Page Title

SHANGANI

(Synopsis of a story based on the conquest of Matabeleland)

Zimbabwe 1893: An introduction to Africa South of the Zambesi. Ancient ruins and European intrusions. Wagon tracks, the telegraph, and the presence of horses.

Chapter 1. The Invasion of Matabeleland. Mashonaland: George Gooding meets an American friend Pearl Ingram. Salisbury and Victoria troopers converge on the plain below. Leander Starr Jameson's army invades Lobengula's Matabeleland.

Chapter 2. Trek to Shangani. Strategy and tactics of Patrick Forbes on the trek. George enquires what happened at Tati. Matabele attack the wagon Iaager. Rifle fire and Maxim guns slaughter them terribly as they run.

Chapter 3. Bembesi to Buluwayo. Another attack. Alan Wilson saves George's life. The capital, Buluwayo abandoned by Lobengula. Jameson sends a swift patrol to kill or capture the king.

Chapter 4. The Shangani Patrol. George, Pearl, Burnham and the quarrels of command. The rains come, but they follow Lobengula's spoor. George hears more about Tati. Alan Wilson takes a party across the Shangani.

Chapter 5. Hunting -- Lobengula. Reconnaissance finds the king's palisade, but takes casualties, and retreats. Hard pressed by the Matabele, Burnham, Pearl and George break out to get help. Patrick Forbes with the main force is under strong attack.

Chapter 6. The Hunters Hunted. The Shangani Patrol retreats, convinced Alan Wilson's party are dead. They are harried and hurt. Quarrels continue. Pearl is sent ahead to beg assistance. Rhodes sends Selous to rescue them.

Chapter 7. Intermission. George, wounded, recuperates with a trader, 'Matabele' Dawson. Recriminations; a court martial looks at the failures of the Shangani Patrol. George is questioned privately by Jameson, curious to penetrate confused evidence.

George and Dawson trek to the Crocodile River. Returning to rumours, about Lobengula, the failure, a bribe, and questions on the escape of two Americans and the Englishman. To discover the truth, Jameson and Rhodes send Dawson and George back to the Shangani. George goes under an assumed name.

Chapter 8. A Man Called Riley. George learns how Lobengula's ambassadors were killed at Tati; and the Matabele history of the war. He is assured of Lobengula's death; Wilson's end; and much about the gold.

Chapter 9. Dry Bones. The bones gathered and buried, George and 'Matabele' return to Buluwayo. "Riley" waits secretly for Jameson. The two reach separate conclusions. The traitors identified. George regrets his lost comrades but has had enough of Rhodesia.

Chapter 10. Pearl. A vignette. Pearl sees his fire and climbs up to meet George again. They speak of Africa, of comradeship and their future.

What happened to them?

Historical gobbets; subsequent lives of the main characters in the narrative, a prelude to the Boer War, and the Scout movement. An ironic echo in the Somme. The element of fiction was only sufficient to make a convincing story of factual truth.

A huge black man lurched toward and over him, one useless hand dragging his shield about his feet and his right hand poised to stab at him with a heavy-bladed assegai. George saw the fellow's eyes dripping blood from a head wound, the entry hole of a bullet in his chest, and arm muscles tensed to thrust home. Galvanised by fear, George rolled away from the thrust, came against a rock and, unable to move further, waited for pain to open up his back.

In recollection afterwards he recognised the blast of a revolver shot above him. At the time he was conscious only of surprise that the pain did not come.

The first snaking rocket ended in a white ball of fire that hung just below thick clouds, lighting up the tumescent underside. The second exploded with a plop deep in the clouds, and lit them from within. In that pearly light George saw a curtain of silver gauze detach itself from the cloud and drop towards him. A few seconds later the deluge hit them all as if a bucket of water had been emptied on their heads.

In that wet night the Matabele came back to taunt, calling across the river, "Where are the other white men?" And they laughed. "Oh! Oh! White man," they jeered, "we have killed them all, and now we will come to kill you."

It was eerily quiet, and he felt the prickling sense behind his back of someone watching him. He rolled onto his shoulder, and looked back and upward to a horse and rider high above him, eyes locked onto his. Oh! He recognised him all right: someone he knew well. That was a puzzle, chilling and uneasy. What was the rider's name?

He could not remember having got onto the horse. What was he doing high in the saddle, and who was the man, rifle flung before him, who lay twisted on one shoulder below him; a pale face between the beard and matted hair? Who was it? George focused his tired eyes. Money! Yes. Harold Money. Why was Money looking at him so sad and surprised? Silently and slowly George turned his head, high up there on the horse. And who was that fellow down by the tree roots, aiming out of the trees? What cloud was he in that muffled sound so?

As his horse flew above the recumbent form of his comrade, someone shook him gently awake and laid a silencing hand on his lips.

"Hello, Mr. Dawson," said George. The trader had been about to turn his back to help the next fellow up. He peered at George's unshaven face. "0f course 1 knowd you, "he said with pleasure. "Wa'sser name, came up with George Grey. Met you at Inyati. Don't tell me." Jimmie Dawson scratched his head. "Hell! You're a mess," he concluded and went about helping the crippled and wounded onto his wagon.

In this fashion they got to Inyati where George was washed and his bleeding feet disinfected and bandaged. He was fed and rested, then carted into Buluwavo.

George tried to remember Wilson's face.

None of their faces would come to him!

What! forgot so soon? All that stubble had made them look more alike.

Eyes? Screwed against the sunlight; laughing; angry? But the colours would not come- -he had never noticed.

Yet if they all came back from the dead he would have known them all.

Their general bulk in the half light; the set of their shoulders; the way they walked, --yes, that was more like it; that's the way he would remember them. Not that alone, but in that gloom the clear distinction that would have made him able to recognise his friends was their voices. The kind of things they'd say -- peculiarities of style and emphasis, and the exact timbre of their spoken word.

He had no adequate preparation for describing a man's voice, something memorable and unique. Captain Borrow's voice sounded as if he had the mind of a woodpecker; Wilson's gravelly Glasgow. William Bath's voice, even when he was happy enough, complained like an unoiled hinge. Herman Hoffmeyr's voice sounded like stones.

"It's very primitive, " George provoked him. "Don'' you find it so?"

"Well, I did at first," the trader replied. "And it's probably true; primitive is what it is. But if you've lived with them, far from what we've come to know - forgettin' what you expect and letting their ways carry you a bit - it's strangely captivatin."

George grunted.

"An' I come to think repetition is what makes music; waitin' for what's familiar. Rhyme as well as rhythm - that's repetition."

"The murmuring of innumerable bees -"mumbled George who had decided not to argue

"What?" said 'Matabele' looking round at him.

"And the moaning of doves in immemorial elms."

"Yes, well, probably .... But repetition. I was saying, repetition! No more'n a drum beat, is prob'ly the first thing that tells you what's the difference between bein' alive an' dead." He looked at his listener to find only puzzlement. "When you stir in the belly of your mam, the heartbeat of her blood must be all you know."

The two American scouts. Frederick Burnham and Pearl Ingram, were together again as scouts in the 1896 rebellion. In the ensuing Boer War, Lord Roberts used Burnham as his chief scout, and his valuable help was recognised with the D.S.O. He returned to America in 1904, lived a long and successful life, and died in 1947 aged 86.