The Rhodesians
Few of the men who straggled into "Rhodesia" in 1890 as part of the "Pioneer Column" would have anticipated the bitter and protracted war of the 1970's between the white "Rhodesians" and Africans. Yet early uprisings against European settlers foreshadowed the war for liberation a century later. Only three short years after Europeans settled into the land that makes up modern-day Zimbabwe, the Ndebele, who occupy the western portion of the country, declared war; and though the European settlers suppressed the first uprising, three years later, they found themselves at war again with both the Ndebele and the Shona, who live in eastern Zimbabwe.
For nearly a century, Rhodesians pictured their colonial history in the same romantic way Americans viewed their history. Like the Americans, whose mythology of the hard-working Pilgrims/Puritans and the pioneers who emigrated to "The Wild West" persists even today, Rhodesians believed the men who conquered Zimbabwe were independent, self-sufficient, hardy and brave. Against all odds, they carved civilization from a bastion of savagery and barbarism. They brought law and order and government to the frontier.
Like all myths, there is a certain amount of truth in this version of Rhodesia's history.
For one thing, the relationship between the Ndebele and the Shona can not be characterized as peaceful. The Ndebele continuously raided Shona villages for workers, cattle, and women. Even a century later, when Africans from both the Ndebele and Shona wanted majority rule, they were unable to work together to bring liberation to their country except for a very brief period. In the 1980's, after Africans achieved Independence, Robert Mugabe's government committed large scale genocide in Matabeleland, where the Ndebeles reside.
For another reason, though an earlier Shona civilization had built the Great Zimbabwe and constructed a complex society, they had never invented the wheel and still lived in the Iron Age when Europeans colonized their country.
If peace and superior technology constitute "civilization," then clearly, the Africans in Zimbabwe were not "civilized." And while oppression and "peace" may not be the same thing, Africans did not rise up against the whites for almost seventy years. If Rhodesians wished to ignore certain warning signals, they could assume that Africans were content and happy under their rule.
The British set up its African colonies with one of two systems of government: direct or indirect rule. Direct rule required the presence of British officers and government officials in order to administer law. Indirect rule, on the other hand, theoretically integrated Great Britain's colonial policies through the systems of government already in place. This meant that in some places, they dictated their terms through African figureheads and in other places, they genuinely worked with African leaders to rule. Often, indirect rule set up an arbitrary system that resembled British preconceptions of African government rather than the actual "native" system of government. Sometimes, certain Africans were chosen as leaders because they worked well with the British; the indigenous groups of Africans did not necessarily recognize these men as their leaders.
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