The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
THIS is Oxford, the ancient academic city in England where learners wear gowns during lectures. It is a city of cycles alongside modern cars from a myriad of countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Japan, inter alia. Oxford University dates back to the 13th century and continues to provide leadership in research and canon.
I have come here on several occasions before, specifically to make presentations during the Britain Zimbabwe Society (ZBS) Research Days whose edition this year was held on 17 June. I am visiting for the fourth time: having been here in 2007, 2010, 2014 and this year. My friend Marieke Faber Clarke lives at Number 5 Crick Road, which to me has become home away from home.
My mind wonders a bit and I begin to seek out for links between this city and Zimbabwe and Matabeleland. For starters, the BZS brings together people with links with Zimbabwe, across the racial line. When I first came here in 2007 Professor Terence Ranger was the moving spirit of BZS which each year arranges a Research Day with a focus on Zimbabwe.
A not so young generation has since taken over administration of BZS. This year’s Research Day has brought several researchers from both Zimbabwe and the UK. Beyond Research Day there are other links which have inspired this new series of articles. Down Parks Road there is a building that stands out and shouts the loudest concerning links with Zimbabwe. It is a building with architectural links in the form of a green dome at its top. The architectural curiosity is the same as what marks the roof of the Zimbabwe High Court in Bulawayo. The highest point on this building, referred to as Rhodes House, is the Zimbabwe Bird.
Rhodes acquired one of the Zimbabwe Birds that were recovered from Great Zimbabwe’s Eastern Enclosure. The bird, which is yet to be repatriated back to Zimbabwe found its way to Rhodes’ official residence in Cape Town, Groote Schuur. The bird did cause a lot of pain in the backsides of whites who could not countenance so massive an architectural monument to have been a product of a black man’s mind.
That makes a direct link with Zimbabwe’s largest heritage monument — Great Zimbabwe. As you might figure out, Rhodes House is named after Cecil John Rhodes the arch imperialist who harboured an insatiable desire to establish British colonies from the Cape to Cairo. He attended Oxford University with its many colleges. Rhodes House accommodates many books, articles and journals that carry the colonial history of what was named Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) after the man who engineered the conquest of both Mashonaland and Matabeleland.
Rhodes House has had its numerous books taken over by the Bodleian Library, a vast array of libraries that is used by students and lecturers at Oxford University. Just across Parks Road is the massive Natural History Museum within which is the Pitt Rivers Museum. Items in this museum are arranged according to themes with samples from virtually the whole world. Under the pottery section for example there are samples of clay pots and shards from the Khami Monument outside Bulawayo.
Then there is a whole wide array of headrests and pillows. There one finds samples of headrests of the Ndebele people which were looted in the 1920s. When I made my first visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2007, I saw these invaluable assets and requested the Museum to send their images down to Amagugu International Heritage Centre within the Matobo World Heritage Site. Now the headrests, imithiya, are being produced and sold at our Heritage Centre.
My hostess who lives at Number 5A Crick Road is Marieke Faber Clarke who, in 1963 and 1964, taught at Inyathi Mission belonging to the London Missionary Society (LMS) which since 1967 became the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa. The church will later this year celebrate the 50th anniversary of its existence in Durban, South Africa. Marieke fell in love with western Zimbabwe from the time she taught at Inyathi Mission. As one who held radical political views she was bound to face the wrath of the Ian Smith regime. For sure she did and was deported in 1964.
Inyathi Mission was to become the cradle for Zimbabwe’s revolutionary struggle: Aleke Banda from Nyasaland (now Malawi attended the school and was also deported and detained during the days of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. There were other students that would later become nationalists and guerrillas such as Welshman Mabhena, Jeremiah Macelegwanae Khabo, Zwelibanzi Mzilethi, Moffat Hadebe, Moffat Ndlovu, and Joshua Mahlathini Mpofu and Agrippa Madlela, among several others.
Marieke wrote a book Mambo Hills which was her first attempt at capturing the history of Matabeleland. She later penned Lozikeyi Dlodlo: Queen of the Ndebele with me. The book, published by Amagugu Publishers, was followed in 2016 by Welshman Mabhena: A Voice for Matabeleland. Very soon another title is on its way which is a biography of Reverend Bowen Rees who was the LMS missionary from 1888 t0 1918. Once again, we are writing that book together. More titles are lined up: Inyathi Mission: Cradle of the Revolution, Princess Sidambe Khumalo, Princess Famona Khumalo, From Isanuse to Woman
Chief: History of the Dakamelas.
With us at Number 5A Crick Road is Non Pierce, nee Rees from Wales. Non, as you might guess, is a descendant of Reverend Bowen Rees of Inyathi Mission. She has come to attend the BZS Research Day but also to meet with us in preparation for her trip to Zimbabwe in September. Her father Dr Ioan Bowen Reese, an Oxford University graduate, is the grandson of the Reverent Bowen Rees. Her father, Aufryn used to sit on King Lobengula Khumalo’s lap while showing the monarch his picture book. Aufryn, who was born at Inyathi Mission, spoke IsiNdebele fluently and would, in later years, prefer to speak the language, his first language.
Reverend Bowen Rees and wife Susannah Wesley Davies Rees lived in Matabeleland at the time when the State faced demise in the name of empire and gold. Aufryn apparently means hill of gold and could have been reference to Ndumba Hill close to Inyathi Mission. The Rees couple kept a record of their experiences at Inyathi Mission and its outstations such as Shiloh (Etshayile), Insiza (where Reverend Zhizho Moyo was stationed), Dakamela, Tshoko (Chief Madliwa’s father), Sivalo, Malinga, and Sikhobokhobo. In 1914 Reverend Rees visited all these outstations and paid a courtesy call on Prince Tshakalisa Khumalo the son of King Lobengula and Mbhida Mkhwananzi (okalodada). This is the royal son, also known as Sintingantingasenkosi, who attended Inyathi Mission after his elder brother Dabulamanzi Khumalo had abandoned it.
The Reeses were succeeded by Reverend W G Brown whose daughter Kathleen Hawkins I wrote about in 2014 when Marieke and I visited her at an old people’s home in Coventry. The Browns left behind pictures of the family (Prince Tshakalisa) and his home and wives which we hope to publish in the Reverend Bowen Rees biography. There was a time when Reverend Bowen Rees was the only LMS missionary in Matabeleland and his documents and those of his wife give some insights into what was happening at the outbreak of the 1893 and 1896 wars and their aftermath. None has brought with her new photographs that have hitherto not been released into the public domain.
She has brought new pictures of Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo, Mathambo Ndlovu, Sivalo Mahlangu and Tshwapha Ndiweni. Also in the possession of the family are letters that Reverend Bowen Rees wrote to his superiors in London concerning his experiences in Matabeleland?
This article thus marks a new series which shall throw the spotlight on the LMS missions, in particular Inyathi, the Ndebele State and its aftermath.
