Rhodesia - Matabeleland
I came across this interesting cover on the internet which I have taken the liberty of tidying up. I question if this cover was designed for postal use. The image you see below is printed on the front where typically the address and stamp go. This design leaves little space for either a stamp or an address. The reverse (with flap) is clear (unused). One seldom sees letters addressed and stamped on the reverse. I think this envelope may have held a set of sketches or photos showing events in and around Bulawayo, Matabeleland in 1893.
1883. Envelope. Presumably Printed illustration. Unposted.
Although this is the front of a letter, its intended purpose may not have been postal use.
The creator may have been a philatelist. The 'Royal Male' & 'Postal Jubilee' suggest so.
The reference to a 'Matabele Postal Jubilee' is spurious and tendentious. There was none.
Top: Lobengula as a child crawls around his father's kraal at Gubulawayo in 1843.
This image inadvertently acknowledges a Matabele presence and ownership of the land since 1843.
Bottom: King Lobengula flees Bulawayo in 1893 after firing it before the advancing BSAC forces.
This is a facetious item of anti-Matabele racist nonsense.
I imagine that back-in-the-day (1893) it was created as a testament to the White Man's civilising influence and the defeat of the Matabele whose capital the BSAC (British South Africa Company) had occupied.. Today it is a rather awful remindeer of the greedy iniquities of colonisation. I collect items of ephemera like this but feel vaguely uneasy about doing so. I tell myself that some of us have to remember and be the custodians of the past. One day when we come to explain what happened items like this will be invaluable.
So what is the background to this piece? I began by using AI. I asked Grok for a 100 words precis on the colonisation of Matabeleland by the British.
Grok replied: "In the late 19th century, the British South Africa Company, led by Cecil Rhodes, orchestrated the colonisation of Matabeleland, a region in modern-day Zimbabwe. Seeking mineral wealth and strategic control, the company exploited tensions between the Ndebele and Shona peoples. In 1893, the First Matabele War erupted, triggered by disputes over land and cattle. The British, using superior firepower, defeated the Ndebele, leading to the establishment of colonial rule. By 1896, the Second Matabele War saw further resistance, but British dominance was solidified, paving the way for settler governance and exploitation of resources". Note that 1893 was the start of the First Matabele War.
Thinking that maybe 1843 was the birth date of Lobengula, the king of the Matabele tribe, I asked Grok when he was born.
Grok replied: "Lobengula, the Ndebele (Matabele) king, was born around 1835. Exact records of his birth are scarce, as Ndebele oral traditions and early colonial documentation rarely specified precise dates. Estimates place his birth between 1833 and 1837, based on accounts of his age during key events, like his ascension to the throne in 1868 and his interactions with European missionaries and traders. For example, missionary reports from the 1860s describe him as a man in his late 20s to early 30s, supporting the circa 1835 estimate." Note that 1843 now appears to be a thumbsuck date of convenience for the creation of a 'Jubilee' period.
I asked Grok for the date of the opening of the first Post Office opened in Matabeleland?
Grok replied: "The first post office in Matabeleland opened in Gubulawayo (this was its original Matabele / Zulu name) on August 9, 1888, as part of a mail service established between Bechuanaland and Matabeleland. A Postal Notice dated July 28, 1888, issued by Acting Postmaster General Ernest C. Baxter in Vryburg, announced the service, with Gubulawayo among five postal agencies along the route. Each agency, including Gubulawayo, was equipped with a postmaster, a date stamp, and a barred oval numeral canceller".
BONC 312 Issued to Iron Hill Mine AND Salisbury, Rhodesia. Just legible
Finally, thinking of the Royal Male leaving Bulawayo at 30 mph. I asked Grok when did the Pioneer Column kick the Matabele out of Gubulawayo?
Grok replied guardedly. "The Pioneer Column, raised by Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, did not directly engage in conflict to "kick the Matabele out of Gubulawayo" in 1890. Instead, their primary mission was to occupy Mashonaland, which they achieved by establishing Fort Salisbury on September 12, 1890. However, tensions with the Ndebele (Matabele) escalated later, leading to the First Matabele War in 1893".
"During this war, the British South Africa Company’s forces, led by Major Patrick Forbes, advanced toward Gubulawayo (Bulawayo), the Ndebele capital. The key engagements occurred on October 25, 1893, near the Shangani River, and on November 1, 1893, at the Battle of Bembezi, where the Ndebele were defeated due to the superior firepower of the BSAC, particularly the Maxim guns. Following these defeats, King Lobengula set fire to Gubulawayo and fled northward. The BSAC forces entered the abandoned and partially destroyed Gubulawayo on November 4, 1893, effectively taking control of the area without a direct expulsion of the Ndebele population from the city by the Pioneer Column itself. The Ndebele resistance was crushed, and the kingdom was annexed by the BSAC in 1894. Thus, while the Pioneer Column's occupation of Mashonaland in 1890 set the stage, it was the BSAC forces in November 1893 that occupied Gubulawayo during the First Matabele War".
Rhodesians made a BIG thing about the heroic adventures of their settler ancestors in the Pioneer column, a force of hired mercenaries promised African farmland in exchange for subordinating Africans to the British Crown. They conquered the Shona and the Matabele with modern cannon, Maxim machine-guns and rifles that were the envy of the Boers who until 1896 had none to speak of until the BSAC's Dr Jameson thought such adventures all too easy invaded the ZAR. Rhodesia was born in the 1890s, a time of criminally high Anglo-Saxon imperial arrogance and aggression , something most 'Rhodies' held onto as a matter of self-identity and pride. You can see this blind, racist supremacy writ large in the cover above. Land theft was permissible if you were British. After all, God was an Englishman. According to Rhodes, to be born English was to win first prize on God's lottery of life.
So what happened to all these exalted and proud Rhodies? The White population of Rhodesia was about 300,ooo in 1975. Some seven years after Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, some 200,000 Whites had left for pastures new. The optimism that had swept the country, much like that which followed Nelson Mandela's and the ANC in SA, proved to be hollow. The worst warnings by racists of the dangers of African democracy had come true in large part. Despite the successful country they had built, the wonderful weather, the comfortable homes with swimming pools, a lifestyle of sports and affordable servants, the majority of the White population chose to quit the sinking ship and become 'whenwes' somewhere else. If you were born or lived in Rhodesia and are reading this, you are probably not living in Zimbabwe.
Recently I was watching a YouTube program in which the President of Zimbabwe was advising the ANC government of South Africa NOT to seize the farmland of Boer (Afrikaner / White) farmers, as had happened in Zimbabwe. The President said that the land issue in South Africa was different. The Afrikaners, he said, were an African people who had a right to own land. The problem in Zimbabwe was that the British Queen Victoria had granted the BSAC African land which she had no title nor right to give. The essential problem that the Zimbabwean government has today is not with settler farmers so much as with the British monarchy who were the creator of the original land theft injustice. While I sympathise with this argument I hope that my UK taxes will not rise to pay this debt. Despite his self-proclaimed "progressive socialist" values, PM Keir Starmer has ignored Rhodesian Reparations to date. Hopefully he thinks the King should pay the Zimbabwean people back for the land that was stolen. If he does, good! Let the King clean his family's slate.
Rhodesia is fondly remembered by ex-pat Whites as a pretty wonderful prosperous country. It wasn't always so.
Apparently, in the past the various tribes of Rhodesia were ar war with each other. When they weren't fighting and killing each other there was the precarious business of staying alive in the bush during times of great famine. In addition there was sickness, disease and a very high infant mortality rate. In order to survive this deadly combination of factors the native people had large families. (It is not uncommon for tribal people to have large families. It is apparently an insurance and pension policy for one's old age.)
The Bottom Line is that European settlement in Rhodesia disrupted the cycle of war, death and famine. The Europeans bought peace, created farms to feed people and built hospitals to provide for the sick and the dying. Within this new stability Black people continued to have large familes. Their numbers rapidly eclipsed that the small European Settler community. By the time of UDI Rhodesis had a population of of some 4.5 million Blacks compared to just 250,000 Europeans. Much like the industrial development of South Africa that drew Black rural migrants into the 'White' areas and cities in search of work, so Rhodesia created a peace that subsumed it.
You are missing a point. When the Europeans went into Central Africa many of the peace loving Africans welcomed them and the protection and stability that they brought with them. It was the un-peaceful Africans that didn't welcome them. That is the decendants of Mzilikazi who had declared war on the locals and created havoc as he had done across what was to become the Orange Free State and Northern Transvaal. I will add here, it had been the same story in what was to become Kwa Zulu Natal. When many local indiginious people were either exterminated or ran into the Drakensburg Mountains to become the Basuto nation under Moshoeshoe. Much of that land in Central Africa was traded for by those Europeans who went up there!
If I as an Englishman was to take up your augument I would be sueing most of Europe to pay me back for the land that they 'stole' in the UK when the Ancient Brits, invaded from Britiny in France, Danes from Scandinavia, Jutes, Saxons, Anglo's and Romans stole from the Picks and Scots. If my memory serves me right 85% of England is still owed by the Normans!
Do you want me to carry on to the not so silent invasion of the UK today? Or the situation in South Africa, I have no idea of the number of 'foreign' invaders but I would guess that over 50% of the now population are not legal South Africans. History and the right and wrong s of it are in the past! Let's get on with the future!
I would agree with your general statement that that "peace loving Africans welcomed them and the protection and stability that they brought with them" but this did not last for long with the majority given the aspirations of people for self-improvement and self-rule set against colonial paternalism, the greed in the heart of the BSAC and the racist settler mentality. Don't forget that southern African Black people were illiterate and superstitious, two things that made them mistrustful of Europeans with Bibles and guns.
The difference between the British in Rhodesia and the Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Normans in Britain is that historically and culturally we are expected to be better than bloody-minded medieval marauders looking for land to conquer, rape and plunder. Unfortunately there is this adventurous part of the Angl-Saxon soul that wants to go out and do exactly that, most brutally in the USA.
If you have a problem with the British aristocracy and establishment, vote to get rid of what little is left of them. Those who did not die colonising the world died in WW1 and WW2 as platoon leaders. Their political parties - Conservative, Labour and Liberal - have utterly betrayed them and the British people with their liberal acceptance and encouragement of the "not so silent invasion of the UK today".
With regards to "the situation in South Africa", my view post-Mandela is that African migrants are the allies of the remaining European population. Generally, of the migrants that I have met, they have a stronger work ethic than Black South Africans because they are given nothing and have nothing to fall back on. They are more decent, optimistic and seek work opportunities to improve themselves in a country where whining local native zenophobes expect special treatment, BEE or DEI hand-outs because they have been taught by Marxists, Communists and soapbox populists like Julius Malema that in the capitalist Apartheid history of South Africa they were the victims. But really, today, they are victims of the ANC's socialist ideology, moral ambiguity, staggering hypocrisy, corruption and theft. South Africa's President, the billionaire Cyril Ramaphosa, is one of the country's wealthiest men but as a politician he has never owned or run a business! If we are to"get on with the future" southern Africa requires international capital investment under the guidance of South African business people, not pirates like the BSAC or Ramaphosa, to build hope, jobs and wealth. The ANC and its communist allies cannot bring us to the bright sunlit uplands that should be the inheritance of all, a happier and more prsperous South Africa.
Go Bokke! (South Africa's only hope of anything exceptional at this time is its wonderful rugby team!)
Sticking with Bulawayo, here is a postcard with a curious little perforated Cinderella that shows 'Queens Ground Bulawyo'. I have looked on the RSC (Rhodesian Study Circles) website at the Cinderellas and labels it lists. This ones does not appear there. A Google search refers only to today's cricket ground. The image is small and blurred, probably locally produced. I attach a high-res image of it separately.
The top postcard below shows 'Government House, Residence of the late Hon. C. J. Rhodes''. (Died 26 March 1902.) It was sold by the 'B'Wayo Pict. P.C. Depot, Corner Jameson Street and 6th Avenue Bulawao, PO Box 56'. Next is an enlarged view of a very blurred 'grandstand'. The reverse of the PC shows that this Rhodesian postcard was posted in the Cape Colony at UMZIMKULU 'FE 8 05'.
Uploaded files:
Sticking with Matabeleland ... in this case MAT. FARMERS CO-OP.
1960. Cover. BULAWAYO ' 31 III 60' to EAST LONDON, SA.
Sent at the 4d rate. Machine cancelled 'BULAWAYO RHODESIA NYASALAND' with slogan obscured by Air Mail Label.
The Cinderella label advises that the Central African Trade Fair will take plave in May.
Anyway, back to the beginning. Here is the same Matabele Postal Jubilee cover postally used. Wow! It is a postal envelope.
1894. Envelope. WYNBERG 'MR 16 94' to CAPE TOWN.
CoGH 1d red cancelled with an illegible strike of Wynberg's BONC 6.
This was sold as LOT 6185 in a recent Corinphilia Auction in Zurich, Switzerland. It included some very attractive items. See:
Corinphilia described it as "1884/90: 1 d. rose-red used on Matabele Postal Jubilee illustrated envelope, loosely based on the Great Britain 1890 illustrated envelope, mailed from Wynberg to Cape Town tied by numeral obliterator with 'Wynberg' cds at top (March 16, 1894). Reverse with Cape Town arrival cds of the same day. A charming cover.rnrnProvenance: 'Rectangular Issues', Spink, Sept 2007, lot 99."
For those of you who do not know of Corinphilia, here is a full page ad they placed the the South African Philatelist in March 1958, 67 years ago.
Rhodesia - Mashonaland 100
As a boy I recall being taken to see cars racing around Gunners Circle at Epping in Cape Town. (Curiously, I grew up in Camp Road Pinelands which during the SAW led out of the Maitland Army Camp in the direction of Gunners Circle. Perhaps it got its name from artillerymen who trooped their guns and horses down to the Cape Flats through the Pinelands Forestry Station). Some 50 years later it was the peculiar smell and the noise that I remember. Subsequently I went to motor racing at Killarney past Milnerton where I again had my senses assaulted by the noise and smell of racing car engines.
So, I guess I began thinking of my boyhood when I found these photos at a fair in London and bought them. All are headed "Salisbury, Southen Rhodesia. 29 . 5. 55. Mashonaland 100 Meeting". Prior to the establishment of the Rhodesian Grand Prix in 1960 the Mashonalsnd 100 was the British colony's most important annual motor racing event. The Mashonaland 100 was run as handicap races for cars and motorbikes. It attracted top drivers and riders from the Union of South Africa whose motor racing scene was more advanced. The three photos below show the Mashonaland 100 in 1955. It is uncertain which of the several Salisbury racing circuit it is.
In 1955 the Mashonaland 100 race was won by Ian Fraser-Jones racing a Porsche Sport 1.5.
1955. Photo. Mashonaland 100. "In the Pits".
The near car is possibly a Riley Special.
1955. Photo. Mashonaland 100.
"Austin Healeys lined up for the Race".
1955. Photo. Mashonaland 100.
"Austin Healey and Jaguar XH 120".