http://www.chirundu.com/the-pongo-memorial-econd-matabele-war-2010-02/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-pongo-memorial-econd-matabele-war The Place for Homesick Africans Wed, 26 Oct 2011 06:39:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.chirundu.com/the-pongo-memorial-econd-matabele-war-2010-02/comment-page-1/#comment-616 The Last Stand of the Shangani Patrol : chirundu.com v2.0 Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:42:32 +0000 http://www.chirundu.com/?p=486#comment-616 [...] The Pongo Memorial – The Second Matabele War [...] [...] The Pongo Memorial – The Second Matabele War [...]

]]> http://www.chirundu.com/the-pongo-memorial-econd-matabele-war-2010-02/comment-page-1/#comment-298 David Tue, 18 May 2010 05:51:22 +0000 http://www.chirundu.com/?p=486#comment-298 The Pongo store was the site where three men were murdered by a group of six men, Induna Nganganyoni Mhlope was the clan elder in charge of the foray. This group was from the Inyati area. You can find accounts of this day in FC Selous' book"Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia" as well as Mhlope's version in T.O.Ranger's "Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896-7 (page 129). His version highlights the strange gulf between the reasoning of the westerners and the Ndebele. Essentially they went to the store and pretended to want to buy cloth and split the store owner's face in half with an axe. Outside, the others pretended to help a man in the garden and hunted him down in the corn field. The third man escaped after having his head stoved in with a knobkerry... as did the man from the store, being picked up by a man in a cart later next day. Chilling really. Mhlope says in 1938: "These white men were our friends and so they did not expect that we were coming to kill them. They were our friends but since we were going to start to fight they might have come to kill us too." Not all the people listed on the marker were actually killed at Pongo Store. They were people from the Gwelo region but perhaps chosen for other reasons for the memorial (Namely their international origins etc.) Andrew Hammond and his mates were killed at Ingwania (Crocodile River) 25 miles north of Gwelo. Andie Hammond was an old man by 1896, a successful silver mine baron from Globe Arizona. He had founded the Globe and Pheonix mine there with Fred Burnham and some others. A face from the old west in Tombstone Arizona, Andy packed twin sixguns everywhere he went. He had once been called outside to a duel over a woman in Tombstone but she came into the street and pled for his life as his opponent was about to send him to his maker. The times were such that women were never disrespected, even at high noon. The Fourie family's killings highlights the shock and horror that the Victorian Rhodesians felt over the attacks, and they amplified the brutality in their outrage over women and children being murdered. Again it was a tragic vast gulf that spanned the two cultures. Perhaps the marker is a symbolic memory of how it all seemed to go bad from that time to this over the years. Its doubtful the country ever healed those wounds well enough to feel better about anything, as present day Zimbabwe is evidence of. Modern people cannot any longer understand the terrible times they lived in. Certainly those people in 1896 could not have predicted our world. The Pongo store was the site where three men were murdered by a group of six men, Induna Nganganyoni Mhlope was the clan elder in charge of the foray. This group was from the Inyati area. You can find accounts of this day in FC Selous’ book”Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia” as well as Mhlope’s version in T.O.Ranger’s “Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896-7 (page 129). His version highlights the strange gulf between the reasoning of the westerners and the Ndebele. Essentially they went to the store and pretended to want to buy cloth and split the store owner’s face in half with an axe. Outside, the others pretended to help a man in the garden and hunted him down in the corn field. The third man escaped after having his head stoved in with a knobkerry… as did the man from the store, being picked up by a man in a cart later next day. Chilling really. Mhlope says in 1938: “These white men were our friends and so they did not expect that we were coming to kill them. They were our friends but since we were going to start to fight they might have come to kill us too.”
Not all the people listed on the marker were actually killed at Pongo Store. They were people from the Gwelo region but perhaps chosen for other reasons for the memorial (Namely their international origins etc.) Andrew Hammond and his mates were killed at Ingwania (Crocodile River) 25 miles north of Gwelo. Andie Hammond was an old man by 1896, a successful silver mine baron from Globe Arizona. He had founded the Globe and Pheonix mine there with Fred Burnham and some others. A face from the old west in Tombstone Arizona, Andy packed twin sixguns everywhere he went. He had once been called outside to a duel over a woman in Tombstone but she came into the street and pled for his life as his opponent was about to send him to his maker. The times were such that women were never disrespected, even at high noon.
The Fourie family’s killings highlights the shock and horror that the Victorian Rhodesians felt over the attacks, and they amplified the brutality in their outrage over women and children being murdered. Again it was a tragic vast gulf that spanned the two cultures. Perhaps the marker is a symbolic memory of how it all seemed to go bad from that time to this over the years. Its doubtful the country ever healed those wounds well enough to feel better about anything, as present day Zimbabwe is evidence of. Modern people cannot any longer understand the terrible times they lived in. Certainly those people in 1896 could not have predicted our world.

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