The Shangani Patrol (57 page)

Read The Shangani Patrol Online

Authors: John Wilcox

BOOK: The Shangani Patrol
4.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
In setting the adventures of Simon Fonthill against the background of the war, I have attempted to relate accurately its twists and turns and also to paint the background to what became a classic conflict between the expansionist march of a great colonial power and the struggle of a barbaric and warlike people to remain independent. The Shangani episode was a tragedy, of course, and among the last of its kind.
As always in the Fonthill novels, I must establish what was fact and what fiction. Simon, Alice, Jenkins and Mzingeli, of course, are fictional characters, as are General Lamb and those two rogues Murphy and Laxer. All of the other main characters, however, very much existed: Beit, King Khama, Fairbairn, Dr Jameson, Chief Umtasa, Captain Borrow and Majors Wilson and Forbes. I did not create Manuel de Sousa, ‘Gouela’, although I confess to painting him rather more darkly than perhaps even he deserved. De Sousa, a Portuguese agent with a reputation as a rapist and a slaver, was a regular attender at the court of King Lobengula, and he did try to persuade the king to eschew all dealings with Rhodes.
Lobengula did indeed send a bag of golden sovereigns in a pathetic attempt to divert his pursuers, and the two troopers who accepted them from the
inDunas
did try to keep them and were court-martialled. Three men, all scouts, were sent back by Major Wilson to cross the Shangani in an attempt to get Major Forbes to bring aid, and for those who may think that Simon’s crossing of the river by holding on to the horse’s tail is a little fanciful, then I must refer them to Lieutenant Horace Smith-Dorrien, who escaped the Zulus after Isandlwana by crossing the Buffalo river in the same way.
Alice’s treatment of Lobengula’s gout is based on fact, in that Dr Jameson did earn the king’s friendship by so treating his ailment in Bulawayo - as well as, it is said, because he could make the king laugh. Rhodes’s pursuit of Simon to recruit him to take the gold and arms to the king and to prospect to the east is quite logical, in that he did, in fact, employ many young British adventurers for such tasks - particularly in exploring towards the Portuguese borders to establish contact with the tribes there and to persuade them to sign treaties with his company.
Wherever possible, I have based important conversations on the writings of the participants or those who were present at the time. Rhodes’s eulogy to the strengths of British character and his vision of the map of Africa to the north ‘covered in red’, expressed so forcefully to Fonthill in Cape Town, are taken from his writings. Similarly, Lobengula’s colourful analogy of the chameleon (England) and the fly (Matabeleland) was remembered by those who were in his kraal at the time.
Cecil John Rhodes, of course, was a highly complex and controversial character. As I have tried to reflect in the novel, the British Government, the press, the bankers of London, the public of the day - none of them could ever quite make up their mind about him. Was he a capitalistic charlatan or a great man of empire? Amazingly, well over a hundred years later, the jury is still out.
Rhodes attracted opprobrium when - as Fonthill feared - he plotted to send a party of armed men into Kruger’s Transvaal under the command of the faithful Dr Jameson to stimulate a rising against the Boer government. This abortive mini-invasion became known as the Jameson Raid, and the good doctor went to jail for leading it. Somehow Rhodes wriggled out of accepting the blame, although he sturdily supported the doctor throughout, and Jameson later became reinstated in society and died an honoured man and servant of empire. He was interred in Rhodesia’s Matopo Hills, near to the body of Cecil John Rhodes, the man he had served so well.
The cause of Lobengula’s death was never established - he could well have been poisoned, the fate of many African despots. His people wrapped his body in the hides of two newly flayed oxen and buried it in a cave. Rhodes took charge of three of Lobengula’s sons, and of their sons, and took them to his home in Cape Town, to be educated and brought up there. One of the boys survived to become one of Rhodes’s chief mourners when the great man died in 1902.
The fate of the Shangani Patrol became a cause célèbre back in England. As with Rorke’s Drift after the British defeat by the Zulus at Isandlwana, the heroism of the little band - their singing of the national anthem, the formal shaking of hands before they faced the last charge of the Matabele warriors - distracted the public’s attention from all that had gone before: the slaughter of the natives by machine guns, modern rifles and cannon. It thrilled the readers of the Victorian newspapers and was what they expected of their heroes. The only things lacking were white pith helmets and red coats.
A memorial to Wilson and his men was erected where they fell, and the remains of their bodies were removed to consecrated ground, to be reinterred later near their memorial in the Matopo Hills, where Rhodes and Jameson were to lie. If the Anglo-Matabele war is little remembered now, the Shangani Patrol lives on in the minds of those lovers of history who respect extreme bravery - particularly when its last moments are acted out with a sense of drama and pathos that even Hollywood would consider too unbelievable to put on the screen.
 
J. W.
Chilmark
August 2009
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Shangani Patrol
 
 
 
 
JOHN WILCOX
 
 
 
headline
 
 

Other books

Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 by Gordon R Dickson
Thank Heaven Fasting by E. M. Delafield
Blood Brothers by Richie Tankersley Cusick
Coconut Cowboy by Tim Dorsey
Damage by PJ Adams