Second Matabele War

The Ndebele plan, however, went awry. Several hotheads shot a native policeman on March 20, then stabbed him with their assegais. News of the murder reached Frederick Courtney Selous on March 23. Selous, a noted big-game hunter employed by the Company as a rinderpest inspector, at first felt that it was merely a localized problem and not an insurrection. But when rumors surfaced of white farmers being killed, he knew that the settlers were in imminent danger. ‘I kept awake all night with my rifle and a belt of cartridges alongside of me,’ he later wrote.

In the course of the following week, the Ndebele raided the countryside. White ranchers, miners and rural travelers were cut down indiscriminately, as were a number of Indian farm laborers. As news of the rebellion spread, surviving whites streamed toward Bulawayo. Selous managed to escape with his wife, Gladys, although his farm was burned to the ground.Bulawayo became a city under siege. Without the Rhodesian police for protection, it was up to the settlers and townspeople to prepare for an attack. Oil-soaked fagots were arranged in strategic locations in case the Ndebele should attack at night. Blasting gelatin was secreted in outlying buildings that were beyond the defense perimeter, to be exploded in the event the enemy occupied them. Barbed wire and a laager of sandbagged wagons were added to Bulawayo’s defenses. ‘As further protection,’ noted Frederick Burnham, and American scout in Matabeleland, ‘we gathered up all the empty bottles around the town, broke them, and threw the fragments in a mass several inches deep and about twenty feet wide in front of the wagons.’

Rather than wait passively for an assault, the white colonials decided to reconnoiter the countryside for survivors and, when possible, carry out mounted attacks on the Ndebele. Although there was a shortage of weapons and horses, about 40 men under the command of Maurice Gifford rode east along the Iniza River. On March 26, they reached Cummings’ Store, finding 38 men, women and children in laager with the sheet-metal farm building as their base. Gifford ordered loopholes made in the sandbag wall, then stationed pickets. Just before dawn the next morning, the store was attacked ‘by about three hundred natives, who came on in the most fanatical and plucky style,’ wrote Gifford after the battle. The settlers answered with a fusillade of rifle and shotgun fire. Stabbing through the loopholes with their assegais, the Ndebele killed two and wounded six whites before begin driven off. The settlers quickly loaded their wagons and retreated to Bulawayo.

In the capital, in the meantime, a militia unit dubbed the Bulawayo Field Force was organized under Colonel William Napier. His subordinates were settlers who had previous military experience. Unfortunately for the defenders, available armaments consisted mainly of hunting rifles and shotguns. A store of old Martini-Henry rifles was discovered and put into operation. A few 7-pounder field guns were adapted to the laager-they were unserviceable in the open field because their carriages had been eaten away by white ants. There was also a small assortment of Maxim, Nordenfeldt and Gatling machine guns.

In early April, a mounted force of 100 riders, supported by a cart-mounted Maxim gun drawn by mules, began combing the district north of Bulawayo. Under the command of Captain Ponty H. Van Niekirk, the patrol sortied through the rocky scrub brush of Matabeleland. Skirmishing was almost continuous as Ndebele marksmen targeted the riders. When the Maxim gun was brought into play the Ndebele scattered, remembering full well the futility of frontal assaults against the weapon they had experienced in 1893. Nearly trapped by the tribesmen, Van Niekirk managed to fight his way back to Bulawayo.

On April 4, 140 men led by Maurice Gifford dueled Ndebele riflemen perched on kopjes (hillocks) and hidden in the brush. Riding toward Fonsecas Farm, Gifford’s patrol encountered as many as 1,500 warriors. Concentrating rifle fire on the Maxim gunners, the Ndebele began inflicting casualties. A bullet shattered Gifford’s arm, which eventually had to be amputated. His second-in-command, Captain J.W. Lumsden, formerly of the 4th Battalion Scottish Rifles, fell mortally wounded. Relying on their mounted mobility and superior marksmanship, Gifford’s men managed to extricate themselves and return to Bulawayo.

Surprisingly, the Ndebele never mounted a concerted attack on either the city or on other fortified towns such as Belingwe and Gwelo. Nor had they blockaded roads leading to Bulawayo. Or cut telegraph lines connecting Matabeleland to Mafeking on the Bechuanaland border. The mlimo had, after all, predicted that true believers would be magically protected from the white man’s bullets. Investing enemy strongholds and cutting their lines of communication seemed to be of little consequence to those warriors who had faith in the mlimo. But overlooking the destruction of the telegraph lines was a major Ndebele blunder. As early as March 29, a plea was sent to Kimberly for a relief column. Sir Hercules Robinson, high commissioner in South Africa, was ordered by the British Colonial Department to raise a force of 500 volunteers and place them under the army’s command. Robinson chose Lt. Col. Herbert Plumer to head the newly designated Matabeleland Relief Force.

Plumer immediately ran into difficulties. He had little problem in raising a volunteer force at Mafeking, but the plague of rinderpest prevented him from using oxen to pull the supply wagons. He was compelled to use mule teams, which meant the wagons had to be more lightly loaded. Nearly two-thirds of the tonnage per wagon would have to be fodder to feed the transport animals and cavalry horses. In need of firepower, Plumer was forced to purchase 10 new .45-caliber Maxim guns on tripods from a Durban company at a price of 4,500 pounds sterling-’considerably in excess of their value,’ he later observed.

While the relief column was being organized, the colonials continued their operations against the Ndebele. Selous estimated that 10,000 warriors were spread in a semicircle from the Khami River 12 miles west of Bulawayo to the banks of the Umguza River three miles to the northeast. To keep the roads to the south open, he was ordered to establish fortified outposts at Fig Tree and Manyami. Meanwhile, conditions inside Bulawayo were becoming unbearable for the nervous settlers. Nearly 1,000 women and children were crowed into the city. By day, families could return to homes and buildings within the town, but by night, they were forced to seek shelter in the laager. False alarms of Ndebele attacks were common. ‘Five cartridges went off by mistake,’ recalled Gladys Selous. ‘We were woken up by cried of ‘they are on us.” TheNdebele were, in fact, not far away. On April 17, 45 men commanded by Captains Van Niekirk and George Grey skirmished with a Ndebele ibutho (regiment) on the Umguza River barely three miles from Bulawayo. Unable to drive the native warriors from the area, the militia returned to the city. At about the same time, a Ndebele ibutho attacked Colonel Napier’s fortified farmstead at Maatjiumschlopay, three miles to the south. The 16-man white garrison, supported by friendly natives, managed to drive off the attackers.