Quote from Steve on August 16, 2025, 3:50 pm

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. 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 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.