Book Review : Travel and Adventure in South East Africa by Frederick Courteney Selous

 Some time ago I read and finished the book Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa by the legendary Frederick Selous. It is a must read for anyone interested in Africa, especially, precolonial Africa. It is a very big book, over 500 pages, but dont let that deter you. The book is impossible to put down. Why? Selous gives the most vivid accounts of his hunting expeditions and his relationships with the Africans. As I read the book I could almost smell, taste and see Africa in its untamed form before colonialism.

Selous is a legend in Rhodesian lore. He is the man who the Selous Scouts, a Rhodesian military outfit is named after. He is the man who led the Pioneer Column as it made its way from South Africa to Mount Hampden. He is the man who gave Mount Darwin and Mount Hampden their names. He is the man who chose where Fort Victoria city nowadays Masvingo would be built. He was an adventurer like Indiana Jones, a fearless wanderer and a man's man. He is what Tony Soprano would call the strong, silent type. 

Selous wound up getting killed during the first World War, he was shot by a German somewhere in Tanzania, I think. For a man addicted to adrenaline there could be no other fitting death. I doubt Selous wanted to die in bed at 90 years surrounded by his loved ones. He was a man of action and died the way he lived, on knife's edge. Although if he was to resurrect and see what Rhodesia had become he would die of shock and agony after realising Rhodesians had lost everything.

The only thing I did not like about the book was the carefree use of the word Kafir. It is on almost every page and illustrates the racist and condescending attitude that white pioneers had towards Africans. I suppose for a man born and raised in Britain to be confronted by primitive Africans it would be expected for Selous to look down on Africans as inferior. However, he is a complex man full of contradictions. On one hand he bemoans the extinction of wild life in Africa and on the other hand he runs around Africa like the Terminator, dispatching lions, leopards and elephants without remorse.

I did learn a few things from the book that I did not know. It is often said Lobengula sold the country to the British. But in the book Selous records events of how Shona chiefs signed treaties with the British in exchange for protection from the predations of the Ndebele tribe. It is easy to understand why Shonas were desperate for that protection because they had suffered greatly under the Ndebele. In one chapter called Matabele atrocities Selous gives the reader multiple accounts of Ndebele savagery.

If you want to know what Zimbabwe was like before the advent of colonialism, look no further than the Travel and Adventure in South East Africa. It is a nail biting, edge of the seat kind of book. Selous flirts with death on almost every page and you feel like you are taking every step with him.