For decades, a specific, highly charged historical myth has circulated through the markets, kombis, and social media spaces of Zimbabwe: the claim that King Lobengula Khumalo "sold the country for a packet of sugar, a mirror, and a gunboat." Within popular Shona discourse, this narrative is frequently weaponised to shift the historical blame for colonisation entirely onto the Ndebele monarchy. It reduces a complex, multi-layered tragedy of corporate deception into a simplistic tale of a single, naive ruler who traded a sovereign nation for European sweets.
However, this finger-pointing relies on a profound, convenient case of historical amnesia. While Zimbabwe’s public consciousness—and its national education curriculum—scrutinises every line of the 1888 Rudd Concession, it completely airbrushes out the reality of Mashonaland in the late nineteenth century. The Shona people were not a single unified nation watching helplessly from the sidelines. Mashonaland was a network of fiercely independent, sovereign chieftaincies whose leaders actively engaged in concession diplomacy. From the Mazowe Valley to the eastern highlands, Shona chiefs signed numerous treaties, concessions, and friendship pacts with British, Portuguese, and Boer agents.
To understand how Zimbabwe was colonised, the country must move past tribal blame and examine the unedited history of the late 1880s and 1890s. When looked at closely, the historical record reveals that Shona rulers were just as entangled in the messy, dangerous game of nineteenth-century European diplomacy as the Ndebele state—and their responses to British occupation were deeply divided.
Deconstructing the Sugar Myth
Before examining the Shona agreements, the myth surrounding the Ndebele monarchy must be dismantled. King Lobengula did not sell land, nor did he trade his kingdom for sugar. He was the ruler of a powerful military state under immense pressure from European expansion. Surrounded by Boer trekkers from the south, Portuguese forces from the east, and British imperialists from the Cape, Lobengula used diplomacy to buy time.
When he signed the Rudd Concession in October 1888, he was deliberately misled by British agents Charles Rudd, Rochfort Maguire, and Francis Thompson, who were working for Cecil John Rhodes. Lobengula verbally stipulated that only ten white men would enter his territory to dig for gold, and that they would abide by Ndebele law. The written document, which he could not read, granted Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC) exclusive and unlimited mineral rights over his entire claimed territory.
The historical irony is that while popular lore mocks Lobengula for "selling out" Mashonaland, Lobengula’s legal claim to rule over all Shona territories was a convenient fiction manufactured by Cecil Rhodes. To get a royal charter from the British government, Rhodes had to convince London that Lobengula was the absolute king of the entire region between the Limpopo and the Zambezi. In reality, the vast majority of Shona paramountcies were completely independent sovereign states that did not pay tribute to Bulawayo.
The Forgotten Shona Treaties: Door-to-Door Diplomacy
Because Mashonaland was decentralized, European concession-hunters knew that Lobengula’s signature was not legally or practically enough to secure the land. British, Portuguese, and Afrikaner agents went door-to-door through Shona territories, exploiting local rivalries and offering treaties to individual chiefs.
The Mapondera Concession (1889)
One of the most significant counters to the British narrative came from the Mazowe Valley. In 1889, the legendary hunter and explorer Frederick Selous, working for a rival British corporate group called the Selous Exploration Syndicate, approached Prince Kadungure Mapondera and Headman Temaringa of the Negomo dynasty.
Mapondera signed a concession granting Selous’s syndicate exclusive mineral rights in the upper Mazowe Valley. Crucially, when signing, Mapondera and Temaringa explicitly stated to Selous that they were independent rulers who had never paid tribute to Lobengula or the Portuguese. This treaty proved that Shona chiefs viewed themselves as fully sovereign. To eliminate this legal headache, Cecil Rhodes simply bought out Selous's syndicate, hired Selous to guide his Pioneer Column, and suppressed Mapondera’s independent claims.
The Eastern Front: The Mutasa and Marange Concessions (1890)
In the eastern highlands of Manicaland, the struggle for territory was fought between the British and the Portuguese. Chief Mutasa of the Manyika people found himself caught in the middle. In the late 1880s, Mutasa signed treaties with Portuguese agents like Manuel António de Sousa (Gouveia) and Paiva de Andrada, granting mineral and commercial rights to Lisbon in exchange for protection and European trade goods.
Recognising the danger of a Portuguese route to the sea, BSAC agent Archibald Colquhoun rushed to Mutasa’s court in September 1890. Caught in a geopolitical vice, Chief Mutasa signed the Umtasa Concession, granting exclusive land and mineral rights to the British in exchange for an annual subsidy and protection. Nearby, Chief Marange signed a similar concession with British agents, seeking firearms to protect his people from Portuguese incursions.
The Southern Front: The Adendorff Concession (1891)
In the south, Afrikaner Boers attempting to launch their own invasion of Zimbabwe approached Chief Chivi (Chibi). Looking for a powerful ally to counter Ndebele raids, Chief Chivi signed the Adendorff Concession in 1891, granting land and mining rights to the Boers. When British authorities challenged the deal, Chief Chivi openly asserted his independence, declaring that Lobengula had absolutely no right to sign away Shona land because the Ndebele had never conquered the Chivi paramountcy.
The Maungwe Defiance: The Makoni Treaty (1890)
Further north in the Rusape district, Chief Makoni Chingaira, the powerful and fiercely independent leader of the Maungwe people, was also dragged into the corporate dragnet. In 1890, BSAC agents arrived at his court eager to secure his alignment. Fearing encroachment from Portuguese forces to his east and looking to secure his borders, Chief Makoni signed a treaty of friendship and mineral concessions with the British.
However, Makoni’s relationship with the BSAC serves as the perfect historical case study of how these treaties collapsed. Unlike some of his contemporaries who chose neutrality, Makoni completely repudiated his treaty the moment the British attempted to enforce colonial laws, seize land, and demand taxes. He realized that the piece of paper he had signed was being used as a weapon of subjugation. When the First Chimurenga broke out, Makoni became one of its most brilliant and uncompromising military commanders. He used a vast network of mountain caves to wage a fierce guerrilla campaign against the BSAC, frustrating British forces for months until he was finally captured and executed by a British firing squad in September 1896. His trajectory from treaty-signer to revolutionary icon perfectly highlights the deep deception embedded in these early agreements.
The Cultural Misunderstanding
Like Lobengula, none of these Shona chiefs believed they were permanently giving away their ancestral land. In Shona cosmology, land belonged to the ancestors and the community; it was a spiritual asset that could not be bought, sold, or alienated. The chiefs believed they were granting temporary access to hunt for gold or rocks in exchange for weapons, luxury trade items, and strategic military alliances against their immediate regional rivals.
Collaboration and Division: Shona Fight Shona
The romanticised nationalist narrative of Zimbabwean history implies that once the white settlers arrived, the Shona people instantly united in righteous indignation. The actual history is far more fractured. When the BSAC's true intentions became clear—manifested through forced labour, land seizures, and the brutal enforcement of the Hut Tax—the Shona response was deeply divided.
When the First Chimurenga (1896–1897) broke out, it was not a neat, universal uprising. It was a complex conflict where many Shona chiefs chose strategic neutrality or active collaboration with the white settlers to settle old scores or ensure their own survival.
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Late 19th-Century Shona │
│ Responses to the BSAC │
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
│
┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ Resistance │ │ Neutrality │ │ Collaboration │
│ (e.g., Makoni,│ │ (e.g., Mutasa)│ │ (e.g., Chivi, │
│ Mangwende) │ └───────────────┘ │ Chilimanzu) │
└───────────────┘ └───────────────┘
Chief Chivi and Chief Chilimanzu in the south completely refused to join the rebellion. Having signed friendship pacts and alliances with the whites to shield themselves from historical Ndebele dominance, they remained fiercely loyal to the BSAC. They provided the British military with critical intelligence, food supplies, and logistical support. In the east, after his complex diplomatic maneuvering, Chief Mutasa chose to stay out of the war entirely, refusing to send his forces to assist the rebels. Chief Zimuto similarly assisted colonial forces in the southern districts.
Most devastatingly for the resistance, the British military actively recruited thousands of Shona men to serve as "native levies." These Shona forces acted as scouts, trackers, and auxiliary soldiers. They guided British troops through the difficult terrain of Mashonaland, pointing out the complex network of mountain caves where rebel chiefs like Makoni and Mangwende were hiding. The First Chimurenga was, in many ways, a civil war where Shona hands held the guns and torches that helped the British military dismantle the resistance.
Educational Amnesia: Why Schools Don't Teach This
If the historical evidence of Shona treaties, concessions, and widespread collaboration is so thoroughly documented in archival records, why is it completely absent from the national consciousness? The answer lies in the politics of post-independence education.
The Zimbabwean history curriculum (from Primary School to O-Level) relies on a highly selective, linear narrative. Students are taught a neat, packaged storyline: the Moffat Treaty leads to the Rudd Concession, which brings the Pioneer Column, which instantly triggers the heroic, unified resistance of the First Chimurenga under Nehanda and Kaguvi.
Traditional School Narrative:
[Moffat Treaty] ──> [Rudd Concession] ──> [Pioneer Column] ──> [Unified Chimurenga]
The Hidden Historical Reality:
[Dozens of Independent Shona Treaties] ──> [Corporate Manipulation] ──> [Divided Uprising/Collaboration]
This curriculum airbrushes out Shona concessions and Shona collaboration because they complicate the romanticised, nationalist myth of immediate, universal Shona resistance. Admitting that Shona chiefs willingly signed mineral concessions, played European empires against each other, and actively picked up arms to help the British crush their fellow Shona neighbors damages the post-colonial narrative of an unbroken history of unified anti-colonial solidarity.
By omitting these nuances, the education system has left a vacuum filled by regional and tribal divisions. It allows the "Lobengula sold the country" myth to survive unchecked in public spaces, protecting Shona historical narratives from critical analysis while unfairly pinning the blame for a continent-wide scramble for Africa onto a single Ndebele monarch.
Moving Past the Blame Game
The scramble for Africa was an overwhelming wave of European industrial and corporate militarism. No single king, chief, or paramountcy in nineteenth-century Southern Africa had the geopolitical foresight or resources to stop it. Both King Lobengula and the independent Shona chiefs were operating within the limits of their traditional worldview, attempting to use diplomacy, concessions, and temporary alliances to protect their immediate interests.
Confronting the reality of Shona treaties and collaboration is not an attempt to shift blame or create new tribal animosities. Rather, it is a necessary step toward intellectual honesty and national healing. True patriotism requires a nation to look into the mirror of its past without blinking.
Zimbabweans must dismantle the lazy, divisive myth of the "sugar concession." It is time to update the educational narrative to restore the true, complex, and unedited history of the country's ancestors—recognising that they were neither a monolith of flawless resisters nor a collection of naive sellouts, but human leaders navigating an impossible historical storm.
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