This photograph of two Ndebele leaders is entitled on its reverse: ‘Chiefs “Babyon” & “Omjaam.” Babyan was answerable for the assassination of Alan Wilson’s party on the Shangani River.’ Since the photograph was purchased on the internet it has no provenance, so what can be said about these two men?
Their names were transcribed by various British authors in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most accurate is that they were Babiyane ka Masuku and Mtshede ka Mabuyana, two of the most senior leaders of Lobenguela Khumalo (1845–1894), the second Ndebele king.[i] In 1888 they were despatched to England, carrying letters on behalf of the king to Queen Victoria. Babiyane and Mtshede left Bulawayo on 1 November 1888, accompanied by two Englishmen Colonel Johan Wilhelm Colenbrander and Lieutenant Edward Arthur Maund.[ii]
The King’s predicament is well known: he was facing white encroachment on his territory from all sides. The Ndebele were trapped between the Boers of the Transvaal republic and the Portuguese of Mozambique, while being plagued by white prospectors seeking their fortunes in Rhodesia. Lobenguela is reported to have said: ‘I am afraid of being eaten up by either the Portuguese or the Boers…but I do not want to be eaten up. I wish to be friends with the Great White Queen, but the Boers tell me there is no White Queen – that England has been eaten up by the Dutch long ago.’[iii]
The purpose of sending his representatives to England was laid out in the letter they carried.[iv] ‘Lobenguela desires to know that there is a Queen. Some of the people who come into this land tell him there is a Queen, some of them tell him there is not. Lobenguela can only find out the truth by sending eyes to see whether there is a Queen. The Indunas are his eyes. Lobenguela desires to ask her to advise and help him, as he is much troubled by white men who come into his country and ask to dig gold. There is no one with him whom he can trust, and he asks that the Queen will send someone from herself.’ Maund provided a detailed and not very flattering account of the envoys.[v] Babiyane was described as ‘dirty’ but ‘charming’ and unselfish, while Mtshede was said to be ‘vile tempered’ and suffering from elephantiasis and a weak heart.
Lobenguela paid for the trip himself, with £600 in gold sovereigns he had obtained from the Rudd concession.[vi] The party travelled via Kimberley (from where Maund telegrammed the High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson) before arriving in Cape Town. Permission was granted for the voyage on board the steamship The Moor, arriving in England on 27 February 1889.
Once in London they had a busy schedule of meetings. These included a breakfast with the Aborigines Protection Society, who provided them with a letter to their king, warning him to resist proposals by whites to mine for gold.[vii] On Friday, 1st March they went to the Colonial Office (accompanied by Maund as interpreter) where they were received by Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State for the Colonies.[viii] The following day they were taken to Windsor. Queen Victoria sent a carriage to meet them before receiving them in St. Georges Hall, accompanied by fifty members of the Lifeguards. The troops – tall and in full ceremonial dress – made a considerable impression on Babiyane and Mtshede, who asked whether they were stuffed.[ix] After a conversation with Queen Victoria the envoys were given gifts for their king, and sent on their way.
No visit by an African delegation was complete without a display of British military might, and so they were taken to Aldershot where they were saw 10,000 troops on parade. There were cavalry charges with all the paraphernalia of the military and they were impressed. ‘Come and teach us how to drill and fight like that and we fear no nation in Africa,’ they were reported to have exclaimed.[x] Their visit included trips to the London Zoo, the Bank of England, Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth and Birmingham and was extensively covered, including a full page spread in the Illustrated London News.[xi] The aim was to impress and it clearly did. The izinDuna declared that: ‘Englishmen are as the sands of the sea in number, and their power is irresistible as the tempest.’[xii]
The envoys left Britain with a letter from Lord Knutsford in which he said that: ‘the Queen wishes Lobenguela to understand distinctly that Englishmen who have gone out to Matabeleland to ask leave to dig for stones, have not gone with the Queen's authority, and that he should not believe any statements made by them or any of them to that effect. The Queen advises Lobenguela not to grant hastily concessions of land, or leave to dig, but to consider all applications very carefully.’[xiii] It was wise advice and with the letter and the gifts they returned home. The assurances did not last. In that same year Rhodes was awarded a Royal Charter and the invasion of Matabeleland was commenced by the British South Africa Company.[xiv]
With Logenguela unable to fend off white predation of his territory a conflict was inevitable. What became known as the ‘Matabele War’ erupted in October 1893. In December Major Allan Wilson led the ill-fated ‘Shangani Patrol’ during which he – and his troopers – were wiped out. Their ‘last stand’ became the stuff of Victorian and Rhodesian legend. Wilson’s death was referred to on the rear of the photograph at the start of this article, which must have been taken after this date. Were Babiyane and Mtshede prisoners at the time?
We have some indications of what the two men had done in the intervening years. Mtshede continued to be an envoy for the king and in September 1893 he was in Kimberley, en route to the High Commissioner with a letter from Lobenguela.[xv] By the time he reached Mafeking Mtshede was ‘dangerously ill’, a condition that was giving rise to ‘anxiety.’[xvi] The Times reported that the High Commissioner cabled London that the letter ‘contained nothing of importance’ but that Lobenguela was ‘collecting men on frontier.’[xvii] The letter was sent to England and by December, Mtshede was home and ‘in good health.’[xviii] For his part Babiyane continued fighting the whites. He was reported to be leading troops against Colonel Plumer in July and then participating in negotiations after the Ndebele defeat.[xix] Clearly both Mtshede and Babiyane were senior leaders of their nation; serving their king and their people both as envoys and military commanders. The stature of Mtshede and Babiyane is clearly visible in the photograph, which reflects their superior ranking.
Endnotes
[i] C. K. Cooke, Lobenguela: Second and last King of the Amandabele, Rhodesiana, No. 23, December 1970, footnote 17, p. 53 ↵
[ii] For a detailed contemporary account of the mission and a description of the King’s envoys see E. P. Mathers, Zambesia: England’s El Dorado in Africa, King, Sell and Railton, London, 1891, p. 144 ff. For further details of their trip and the wider context of African visits to London see Neil Parsons, ‘No longer rare birds in London’, Zulu, Ndebele, Gaza and Swazi envoys to England: 1882 – 1894, in Black Victorians, Black Victoriana, ed. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2003 ↵
[iii] As recounted by Maund to Lucy Cavendish, Five Months in South Africa, Murray’s Magazine, April 1890, p. 465 ↵
[iv] Stanley Portal Hyatt, The Northward Trek, Andrew Melrose, London, 1909, p. 150. E. P. Mathers, op. cit. p. 145. ↵
[v] E. P. Mathers, op. cit. p. 146 – 147. ↵
[vi] Lucy Cavendish, op cit. p. 465 ↵
[vii] E. P. Mathers, op cit. p. 155 - 156 ↵
[viii] The Times, 2 March 1889. ↵
[ix] Lucy Cavendish, op cit. p. 468, Daily Telegraph, 7 March 1889 ↵
[x] Daily Telegraph, 26 March 1889 ↵
[xi] Illustrated London News, 16 March 1889 ↵
[xii] Daily Telegraph, 27 March 1889 ↵
[xiii] E. P. Mathers, op cit. p. 156 – 157. ↵
[xiv] Neal Parsons, op cit. p. 124. ↵
[xv] The Times, 8 September 1893. ↵
[xvi] The Times, 15 September 1893. ↵
[xvii] The Times, 18 September 1893. ↵
[xviii] The Times, 7 October 1893, 13 December 1893. ↵
[xix] Howard Hensman, A History of Rhodesia, William Blackwood and Sons, London, 1900, p. 100,0104. available online at: http://www.pdfarchive.info/pdf/H/He/Hensman_Howard_-_A_history_of_Rhodesia.pdf. Accessed 15 September 2016. ↵
This article was first published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa in 2016 and is re-printed here with the kind permission of the author, Martin Plaut.