Why Every Ex-Rhodesian and Zimbabwean Must Read Pioneers of Mashonaland

 

If you are an ex-Rhodesian, a Zimbabwean in the diaspora, or anyone who still carries the memory of what that country once was, stop what you are doing and read Pioneers of Mashonaland. The book is free on the internet, it is superbly written, and it is one of the most thrilling adventure stories ever told about southern Africa. More than that, it is a reminder of who built the place and why we should be proud of that history instead of ashamed.

The story follows the men of the Pioneer Column who marched into Mashonaland in 1890. These were not romanticised Hollywood heroes; they were real men—surveyors, farmers, miners, soldiers, hunters—who looked at a wilderness of thorn scrub, tsetse fly, and tribal warfare and decided they could turn it into something better. They hacked roads through the bush, pegged farms, sank mines, and laid the foundations of Salisbury, Bulawayo, and the entire modern economy that followed. Pioneers of Mashonaland captures that raw, boyish excitement of men who believed civilisation was something you built with your own hands, not something you inherited or begged for. It is adventurous, honest, and unapologetic. You will finish it feeling taller.But the book does more than celebrate courage. It records a truth that modern history books prefer to airbrush: the Shona people were being systematically raided, enslaved, and slaughtered by the Ndebele (Matabele) impis under Lobengula. The Ndebele were the colonial power in the region before the white man arrived—raiding parties sweeping down from the south, carrying off cattle, women, and children in the classic pattern of stronger Bantu tribes dominating weaker ones. When the Pioneer Column arrived, they did not “steal” the land from peaceful Shona farmers. They stopped a reign of terror. Many Shona welcomed the white man precisely because he brought protection and an end to the annual Matabele raids. That is not “racist propaganda”; it is the documented history the book lays out in plain, eyewitness language.Fast-forward to today. Zimbabwe is a carcass. The farms that once fed the region and earned foreign currency are overgrown with bush and weeds. The commercial agricultural sector the pioneers created—efficient, mechanised, export-oriented—has been reduced to subsistence patches and elite looting. Hyperinflation, mass emigration, power cuts, and empty shelves are not the fault of “sanctions” or “drought.” They are the direct, predictable result of ZANU-PF’s policy of seizing white-owned farms and handing them to cronies who had neither the skill nor the will to keep them productive. The economy the white man built has been murdered, and the Shona people, for all their numbers and all the international sympathy, have not been able to resurrect it.Tony Blair once considered military action to remove Robert Mugabe. He hesitated, and the moment passed. Perhaps he sensed the political cost in Britain. Perhaps he believed, like so many Western liberals, that Africans must be left to “sort themselves out.” The result is plain to see: Zimbabwe did not sort itself out. It collapsed.This is not a call for revenge. It is a call for realism. The truth, however uncomfortable, is that the people who turned wilderness into a functioning modern state were the white pioneers and their descendants. They understood irrigation, soil science, markets, roads, railways, and the rule of law. Those skills did not vanish when the farms were taken; they simply left with the farmers. The Shona cannot save themselves—not because they are inferior, but because the political system they have tolerated for forty-six years has destroyed the very institutions and expertise required for recovery.It is time for a second Pioneer Column.Not in the sense of armed conquest—that era is gone—but in the sense of a deliberate, unapologetic return of the knowledge, capital, and work ethic that once made Rhodesia the breadbasket of Africa. Let the white men who built it come back. Let them take the land again under secure title, under clear rules, and under the same spirit that drove the original pioneers. Let them resurrect the dead farms, the dead mines, the dead economy. The alternative is not “African self-determination.” The alternative is continued poverty, emigration, and a slow descent into a failed state while the world shrugs and blames colonialism for the hundredth time.Read Pioneers of Mashonaland. It will remind you what was achieved when white men were allowed to build. It will make you proud of that history instead of apologetic for it. And it will leave you with the uncomfortable but necessary question: if the first pioneers could turn wilderness into civilisation in a few short decades, why should their grandchildren not be invited back to do it again?The country is waiting. The farms are waiting. Zimbabwe is waiting.Time to come home.