The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba (5 page)

Each one, including its plinth, had been hewn out of a solid block of stone and measured 4 feet 6 inches in height; and each was set firmly into the ground. There was also a stone shaped like a millstone and about 18 inches in diameter, with a number of figures carved on the border.

I selected the best specimen of the bird stones, the beaks of the remainder being damaged, and decided to dig it out. But while doing so, Andizibi [a relative of Chief Mugabe whose village was on the same hill] and his followers became very excited and rushed around with their guns and assegais. I fully expected them to attack us. However, I went on with my work but told Klass, who had loaded two rifles, to shoot the first man he saw aiming at either of us.

Posselt paid Andizibi with blankets ‘and some other articles'. For this he got the one stone bird and the perforated stone. The bird on its pedestal was too heavy to carry, so he hacked it off! The other stone birds he hid, ‘it being my intention to return at a future date and secure them from the natives'.

Word reached Cecil Rhodes of Posselt's successful treasure hunt and that he had brought back to South Africa ‘some wonderful stones from a visit to King Solomon's Temple', and he arranged to buy one from Posselt, the first stone bird known to have been looted from the lost city. Rhodes was undoubtedly mesmerised by the bird; indeed, it became a kind of talisman for him. It is still in the bedroom of his house, Groote Schuur, in Cape Town – now the home of the State President – where last year I was allowed to handle it for the purpose of photography. Alta Kriel, the Curator of the Rhodes Collection, told me that Rhodes refused to have it kept anywhere else and it is rumoured that he preferred to be in its presence when making major decisions, of which the most major was, without question, the decision to acquire the country where the stone birds ruled and have its name changed to his own. This bird indubitably changed the course of African history and half a century later, my own.

Rhodes had two stone copies made for the gateposts of his house in England. The Norfolk pine staircase at Groote Schuur was refitted with newel-posts mounting carvings of the bird and ground-floor doors were fitted with protectors in the shape of the Zimbabwe birds. One cannot avoid the presence of the birds in that house even to this day. I worked in Rhodes' library on this book and there is no doubt that they have a strange, brooding presence. Rhodes took the real bird on fund-raising trips to Europe when he was seeking backers for an organisation called the British South Africa Company, in reality the cover name for his private army of occupation.

The British government was still refusing to have anything to do with an official colonisation of Ophir even though it appeared to be a genuine eldorado. But if Rhodes, who was now Prime Minister of South Africa, wanted to undertake this dubious work for them at his own expense that was a different matter.

Posselt records that Rhodes later told him: ‘I take that stone bird you found in the Zimbabwe ruins; I place it on the table, and tell that where this bird came from there must be something else.' Within a year Rhodes and the bird had attracted sufficient funds and Queen Victoria signed a Royal Charter legitimising the British South Africa Company's invasion of Matabeleland and the occupation of Mashonaland.

Before he left England, Rhodes also took the Zimbabwe bird to the Royal Geographical Society and suggested that they support a ‘proper scientific expedition' to explore the lost city led by an eminent Fellow of the Society, Mr J. Theodore Bent. Rhodes offered to contribute generously to this expedition; indeed, he provided most of the funding.

Q
ueen Victoria refused to grant a charter to Rhodes' British South Africa Company until he had obtained a signed ‘concession' from Lobengula. She had no intention of being held responsible for licensing an invasion, especially one which could easily go disastrously wrong, even if it did add a golden prize to her empire. The Queen and her ministers must, of course, have realised that the Charter would allow Rhodes to invade and occupy Mashonaland. Perhaps she thought the condition of a concession would put a stop to the whole dubious business: Lobengula was no fool and would surely recognise the risks of letting Rhodes loose in his domains?

If that was the case then they both sorely underestimated Rhodes, who sat down to work on this problem with two of his closest friends, Leander Starr Jameson and Rutherfoord Harris. Both had practised as doctors in Kimberley which was now Rhodes' town. Jameson would become Rhodes' right-hand man (many have suggested that the relationship was more intimate than that) and Harris a specialist in Rhodes' dirty work. Jameson had a mercurial temperament and he enjoyed taking huge risks for Rhodes. Many paid off but when he tried to take over the Transvaal from the Boers, only Rhodes' intervention saved him from execution. Harris quite simply did whatever Rhodes told him. Jameson once described Rutherfoord Harris as ‘as thick as they're made'. A more stable business associate of Rhodes from the Kimberley days, C.J. Rudd, was also involved in the plan.

Essentially they had to work out an offer that Lobengula could not refuse. Rudd had already been dispatched to Lobengula's court to see if he could buy a gold-prospecting concession from the Matabele king. He joined at least three other concession hunters there. The Portuguese had also finally decided to do something about their lapsed concessions in the region and sent envoys to Chief Mutasa whose land adjoined Mashonaland to the east. Lobengula was in no hurry to give concessions to anyone and kept Rudd hanging around for weeks until Rudd concluded that only one course was open to him – what might tempt Lobengula were rifles.

The Matabele – a renegade offshoot of the Zulu – were famously disciplined under seasoned military tacticians. The aggressive young warriors were keen to rid their country of hungry white men and they begged their generals and Lobengula to provide them with the opportunity to ‘wash their spears'. For most concession-hunters, including the British emissaries at Lobengula's court, the idea of a Matabele army armed with modern weaponry was enough to chill the blood and thus far they, the Germans, Portuguese and Boers, had baulked at the idea of giving Lobengula military ordnance even in return for Shona gold.

Rhodes, as was his wont, called for an expert analysis of the problem and upon receipt of an assessment by British-trained military advisers decided on perhaps his greatest gamble. Rhodes was told that without expert weapons instruction and target practice Lobengula's army would, quite literally, shoot itself in the foot. Issuing warriors trained in the use of the spear with modern rifles would reduce their efficiency rather than enhance it, at least in the early stages of any war. Armed with this intelligence Rhodes sent Rudd back to Lobengula with orders to offer the Matabele king 1,000 Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles, 100,000 rounds of cartridges, a gunboat on the Zambesi (or £500 in cash) and £100 a month. Rudd took £5,000 in gold coins in his saddlebag as a down payment. In those days it was a king's ransom and it was enough. This king, who by then was weary of badgering concession hunters and worried that the Boers might just ride in and take his kingdom, accepted. Better to give Rhodes a gold-mining concession than risk all that.

That left just one problem for Rhodes, albeit a major one. Trading guns to the natives was highly illegal under South African law, especially for a member, as Rhodes was, of the Cape parliament. The mere removal or conveyance of such articles across the Cape borders was similarly prohibited. Rhodes arranged for the rifles to be moved secretly, admitting in a letter to a member of Rudd's group: ‘With great difficulty I have managed to get them through the Colony and Bechuanaland.'

These rifles are pivotal to our story. Without them Rhodes would not have got his concession and his charter. Without the presence of Rhodes and his money in Mashonaland none of the three scientific investigations, which would subject the Zimbabwe culture to minute scrutiny, would ever have happened. He and the Rhodes Trust subsidised all three.

Rutherfoord Harris, now a Cape Town merchant, applied for a licence from the resident magistrate to send a shipment of rifles to Kimberley. The licence was issued because no borders would be crossed. Once in the vast De Beers sidings – Rhodes' very private bailiwick – they vanished, just as an even larger illicit arms shipment would vanish a few years later when the same team tried to provide supportive ordnance for Jameson's abortive raid on the Transvaal.

Two clandestine teams were used to take packets of 500 rifles apiece across the border under permits issued by a Bechuanaland official. This smuggling did not quite go unnoticed but another official, Sir Gordon Sprigg, who made enquiries about the shipments was urged to look the other way, or more precisely not to look ‘into matters which do not affect the Cape Colony'. The correspondence actually reached the Colonial Office in London but there they looked the other way too. A note in the file observes: ‘Sir Gordon Sprigg evidently thinks that the rifles . . . were meant for Lobengula (
hinc illae lacrymae
) and I dare-say he isn't far wrong.' They were already well on their way to Lobengula. Jameson and Harris crossed into Bechuanaland ostensibly as hunters, picked up the cached rifles, and eventually arrived at the Matabele border post where they were met by one of Rudd's partners, J.R. Macquire, a British barrister and friend of Rhodes from Oxford who was there to see that the Lobengula concession was couched in the right legal terms.

In December 1888 Lobengula fixed his mark to a document, the key paragraph of which read:

Unto the said grantees their heirs, representatives and assigns jointly and severally the complete and exclusive charge over all metals and mineral situated and contained in my Kingdoms, Principalities and dominions together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same and to hold, collect and enjoy the profits and revenue if any derivable from the said metals and mineral subject to the aforesaid payment and Whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and concessions of Land and Mining rights in my territories I do hereby authorize the said grantees, their representatives and assigns to take all necessary and lawful steps to exclude from my Kingdoms, Principalities and Dominions all persons seeking land metals, mineral or mining rights therein and I do hereby undertake to render them such needful assistance as may from time to time require for the exclusion of such persons and to grant no concessions of land or mining rights from and after this date without their consent and concurrence.

Rudd immediately took the road for Cape Town, leaving the lawyer, Macquire, at the court to defend the concession against the attacks Rudd was sure would come. And come they did but first there was the most extraordinary incident that could well have ended in the concession which paved the road to Ophir never seeing the light of day.

A pond called the Lemoen pan upon which all travellers relied for their water was found to be dry. A note fixed to a thorn tree told Rudd there was water 2 miles away but in searching for it he became hopelessly lost in the bush. Rudd dropped the concession, his money bag and a farewell letter to his wife down an ant bear hole, convinced he would not last the night. Wandering around in the dark, Rudd eventually heard the barking of dogs and found their Tswana owners camped nearby. They gave him water and, amazingly, he was quickly able to recover his possessions.

Thereafter, to make up lost time, he made a gruelling dash in a mule-drawn wagon: ‘We drove on through the night in stretches of two hours with one and a half hour intervals.' Two days later he drove in to Kimberley and handed the concession to Rhodes, a record for the distance that would not be broken until the railhead was extended to Bulawayo. They travelled on to Cape Town and presented the document to High Commissioner Robinson who, as Rhodes commented, ‘raised no difficulties as to the guns'. Rhodes, of course, interpreted this as a deed of occupation, which it is not. The powers to protect finds of ‘metals and minerals' are somewhat ambiguous but it remains a mining concession, nothing more. The other concession-hunters immediately claimed the Rudd Concession was a fake and Portugal rejected it outright.

The Consul for Portugal in Cape Town, Eduardo A. de Carvalho, published a denial of Lobengula's claim to Shona territory:

Whereas a notice signed by order of
LO BENGULA
, king of the Matabeles, has lately been published in the Newspapers giving notice that the mining rights in Matabeleland, Mashonaland and adjoining territories have already been disposed of, and soliciting the assistance of all neighboring Chiefs and States in excluding all persons entering these territories hereafter,
I 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
: