The colonial administration for a long time chose to ignore political developments that were slowly heating up in the Shangani. Widespread discontent over land husbandry, memories of violent evictions and the prospect of a better life through nationalism all made the Shangani a hot bed for the breeding of nationalism in the Matabeleland area.

By 1961, chiefs in the Shangani were beginning to confront with the presence of nationalist violence. The colonial administration, only a decade early, had dismissed the prospects of such activity, believing that nationalism would die down like a small fire. They were proved wrong.

Now as violence and resistance was manifesting itself all over Nkayi and Lupane, they believed that nationalism had come into the districts as a poison. They believed things were happening not from within, but because of external elements in the districts. This they chose to believe despite the fact that there were some of the evictees who had settled in the Shangani who had been nationalist activists in the areas from which they were evicted. The authorities had made the mistake of comforting themselves into believing that these men and women would forget about nationalism and settle to a life of agriculture in their new land.

However, things heated up in the Shangani in 1959 when some nationalist restrictees arrived in Lupane. The administration had split up a group of African National Congress (ANC) restrictees held in detention. Some of the restrictees were sent to Lupane and one of the members of this group was the famous politician, James Chikerema

Soon the group was being blamed for sudden change from passivity to active nationalism in the Shangani district. Frequent political meetings were reported and greater violation of agricultural regulations, on a wide scale raised the fury of the administration. The rural folk were now described as arrogant and reckless and the National Democratic Party, the nationalists’ political party active at that time, was blamed for all the insurgence.

Nationalists from the district felt differently though. In their eyes, nationalism was not a new phenomenon in the Shangani. To them, it went back to a decade ago way before the coming of the restrictees. They viewed political parties like the National Democratic Party (NDP), ANC and ZAPU in latter years, as only part of a series of nationalists who had simply made their way to the Shangani, however they were not the ignitors of nationalism, it was already there.

One evictee from Bubi recalled how she was already a member of the African People’s Voice before bring evicted to Nkayi in 1950. She said that when she got to Nkayi, there were no members of the Voice and she started recruiting women into the party and it was in 1957 that she suffered her first arrest for her activities. She was described as danger to the public.

She pointed out that her struggle was never really about land husbandry but it was against white authority and soon, the need to harness the support of the originals was realized.

Critically considered, nationalist opposition to white minority rule did not suddenly appear in the Shangani in 1961. Developments following the coming in of restrictees in the area only added to what was already happening and what had already happened in the past decade.

When the Rhodesian {now known as Zimbabwe} colonial administrators established the reserves as an area for the concentration of Africans in the Shangani forest, neither they nor the Africans thought the former would emerge to stage another takeover the latter’s land. It would be a different kind of take over though, one not of settling on the land, but of controlling the way the land was used – for the positive.

The background to this was the intensification of colonial regulation on all British colonies following the end of the Second World War. The British had lost their control over India and they felt the urge to ensure that their investment in Africa was efficient and profitable. As a result, British officials were deployed all over the rural areas of the colonies in Africa to ensure better agricultural performance.

In Rhodesia {now known as Zimbabwe}, urgent measures were taken to enforce conservation and improvement of farming efficiency in the reserves. Through such policy initiatives, met with some resistance from the Africans, the colonial government in Rhodesia achieved what some scholars have termed as the second colonial occupation or the colonial occupation of the Shangani. 

Since its establishment in the 1890s, the Shangani reserve had been administered as a single entity under the Native commissioner for Inyathi. By 1950 though, the reserve had been divided into two districts, Lupane and Nkayi.

Agricultural rules for reserve dwellers were spelt out and police were deployed to enforce them and where necessary prosecute offenders. In 1964 in Nkayi for instance, there were thousands of prosecutions of those who refused to dip their cattle. There were thousands of other prosecutions of those who refused to pay taxes. 

There was also a transformation in the official knowledge the Shangani area. By 1960, the whole of Nkayi district had been surveyed with plans for roads and land laid out.

All this new activity by the administrators came as a shock especially to the evictees. They had been told that once settled in the reserve, they would be left alone to do as they pleased, but now they protested to the administrators who had gone against their word behind their back. 

They felt cheated and unsure about their investments in their new land. They had paid dearly from the loss of their former homes and they did not want to lose again. 

Earlier settlers were also not too happy with the new policies which were also interfering with their freedom to farm the niches of land which they had identified as suitable for exploit. 

Due to the new policies, some of the Shangani dwellers were forced to lose their fertile land to the marginal areas which were often difficult to plough. To both evictees and the early settlers, the new order looked much like a new colonial occupation.

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Why Are We Named Bulawayo1872?

In 1872 after scoring victory, King Lobengula renamed his royal town. The name was changed from Gibixhegu to Bulawayo. The name derives from the verb bulala and the locative formative ko-. Bulala means, in the first instance to kill. It also means to oppose, persecute or bother. King Lobengula was thus referring to the figurative meaning of the word bulala. 

When Cecil John Rhodes overpowered King Lobengula and his regiments, he ordered a new town be built on the ruins of King Lobengula’s royal town, which was sited where State House stands today.

Northlea High School was built very close to the ruins of King Lobengula Bulawayo. By 1894 a new town of a gridiron pattern was taking shape. Its name was also Bulawayo. In the same year administrator Leander Starr Jameson declared the settlement a town. In 1897 it acquired a municipal status.

Even though Bulawayo was declared a settlement town in 1894, as far as we are concerned and also as history rightly points out, Bulawayo was born in 1872. It was not born at the hands of Leander Starr Jameson, but at the hands of Lobengula King of the Ndebele.