REVIEW: W. F. Rea, S.J.REBELLION IN RHODESIA, 1896-7A Study in African ResistanceT. O. RANGER(Heinemann 1967, xii + 403 pp.)The publication of Professor Ranger's book is amatter of interest to anyone concerned withRhodesian history and with recent events in itspublic life, owing to the author's distinction as anhistorian, and the part he played during the sevenyears or so when he was a Lecturer in History atthe then University College of Rhodesia & Nyasa-land. There can have been few with any interest innational affairs during that time who did not haveviews for or against him. Even before he left thecountry in 1963 it was known that he was engagedon a work on African rebellions in Rhodesia, andthough there were fears that his absence fromRhodesia might have cut him off from some of thenecessary sources, the book has at lengthappeared.Professor Ranger could have been expected toput the resistance movements in the best possiblelight. But it by no means follows that the book isjust an apologia, for he has illuminated darkpatches of history.andthrownfurtherlighton otherspreviously only slightly known. Perhaps its mostvaluable part, though Professor Ranger might notagree with this, is his treatment of Mashonalandfrom 1890 to 1896. As is well known, after theRisings of 1896-7, Sir Richard Martin was com-missioned to investigate the administration of thecountry in the preceding years. His Report wasunfavourable to the B.S.A. Co., which led EarlGrey, then Administrator of Rhodesia, to make areply. We are in consequence comparatively wellinformed about the regime in Matabelelandbetween 1893 and 1896, but for some reason orother the Report was jejune and to some extentwrong in its treatment of Mashonaland, and itsexample was followed by Earl Grey.We are also less well informed about the actualRising in Mashonaland than in Matabeleland. In1926 Marshall Hole wrote that no adequate accountof it had ever been published, and nearly 40 yearslater Dr. Gann also had to say that its organizationhad long remained an obscure subject.Professor Ranger has now dissipated much ofthis obscurity, but what is revealed will not bringmuch comfort to those who idealise the blessingsof early European rule. It is true that in Mashona-land there do not seem to have been the samegrievances over cattle that the Martin Report showsto have existed in Matabeleland, and that thegrievances over land, and possibly even overforced labour, were perhaps less, but they weremade up for by the distress caused by the hut tax,and still more by the outrageous way in which itwas collected. The abuses can be understood. Theduty of the rudimentary native affairs departmentwas limited to getting in the tax, and the content-ment of the Africans lay quite outside its sphere.For personnel the Administration had to rely onsuch settlers as it could get hold of, and as mostof them had come to the country to look for theirfortune, scrupulous consideration for the Africaninhabitants could hardly have been expected.Consider the personality and career of the firstChief Native Commissioner, J. S. Brabant. He wasdescribed by his colleague, M. E. Weale, as roughand ready, illiterate, a good shot and rider, andvery loyal to the Company. The Africans certainlyfound him rough. Early in 1895 he took a force tothe Mtoko area, where the payment of the hut taxhad been resisted. On his way he met four messen-gers from the local Native Commissioner, and sawthat they were wearing boots, He had them takento the Native Commissioner's office and flogged,because, as Weale said, if there was one thingmore than another that annoyed Brabant, it was tosee a raw native wearing boots. He then had all theother messengers flogged because they had notbrought in the taxes. Next it was the turn of thedefaulting chief, Guripira, to whom Brabant saidthat he would burn and shoot everything he sawuntil he asked for mercy. Guripira seems to haveasked for mercy, but that did not prevent Brabantfrom burning a great deal of what he saw, andWeale described the atmosphere as dense withburning rupoko, other corn and grass. Brabantthen ordered him to fill the valley with cattle, sothat he could take what he wanted for the hut tax.He also said that he would take additional ones asa fine, because the tax had not been paid in thefirst place. Guripira was also to contribute 200men for work in the mines. Ultimately Brabantmarched off with 500.If this was the example set by the Chief NativeCommissioner it is not surprising that the ap-proach of a white man was as much dreaded asthat of the Ndebele impis in former days, and thatit caused the Shona to take to the hills with equalprecipitancy, as was reported by the NativeCommissioners at Hartley, Mrewa and elsewherein the later part of 1894 and in 1895. ProfessorRanger has done a service to history in bringing allthis to light, and the indictment against theCompany is the more damning in that the evidenceis not mere hearsay reports coming to the Abori-gines Protection Society and other "do-gooders",but the testimony of its own officials. To the creditof the Company, as Professor Ranger admits,Brabant was dismissed in November 1895, and hissuccessor, H. M. Taberer, was a very differentman, and told the Native Commissioners that theyshould not think of themselves primarily ascollectors of taxes. But before the new regimecould have much effect the Rebellions broke out.At the end of 1897 Sir Alfred Milner, then HighCommissioner in South Africa, wrote that theblacks of Rhodesia had been scandalously usedand Professor Ranger shows that his words wereamply justified. But one wonders whether Profes-sor Ranger, like the Martin Report, has notunintentionally underestimated the influence ofthe rinderpest in causing the Rebellions. Thepossible lack of proportion is easy to understand.Unlike a human agent, the rinderpest cannot beput in the dock by the historian, while witnesses,for and against him, are examined. So the MartinReport disposes of it in a few lines, and ProfessorRanger in half a paragraph.It is true that both could have cited in theirsupport the opinion of Selous, who thought thatsince the first murders of the whites occurred inthe Umzingwani, Filabusi, and Insiza area, whichhad not been touched by the rinderpest when theRisings began, it had not much to do with them.Selous, however, was speaking about a compara-tively limited area, and the Rebellions, which firstbroke out in areas which were still healthy, wouldnever have been given such spontaneous andwidespread support, had it not been for theplague itself, and for the consequent slaughter ofhealthy, or apparently healthy cattle. This gave theimpression that the whites wanted the extermina-tion of the people themselves.What seems more open to criticism is ProfessorRanger's account of the part played by the tradi-tional Shona religious organisations in promotingthe risings. That they had played a great part hadbeen well enough recognised from the first. In factthe Europeans were at a loss for any other explana-tion. They had thought the Mashona gentle,inoffensive and grateful at being freed from thethreat of Ndebele raids. So they could only attributetheir rising to the influence of the witch doctors.This explanation occurs again and again. Pro-fessor Ranger has shown that the Mashona hadmuch to complain about, but he certainly wouldnot underestimate the role of the Shona religiousauthorities. Indeed he describes their influencemore fully than has ever been done before. Hefollows them with care and ingenuity as theyknitted together Ndebele, Rozvi, and other Shonatribes further east, and so brought about a nationalmovement, which swallowed up local and triballoyalties. In this way the risings were an anticipa-tion of the nationalist movements of the presentcentury, and indeed an example to them. Thereligious leaders, as he says, brought thousandsof Shona into a membership of a new society, andmade them true believers in the murenga, withtheir own distinguishing symbols, obligations andpromises of divine favour.So far so good. But surely Professor Rangershould have spent much more time describing howthis new society acted, when it had thus beenbrought together, how its first action was the90killing of hundreds of unsuspecting victims, not infair fight, but by striking them down from behind,or when they were otherwise off their guard,women and children being slaughtered as in-discriminately as men. A tenth of the Europeanpopulation was murdered. Professor Ranger istoo honest an historian not to mention the fact, butin a book of nearly 400 pages it might well haveclaimed more than the ten lines or so in which hespeaks about it.Even from a military point of view the advice givenby Mkwati, Kagubi, and Nehanda was inept. Soundpolicy demanded, not a scattering of the rebelforces to murder Europeans on isolated farms, buttheir concentration for a quick attack on Bulawayo,and later on Salisbury. Selous recognised this atthe time, saying that though the Bulawayo laagerwas probably the strongest ever constructed inSouthern Africa, and could hardly have beentaken by assault by the whole Ndebele nation, had2,000 or even less attacked the town before thedefence was organised, the whole white populationwould have been wiped out,When to the cowardly conduct imposed by thereligious leaders is added their inept strategy, andthe promises made to their followers, which couldnot possibly be fulfilled, such as that their enemies'bullets would turn to water, and their horses feetbe burnt, as they crossed the rivers, it hardly seemsthat they deserve much admiration either from theirown people or from others. Even achieving nationalunity is not a sanatio in radice, obliterating alloffences done in its name.The truth is that, despite heroic actions by bothblack and white during the course of the Rebellions,and here, among others, the names of BernardMzeki, Routledge, and Blakiston spring to mind,they were a miserable business of which neitherblack nor white can be proud. The conduct of theEuropeans in doing so much to promote theRebellions is hard to forgive, but so is the conductof the Africans when they were provoked. For eachthe wisest lesson would be to make the petition forforgiveness in the Lord's Prayer and to mean whatthey say.W. F. Rea, S.J.91