The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba by Robin Brown-Lowe Read Free Book Online Page A

EDUARDO A. DE CARVALHO , Consul for Portugal, having received instructions, make it known that His Most Faithful Majesty’s Government does not recognise the pretended rights of LO BENGULA to Mashonaland and adjacent territories, over which the Crown of Portugal claims Sovereignty, and that therefore, all Concessions of Land or Mining Rights granted, or that may be granted, in future in the said territories of Mashonaland and adjacent are null and void, as the Government of Portugal does not, and will not, acknowledge any such concessions.
    Lobengula, a clever and ruthless man in his own right, suddenly saw the full tidal wave of colonialism building on his borders. Press reports from Cape Town were read to him, no doubt with a little imparted tarnish from Rudd’s competitors, which said that the King had sold his country and the grantees could if they wished bring an armed force into the country, depose him and put another chief in his place, ‘to dig anywhere, in his kraals, gardens and towns’. Lobengula arranged to have the following notice published in the
Bechuanaland News
:
    I hear it is published in the newspapers that I have granted a Concession of the minerals in all my country to CHARLES DUNNELL RUDD . . . As there is a great misunderstanding about this, all action in respect of said Concession is hereby suspended pending an investigation by me and my country.
    Signed, Lobengula
    British lawyers quickly advised Rhodes that this did not actually revoke the concession; indeed, while suspended, it confirmed that Lobengula had signed it.
    Lobengula then asks a competing concession-seeker, E.A. Maund, to take two of his indunas to London to intercede with Queen Victoria, but he is too late. The lion at his gate is the inexorable Cecil John Rhodes. Lobengula’s appeal to the Queen is that Rhodes is trying to ‘eat’ his country. True, but Rhodes has by then already consumed much more sophisticated adversaries – Barney Barnato for one – than this Matabele potentate.
    The British fête the indunas, turn out the Guards, show them the Zoo, the Bank of England, Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. The indunas speak to each other on the new ‘telephone’, and are taken to the first big field-day military tattoo at Aldershot.
    There is psychological double-dealing even at this level.
    Macquire suggests to F.R. Thompson, the third member of Rudd’s party, that when Lobengula heard from his emissaries that ‘he was not strong enough for the white people, [he] will trek [north]. There is I think always a possibility of this and we should be prepared to buy all his rights from him if he shows the least sign of making a move.’
    The British government, still wary of Rhodes’ unbridled expansionism, hand the indunas, through Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, the following bizarre reply to take home to their king:
    Lo Bengula is the ruler of his country, and the Queen does not interfere in the government of that country, but as Lo Bengula desires her advice, Her Majesty is ready to give it, and having therefore, consulted Her Principal Secretary of State holding the Seals of the Colonial Department, now replies as follows:
    In the first place, the Queen wishes Lo Bengula 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 should not believe any statements made by them or any of them to that effect.
    The Queen advises Lo Bengula not to grant hastily concessions of land, or leave to dig, but to consider all applications very carefully.
    It is not wise to put too much power into the hands of men who come first, and to exclude other deserving men. A king gives a stranger an ox, not his whole herd of cattle, otherwise what would other strangers arriving have to eat?
    Umsheti and Babaan (the indunas) say that Lo Bengula asks that the Queen will send