Review

Reviewed Work(s): Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896-7: A Study in African Resistance

by T. O. Ranger
Review by: Richard P. Werbner
Source: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute , Apr., 1971, Vol. 41, No.
2 (Apr., 1971), pp. 174-175
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African
Institute

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1159434

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I74 REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 189 -7: A Study in African Resistance. By T. O. RANGER, London:
Heinemann, I967. Pp. xii+403, maps, ill. 63s.
THIS magnificent mosaic is designed to be an Afro-centric counter-history of early wars
and political confrontations between Africans and Europeans in Southern Rhodesia. It is
more than a polemic against settlers' stock legends, because of the richness of citation from
the day-to-day correspondence of officials of the British South Africa Company, their
unpublished reminiscences and those of chiefs and land shrine messengers, and contemporary
reports of trials and interrogations of African prisoners of war or spies in the I890's.
Implications for comparative studies are discussed, mostly explicitly, in a chapter on ' The
Risings in African History ', which also adds a gloss to anti-colonial, millenarian, and
nationalist movements of the twentieth century in Southern Rhodesia. It considers
' parallels' to the Rhodesian wars-such as the Maji Maji and the Nyabingi risings in the
Congo and East Africa-in so far as these illustrate ' the problem of scale ', of relative
centralization, of co-ordinating multi-tribal participation, and of personal commitment and
visionary leadership. But it also cautions against seeing the Rhodesian confrontations as
' exclusively anti-colonial phenomena'. And this is a caution which the author might have
done well to have heeded himself.
Revision of the study is necessary both in terms of local history and in terms of more
general understanding of factionalism, political combinations, and oracular leadership.
Evidently, the author rejects arguments which he presents elsewhere, such as that ' After
the Ndebele war of I893 [and the Company's sudden triumph], the Ndebele state was dis-
rupted .... The regimental system was broken .. ..I His alternative is more orthodox,
though still inadequate for an understanding of the political organization of the Ndebele
kingdom prior to conquest, i.e. that the kingdom was ' designed to eliminate principles of
sectional loyalty'; although 'there was considerable rivalry among the regiments... '.
Consequently, he fails to see the later risings in relation to earlier, local struggles for power.
Nor does he examine how long-term political processes among the Ndebele defined major
cleavages and structures of power in their kingdom, under European rule, at the time of the
rising. Yet prior to European rule, in I891, the potential importance of lines of hostility
was appreciated, even relied on, by European advocates of conquest, 'The regiments in
... [eastern] Matabeleland are not very loyal to Lo Bengula, who never comes into this part
of his dominions ... [They] refused to recognise Lo Bengula and a great civil war began....
This feud has never been forgotten, and may yet lead to the dismemberment of the country
after the death of Lo Bengula. '2 Somehow, Ranger does not ask the obvious questions.
First, in the war of I896 to overthrow whites and restore kingship, did the ' two rough
factions ' of the 'rebel Ndebele aristocracy' (which fought independently and without
aiding the other, to their mutual cost) form along lines continuing those in an earlier civil
war ? Second, did the 'young bloods' who opposed Lobengula's appeasement of whites, prior
to conquest, also oppose their elders in the rising ? One answer is that they did: as in the
earlier civil war, so too in the rising. The regiments of the north-east-' mostly young men '
-fought for their own candidate, again an eldest son of the late king (perhaps of their
regiments ?). They opposed one backed, as before, by most of the other regiments, senior
chiefs, and the priestly king-maker.
By pursuing this simplest of power struggles-between the' ins ' and the' outs ', between
senior men at the centre and young-men-in-a-hurry at the periphery-the pieces scattered

I T. O. Ranger, 'African Reactions in East and 2 E. P. Mathers, Zambesia, England's El Dorado,

Central Africa' in L. H. Gann and P. Duignan London, 1892, p. I92.
(editors), Colonialism in Africa 87o0-I96o, Cambridge,
1969, p. 306. This article is cited as already in press
in the book under review.

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 REVIEWS OF BOOKS i75

in Ranger's mosaic come together and can be explained. The politics of mobilization in the
risings begins to make sense when seen in terms of such local interests and long-term
struggles. To show this here a brief example must do: the apparently unlike response to the
appeal of oracles and the regional differences in collaboration with whites or in inter-tribal
alliance against them. The message of one oracle of satellites of the Ndebele, in the west and
south-west, was peaceful accommodation with whites; and these satellites ' sat still ' and
aided whites. Elsewhere, in the name of the celestial God Mwali, other oracles exhorted
blacks, Ndebele, and non-Ndebele alike, to rally to arms and drive out whites. Of these
oracles, only that for the peripheral 'outs' became crucial in leadership across major
political divisions, mobilizing north-eastern Ndebele along with Shona from outside the
kingdom. Yet a centrally located shrine was, and is today, a cult focus for a vast crescent of
' Shona ' (Kalanga and Karanga) to the south and east of the kingdom. Policy here was like
that of the rest of the south and the west, despite differences in oracles, to ally with, or at
least to accommodate to whites. Such inter-tribal or ' Shona' support for the rising as was
aroused by a centrally sited oracle came from much closer within the regimental stronghold
of the middle and high veld.I These seemingly varied political choices-collaboration or
resistance, and conformity or non-conformity with oracles-follow a single pattern, seen
as counter-vailing combinations. Across major political divisions, co-operation was forth-
coming, whether inter-tribal or between blacks and whites, when it was in a counter-vailing
combination, counter to the ' ins '. To develop this point more fully in relation to oracular
leadership would require lengthier discussion of the organization of the cult of the land.
I must add a personal note, however. I allowed the author to quote the text of a cult
song which, with the great help of Mr. Timon Mongwa Tjuma, I recorded and translated
at a Kalanga land shrine in I960. Ranger slants the text thus: ' A despairing lament for the
ruin created in the Shona world by the white man and the powerlessness of the defeated to
do anything about it.' Rather, it appeals to God, complaining bitterly against His rejection
and the destructive forces of the white conquerors. RICHARD P. WERBNER

Post-Christianity in Africa: a Theological and Anthropological Study. By G. C. OosTHUIZEN.

London: Hurst, I968. Pp. xiv+273, 14 plates. 6os.
THIS book is primarily a theological assessment of independent churches. There is little
social-anthropological about it. I should myself regard African nationalism (with its deeply
mythological core) as the true successor, in contemporary Africa, to mission Christianity
(with its ineluctable political dimension); and perhaps that comment reveals a bias. But
I am not sure how far to trust the author's factual material. On pp. 45 if., I70 f., and I80,
slightly inaccurate accounts of the Uganda Bamalaki suggest that he has not collated his
sources and that he is not aware that he is referring to the same group. On p. 257 'most
convincing 'arguments are attributed to me which, in fact, I spent several pages in refuting.
A realistic treatment of the lack of missionary empathy towards Africa is followed by a
summary description of independent church movements throughout Africa; by yet another
attempt at a classification (in terms of a new variant of the church/sect theme) and eight
chapters of theological and ecclesiological analysis. The theology relies too much on German
concepts (which have to be shown in parenthesis). It is all very much to the point, but only
provided-and the proviso seems to me to be fundamental-the real issues can be discussed

The seeming exception to this is in Belingwe, Field Force, London: Dean & Son, n.d., p. 142, on
a granery of central regiments. But see D. Tyrie regimental ties and p. 220 on the Ndebele regiment
Laing, The Matabele Rebellion 1896, wit4 the Belingwe from Inseza and Filabusi.

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