The end of the Ndebele Royal Family

Abstract

On 30 March 1932 the High Court in Bulawayo found Rhodes Mpango, son of Njube, son of Lobengula, guilty on various counts of extortion and attempted extortion, and so sentenced him to a total of fifteen months imprisonment, suspended for three years on condition that he did not repeat his attempts to claim 'royal' cattle from peasants in Matabeleland.1 Thus ended in failure a campaign by the Khumalo family which for over thirty years had been trying intermittently to regain some of its status and wealth — a campaign which had culminated in the seizures of cattle after the arrival in Southern Rhodesia in 1926 of Njube's sons, Albert and Rhodes.2 Their failure in 1932 marked the beginning of the end for the very concept of a royal family — seen most strikingly in the response of ordinary cattleowners who at last stopped putting the royal earmark on the progeny of the once 'royal' cattle given to them by the British South Africa Company in 1895.