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The Ndebele Resistance:background.

Answer Text:
The Ndebele Resistance.
Background:
-The Ndebele were descendants of Nguni conquerors from South Africa (fleeing from the mfecane wars) who occupied what is now Matabeleland.
Mzilikazi (Ndebele King) opened the door for the London Missionary Society led by Robert Moffat, who settled in Matabeleland in
1859.
- They assisted him in repairing his guns, inoculating cattle, writing and interpreting letters and providing medical care to the sick.
- He however had little interest in Foreigners and even had those whose who accepted missionary influence killed.
-Lobengula was the Ndebele king at the outbreak of the Anglo-Ndebele war of 1893.
-He went to great lengths to appease the increasingly aggressive British imperialists from the South, Portuguese invasion from Angola and Mozambique and Germans from the south west. He used his diplomatic skills to buy time before engaging in war with the British.
-He in 1870 had granted a mining concession to Thomas Baines of Durban Gold Mining Co. in order to diffuse white intervention. In 1889, he repudiated the treaty and sent a fruitless delegation of Indunas (Motshede and Babiyance) to London to meet Queen Victoria.
- Despite the Ndebele king's repeal of the concession, Rhodes, supported by the British crown, enacted a charter of
the newly created British South Africa Company investing it with an array of rights.