The Sunday News
FOLLOWING the recent visit to Chipata, in Zambia some few days ago and the extreme interest and mischief that were generated in the wake of the history-making venture, there is a need to give some snippets on what the journey was intended to achieve in both the short and long terms.
I will, in this chapter refer to a few aspects relating to the exploratory expedition.
There are people who seem to argue along the lines that who had sent us there. It was not about sending people there. Instead, it was in response to a signal coming from there, where King Lobengula indicated he wanted to come back home.
There were some people not well grounded in Ndebele indigenous spiritual practices, who surmised we went there to dig up the bones of the King and surrender them to President Mnangagwa, to enhance his political fortunes. Mischief of the highest order.
President Mnangagwa
Quite clearly, the King cannot come back in material form as the King died four years following the Battle of Pupu, pitting the Ndebele fighters against the white soldiers of Cecil John Rhodes, on 4 December 1893.
Let me come to the point rather quickly. Not so long ago, I penned a book titled, “Setting of the Sun: The Fate of the Last Ndebele Monarch King Lobengula.”
In that narrative, I gave an account of what I had come to know about the fate of King Lobengula beyond the Pupu Battle. That information was gleaned from several sources, both oral and archival.
Some white woman had undertaken research among the Angoni of Chipata in Zambia.
One source was Nsele Hlabangana, okaSitshenkwa, one of the pioneering founders and players of Highlanders Football Club, then known as Lions Club. He narrated the story to me in Vana’s house. Vana is his son, now in the United Kingdom.
I am not sure whether the house was in Morningside or Montrose. Nsele, the son of an LMS clergy who served at Hope Fountain, Centenary and Esigodini was well connected to royalty.
His sister Hlobile, whose name was given to me by Peter Sivalo Mahlangu and Nsele himself, was married to Dabengwa Khumalo, a son of Prince Mhlambi whose mother Mfaziwamajaha was sister to Mbhida Mkhwananzi. Both were daughters of Lodada Mkhwananzi.
However, Mbhida did not initially conceive, the Mkhwananzis brought her younger sister Mfaziwamajaha to become surrogate wife to King Lobengula. Prince Mhlambi was the son, who later became the father of Prince Dabengwa, who lies buried at koNkosikazi alongside Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo the senior Queen and daughter of Ngogo from ENqameni
Prince Nyamande Khumalo’s younger brother was Sintingantinga Khumalo, also known as Tshakalisa. Two of his sons had names that Nsele thought were significant to the narrative regarding the fate of his father, King Lobengula.
The elder son was Dabulamanzi, literally meaning tearing the waters. The younger son was Qedilizwe, literally meaning finish the land. Names are a form of documentation that preserves history and critical events and circumstances surrounding the birth of a child.
According to Nsele, Qedilizwe was the first to attend Inyathi Mission. He, however, did not stay there to the end.
He deserted and in his place, Dabulamanzi went to enrol at the same LMS Mission at Inyathi. Now we turn to the names.
Qedilizwe is a name that was given to the son at a time when Prince Sintingantinga used to pay his father visits to Chipata in Zambia. The name Dabulamanzi was equally pregnant with meaning. Among the Ndebele, names are not given without context and meaning. I have written a book explaining the origins of names among the Ndebele people.
To get to Chipata, Prince Sintingantinga had to cross the expansive waters of the mighty Zambezi River. The distance is enormous and thus both the long distance and the expansive waters are captured in the two names.
The second incident that Nsele gave to me related to Hobile, who as pointed out above, was married to Prince Dabengwa, who used to pack his clothes and leave koNkosikazi where Queen Lozikeyi lived without uttering a word regarding his intentions to his wife Hobile Hlabangana.
That had the effect of straining their marital relations. However, men were like that. This was more the case where the matter involved the visit to his grandfather King Lobengula in Chipata.
Remember, a song had been coined regarding the fate of the King. The song sought to explain the events that took place, including the rituals that were intended to prevent the capture of the King by the white pursuers.
President Hichilema
“Kudala kwakungenje….,” is the song that primary school teachers have continued to teach to the pupils to this day. The song says, “iNkosi yanyamalala.” The King disappeared. What does the word mean in relation to the fate of the King.
Either people genuinely did not know about the fate of the King.
Alternatively, they knew, at least some of them, but there were reasons to simply say the King disappeared and they did not wish to go beyond that. There were to be no further questions to pose in the hope of getting clarity. In a nutshell, the plain message was that the King’s subjects did not want to divulge the whereabouts of the monarch.
This is easily understandable. If the Major Patrick Forbes Party pursued the King as far as Pupu, and had the Major Allan Wilson Party not been annihilated, what would have stopped them from further pursuing the monarch with the intention of either capturing him or killing him? Indeed, decoys were innovated to convince the Ndebele royal subjects hot on the heels of the King to return home.
About 1985, I interviewed Ndlumbi Mahlangu, who lived on Fletcher’s Farm along the route from Bulawayo to Inyathi Mission. He was among those that followed behind the King. Word came, “the sun has set,” ilanga selitshonile. That was conviction enough to get them suspending the pursuit. The queens, chiefs and general people trekked back. Ndlumbi gave me a traditional Ndebele wooden stool, which I use and cherish to this day.
The King proceeded towards Tongaland and arrived at Pashu, where the reigning Chief Sianganza hid him and his party in a cave. The royal party did not tarry long in the cave where royal paraphernalia were part of the funerary objects, once again a well-crafted decoy to convince possible pursuers not to go beyond that cave that was declared a national monument by the colonial government in a false belief it was the final resting place for King Lobengula..
In the meantime, Chief Magwegwe Fuyane was killed to take the place of the King in the hallowed cave at Pashu. As per Ndebele royal burial practices and underpinning beliefs, a man, one Ngomba Mhlanga was killed to serve as the companion to the “King.”
Meanwhile, the King and his party continued in their northward journey towards the treacherous Zambezi River.
The Tonga who were good at rowing dugout canoes assisted the King, who was in the company of Chief Sianganza. In order to cover the tracks of the King, the Tonga people who assisted the king in crossing the river were killed. The created story of disappearance was maintained with some credibility. The reason was to discourage further pursuit by white soldiers.
Once across the Zambezi River, Chief Sianganza joined his Tonga relatives and left the King to proceed to his relatives, the Ngoni at Chipata under King Mpezeni I, the son of King Zwangendaba Jele Hlatshwayo.
It is possible that some Ndebele warriors crossed the river together with the King.
In an interview, Hudson Halimana Ndlovu told a story about his father Mathelekana also known as Manuka, who was in the Ihlathi Regiment elokuphephela amakhosi.
They fought at the Pupu Battle and did not return until after Imfazo II of 1896. His wife had remarried as she assumed Mathelekana had died in battle. The reason for being away that long, was possibly to serve as the King’s rearguard.
He proceeded to the land of his relatives the Angoni of King Zwangendaba, at the time when successor King Mpezeni II was reigning. The incumbent now is King Mpezeni II, who is resident at Chipata at Ekuphendukeni, the Royal residence after Mutenguleni, which served as the capital from the time of King Zwangendaba who led his people until he died in the Vipya Plateau in Tanzania.
His subjects retraced their footsteps and split into a number of disparate groups, who today are traceable to the shores of Lake Victoria and Burundi. A large number returned and, under King Mbelwa, set bases at places such as Mzuzu along the shores of Lake Malawi, named after the Marabi people who trekked down from Egypt to Malawi.
Perhaps we need to tell the latest account regarding the fate of the King. While at the commissioning of the Pupu Battle Memorial Shrine, Professor Mthuli Ncube, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development told me about intimations from Zambian Finance Minister Musokotwane, who indicated that the Ndebele should approach him for information regarding the passage of the King through the lands of the Tonga in Zambia.
They have information that will add to the narrative, about the route the King followed in his four-months march to the land of the Angoni, to seek refuge away from the marauding whites of Cecil John Rhodes.
Musokotwane was, during the tenure of President Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the Reserve Bank Governor for Zambia. President Hichilema appointed him as Finance Minister.
It does seem when the chosen time, and chosen individuals arrive on the scene, things begin to add up. Given all this information, I wrote the book that I titled “Setting of the Sun,” and one of its readers has been Mzala Tom(Sibanda) a columnist with the weekly Sunday News. I then penned in 2023, “The Pupu Battle and Beyond.” In anticipation of the commissioning by the President of the revamped Pupu Memorial Monument.
At the time, there were no immediate plans to visit Chipata. What we knew well was that present generations do not know about the fate of the King. There were intimations to some, coming from the spirit of the King about his intention to come home, obviously not in flesh but in spirit. There has not been arranged to this day the umbuyiso for the King. But just how would that have been done to someone who went “nyamalala?”
I am sure someone will observe that the Pupu Monument was commissioned just a day before commencement of the journey to Chipata. There was no problem in that timing as the King already knew we were coming. The dead are living and the living are dead and so these can communicate.
Everything was in place. The Government, through President Mnangagwa had laid out the requisite funding pertaining to transport, accommodation and food. A car was waiting for us in Harare.
The party of four, comprised the following: Middard Khumalo, the delegation leader, Dr Ida Irene Ndiweni, Dr Senzeni Khumalo and myself. The journey to Chipata duly commenced. The Reverend Paul Bayethe Damasane flew to Lilongwe, where we were due to rendezvous with him and proceed together in the same car availed by the Government.
We left Malawi (Lilongwe to be precise) and crossed the Malawi-Zambia border into Zambia’s Eastern Province whose capital town is Chipata, our intended destination.
In the next article, we shall deal with our experiences at Ekuphendukeni Royal palace and the results and outcomes of the exploratory journey to ascertain whether the King did get to Chipata the land of the Ngoni.
