastal region of Dahomey, and had begun colonization of Algeria as early as 1830; Portugal had long established bases in Angola and Mozambique; and Spain had small enclaves in Spanish North Africa.

Alistair Boddy-Evans, who runs a website on African history, writes: There were several factors which created the impetus for the Scramble for Africa; most of these were to do with events in Europe rather than in Africa.

These included efforts to end the slave trade. "Britain had had some success in halting the slave trade around the shores of Africa. But Muslim traders from north of the Sahara and on the East Coast still traded inland, and many local chiefs were reluctant to give up the use of slaves. Reports of slaving trips and markets were brought back to Europe by various explorers, such as Livingstone, and abolitionists in Britain and Europe were calling for more to be done.

Another factor was the boom in exploration. During the nineteenth century barely a year went by without a European expedition into Africa. As the century moved on the goal of the European explorer changed, and rather than traveling out of pure curiosity they started to record details of markets, goods, and resources for the wealthy philanthropists who financed their trips.

Then there was the spread of Capitalism, commerce between Europe and Africa. "Explorers located vast reserves of raw materials; they plotted the course of trade routes, navigated rivers, and identified population centerswhich could be a market for manufactured goods from Europe. It was a time of plantations and cash crops, dedicating the region’s workforce to producing rubber, coffee, sugar, palm oil and timber, for Europe. And all the more enticing if a colony could be set up which gave the European nation a monopoly.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 laid down ground rules for the further partitioning of Africa. Navigation on the Niger and Congo rivers was to be free to all, and to declare a protectorate over a region the European colonizer must show effective occupancy and develop a ‘sphere of influence’.

The floodgates of European colonization had opened.

Colonial Africa in the late 1900s

Ophir - the Legend

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

(John Masefield, Cargoes)

As we learned from an early age, Ophir is a region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon is supposed to have received gold, silver, precious stones and other valuables from Ophir every three years. It is not surprising that the discovery of gold in Southern Africa was linked to the legend of Ophir. The first European explorers who arrived in the early six-teenth century were the Portuguese from the Mozambique seaboard, attracted by rumours of unlimited gold. Portuguese chronicles, written as early as 1552, mention the wealth to be found. They believed that they had found the City of Ophir, the legendary capital of the Queen of Sheba, at the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, and that this was the source of the gold and diamonds supplied to King Solomon in the tenth century BC.

In a handbook published at the offices of South Africa in London in 1907, under the title The Story of South Africa’s Gold: Mysterious Relics of Ancient Writings the following appears:

The exact position of the land of Ophir has never been settled, but the discoveries of travellers have established something more than a presumption that in those far distant days when Solomon ruled in all his splendour, gold was coming to him from South Africa.

The Land of Ophir by Charles Beadle was one of many books of strange adventures in faraway places

Mention is made of Persians and Phoenicians, the Red Sea being the highway of commerce, adventurous merchants and sea-men, the ruins of Zimbabwe being the palace of the Queen of Sheba and other fanciful speculations.

It is quite probable that a wave of savagery passed over the interior of South Africa, and then darkness settled down on the land and its gold till modern travellers rediscovered it.

A hearty exponent of the Ophir legend was Dr Karl Peters, a German colonial explorer, active in the foundation of the German colony in East Africa. He was a proponent of the Völkisch movement, whose raison d’être was that human beings were essentially moulded by their inherited characteristics and that some races were superior. His attitude towards the indigenous African population made him one of the most controversial colonisers even during his lifetime.

Peters explored the area south of the Zambezi in 1899 in the interests of a goldmining company he formed, and discovered ruins of cities and deserted gold mines of the medieval Kingdom of Mutapa, which he identified as the ancient land of Ophir. Peters’s theories were readily accepted by Howard Hensman in his History of Rhodesia. Hensman believed that the country was a flourishing semi-civilised colony long before the Christian Era: "It has been said that these are traces of an ancient civilisation - for it is over Rhodesia.

Dr Karl Peters, a hearty exoponent of the legend

Impossible to believe that savage races erected them - extending extensively "The primary object of the erection of the whole of these structures throughout the entire country seems undoubtedly to be that of fortresses to protect the inhabitants from the inroads of other dwellers in the land who were presumably physically stronger and more numerous than the builders.

"Probably those against whom these walls were raised were the original owners of the soil, arid those who entered the country and sheltered themselves behind these massive bulwarks did so to exploit the gold-reefs which they knew were to be found in the country.

While it may be safely assumed, therefore, that one of the objects of these buildings was that of protection, it seems none the less certain that they were also constructed for religious purposes, and therefore they may be said to have acted at once as citadels and temples. What the religion was none can say, but there would seem to be signs that it was a form of sun-worship, and on this all who have examined the ruins appear to be agreed, and this fact gives us a clue to the race that built them. Sun-worship was one of the earliest forms of religion adopted by the Semitic races, and therefore it seems but a logical deduction to infer that these people were at least of Semitic descent.

Cecil Rhodes also embraced the idea that Zimbabwe was Ophir and used this idea to justify the 1890 occupation of Mashonaland by his British South Africa Company.

In 1891 the antiquarian Theodore Bent, with mostly Middle Eastern experience (and no archaeological training) was commissioned by the British South Africa Company (with help from the Royal Geographic Society and others) to investigate and excavate Great Zimbabwe. He concluded that the ruins could not possibly have been built by any known African race and must have been the work of an ancient Arabian people akin to the Phoenicians.

Homo sapiens

Early goldmining certainly took place. According to archaeologist Catrien van Waarden, more than a hundred prehistoric sites have been recorded and double that number of gold-workings are known to have existed in the Tati area.

"The rocks underlying this area are among the oldest in the world. They are schists from the Early Precambrian, 3 000 million years ago, and slightly younger granitoid rocks