The Ndebele in history

The ZAR war against the Ndzundza Ndebele

The leadership of Nyabele was to mark the final era of Ndzundza Ndebele independence. On 13 August 1882 the Pedi paramount chief Sekhukhune was killed, together with fourteen of his advisors. The assassins were acting at the behest of Mampuru, Sehukhune's half brother, who had previously contested the Pedi chieftainship in 1861, and who, under the British administration of the Transvaal, had acted as chief during Sekhukhune's imprisonment in Pretoria from 1879 to 1881.

The ZAR Government, conscious of its newly-won independence from the British, was determine to exercise its authority over the Pedi and demanded that Mampuru be handed over for trial. Mampuru then fled and sought refuge with the Ndzundza, who had previously supported him in 1861 in his claim for the Pedi leadership. The Volksraad of the ZAR demanded his apprehension, but Nyabele not only declined to hand over Mampuru, but also refused to pay the customary Hut Tax to the new Transvaal government. Although largely symbolic, this gesture was also an open act of defiance which proclaimed Ndzundza independence from the ZAR and refuted Boer claims of suzerainty over his people.

Given their precarious hold over their indigenous subjects, this was not a challenge which the newly established ZAR could afford to ignore, Consequently on 30 October 1882 a burgher commando under the leadership of Gen Piet Joubert set out from Middelburg and invested the Ndzundza mountain stronghold near Namashaxelo. In reality this was little more than a series of caves where Nyabele and his people had thought of making a tactical retreat. No records exist of the exact number of Boers engaged in this campaign but, judging from General Joubert's letters, it appears that no more than 1000 to 2000 men were ever in the field at any one time. Certainly the Boers do not appear to have had much stomach for the fight, leading Joubert to complain to the Volksraad that the burghers "seemed to prefer looting cattle for their own account". After a long campaign of nearly nine months, the Ndzundza, starved and dynamited into submission, capitulated and handed Mampuru, bound hand and foot, over to the Boers. Both Mampuru and Nyabele were taken prisoner to Pretoria where they were tried for insurrection and sentenced to death. The British, who had previously supported Mampuru's claims to the Pedi leadership, attempted to intercede on their behalf with the ZAR, but their efforts were only partially successful, for while Nyabele's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Mampuru was hanged in Pretoria Prison on 22 November 1883.

At the same time the Volksraad declared the Ndzundza ancestral lands to be forfeit to the ZAR Government, which then proceeded to parcel them out to members of Joubert's commando. The surviving Ndzundza were indentured for five years as labourers to the farmers in the district, thus effectively scattering them and breaking their power as a tribe forever.

In retrospect the ZAR Government might appear to have acted in a somewhat precipitous manner in what was, after all, an internecine squabble which did not present them with an immediate threat. However, for the ZAR the question of Pedi succession was a sensitive one which needs to be read in conjunction with political conditions prevailing in the Transvaal at the time. Since the establishment of the Transvaal Republic in 1852, the region had remained in an almost constant state of anarchy. The wars against the Tswana in 1852 and 1858, and against Makapane in 1854; the rise of separate Boer republics at Utrecht (1854), Lydenburg (1856), and Zoutpansberg (1857); the establishment of a Boer revolutionary government in the Waterberg in 1860 and the four years of civil war which followed it; the Swazi attack upon the Ndebele, instigated by the Boers in 1864; the war against the Venda, the Boer retreat from the Zoutpansberg and the destruction of Schoemansdal by the Venda in 1867; and the disastrous war upon the Pedi in 1877, all depleted its resources, and by the time the British annexed the Transvaal on 12 April 1877 its government was bankrupt and on the point of collapse. Boer independence from British rule was only regained after a brief series of battles in 1881, and thus it was to be expected that any challenge made against the newly-established government of the ZAR would be met with harsh and immediate force. The newly-elected Volksraad must have been understandably anxious to avoid a return to conditions prevailing in the Transvaal five years previously while, at the same time, serving notice to British and Black alike that it was determined to maintain the independence it had regained only the previous year.

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