Rhodesia

RHODESIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - It is the name given to the large (1.1 million sq. km.) inner South African region comprised between the middle Limpopo (Transvaal) to the S., Mozambique and Nyasaland to the E., Tanganyika and the Belgian Congo to the N., Angola and Bechuanaland to the W. The name derives from that of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), who succeeded in extending, from as early as 1890, British influence over these territories, whose extraordinary wealth he had discovered and whose certain future he had foreseen.

Rhodesia does not form a single, but two distinct political units: Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, separated by the course of the middle Zambezi, from Sambala to Zumbo. The former is almost twice the size of the latter and consists on the whole of a high plateau elevated on average above 1,000 m., in which vast depressed areas open up (the courses of the Zambezi, of its tributaries the Kafue and Luangwa, and of the Chambeshi-Luswula), while the more northern zones rise to above 2,600 m. Southern Rhodesia, enclosed between the Kalahari and the Inyangan Mountains, is likewise formed by a series of plateaus, which in the central zone remain at about 1,200 m. in height. The climate has a subequatorial character (but tempered by altitude), more pronounced in Northern Rhodesia, where the rains are also more copious and living conditions for whites less favorable owing to the presence of areas infested by malaria and the tsetse fly.

The recent colonization of Rhodesia has increasingly clearly revealed its immense and varied resources. Agriculture has good prospects, both for cereals and, even more, for coffee, tobacco, cotton, peanuts and fruit trees. Forestry too can yield good profits, but livestock raising assures even more (2.7 million head of cattle, in Southern Rhodesia), which already permits a large export of meat. But the true wealth of the two Rhodesias lies in the subsoil, which contains coal, gold, iron, silver, asbestos, tungsten, platinum, chromium (Southern Rhodesia), copper, zinc, lead, vanadium, tin, manganese (Northern Rhodesia), etc., in quantities and with locations such as to make foreseeable in the not distant future an industrial development of grandiose proportions. In fact, industries are already in full activity (steelworks, refineries, chemical products, fertilizers, textiles, etc.), but their more rational expansion is conditioned by the solution of the two essential problems of Rhodesia: the influx of labor and the availability of adequate outlets for production.

The indigenous population consists of Bantu Negroes, for the most part pagan. Europeans number fewer than 150,000, of whom barely 22,000 are in Northern Rhodesia. The inhabited centers are still sparse and small: only Salisbury and Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia exceed 50,000 inhabitants.

Northern Rhodesia is a protectorate with a governor appointed by the imperial government, who is the head of two councils, one legislative and one executive, partly elective; Southern Rhodesia, which has been a colony since 1923 and enjoys greater autonomy, tends toward the constitution of a Dominion to which, besides Northern Rhodesia, other units of British south-central Africa would eventually be joined.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

Present-day Southern R., in the second half of the 19th century, that is, when that part of Africa began to interest Europeans, was part of the indigenous kingdom of the Matabele and constituted an extremely important zone for further British expansion in the black continent. Its occupation by the Boers would in fact have shattered the British dream of uniting the Cape Colony and the Bechuanaland Protectorate with the English territories of East Africa and would have isolated the British possessions at the southern extremity of the continent. In fear that the Boers of the Transvaal might invade Matabeleland, Cecil Rhodes, through an emissary of his, Moffat, concluded in 1888 with Lobengula, king of the Matabele, a treaty by virtue of which the indigenous sovereign undertook not to cede his territories to others without English consent. Immediately the following year Rhodes obtained from the British government recognition of the British South Africa Company, of which he was one of the directors, and its purpose was the exploitation and administration of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. Its sphere of activity was vaguely determined as the region north of the Cape Colony and west of the Portuguese dominions of East Africa, but as early as 1891 the Company extended its influence north of the Zambezi River, and therefore into present-day Northern R. After the great Matabele revolt in 1896, white colonization developed in the R., favored by mineral wealth and the fertility of the soil. When the concession of the British South Africa Company expired in 1915, it was extended for another ten years because of the outbreak of the First World War, until in 1923 and 1924 the two R. received colonial status. Subsequently Southern R. achieved considerable political autonomy, which brought its condition close to that of a Dominion of the Commonwealth, and in 1948 the prime minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, took part in the conference of Commonwealth prime ministers in London. Northern R., whose borders were exactly determined in 1911, also passed under the direct dependence of the Crown, represented by a governor-general, assisted in his administrative action by an executive council. The discovery in 1931 of particularly rich copper deposits helped to encourage white immigration and brought to the fore the need for adequate measures for the indigenous population, both from the point of view of its participation in the government of the region and from that of favorable social legislation. At present the union of the two R. with the territory of Nyasaland is advocated. In 1944 the Central African Council was therefore created, composed of the governors of the three territories, the prime minister of Southern R. and nine members (three for each territory). In Feb. 1949, at a conference between representatives of the three territories, there was extensive discussion of the possibility of proceeding with the creation of a federation on the Australian model.

Silvio Furlani

III. EVANGELIZATION

The first missionary in present-day Southern Rhodesia, that is, in the Kingdom of Monomotapa, was the Jesuit Gonçalo da Silveira in 1560, who succeeded in converting the reigning prince and some chiefs. On 15 March 1561 he fell victim to the intrigues of the Mohammedans of the court. A punitive expedition undertaken in 1571 by the Portuguese failed. From 1577 the Dominicans of the convent of Mozambique brought the mission also into the Kingdom of Monomotapa. In 1607 the Jesuits joined them there. In 1628 there was a war between the Portuguese and the Monomotapa, won by the former led by the Dominican Luiz do Espiritu Santo, but in 1633 the Portuguese and the Dominicans were again massacred. In 1652 the Dominicans again succeeded in baptizing the reigning prince, but neither the Dominicans nor the Jesuits were able to establish Christianity in a stable manner in the territory of the Monomotapa, and in the 18th century the mission came to an end because of political complications and the suppression of the Society of Jesus.

The recent missionary activity of Rhodesia began in the course of the 19th century, in the south from 1879 through the work of the Jesuits, in the east by means of the White Fathers from 1895. In fact, in 1879 the Zambezi mission was entrusted to the Jesuits, which comprised present-day Southern and Northern Rhodesia, the northern part of Bechuanaland and the territories on the Zambezi of Portuguese East Africa. With great sacrifices, after more than ten years of work, they succeeded in establishing themselves in Southern Rhodesia. In 1893 the territory was occupied by the English, who in 1896 also put down the insurrections of the Matabele and the Mashona. The new situation allowed the apostolate greater progress. Later the Trappists of Mariannhill joined, who founded a missionary center at Triashill, and the Polish Jesuits who erected their stations in Northern Rhodesia, starting from Brokenhill. In 1915 the Zambezi Mission was elevated to an apostolic prefecture, in 1927 the northern part was detached as the apostolic prefecture of Brokenhill. In 1931 the prefecture of the Zambezi was erected into an apostolic vicariate under the name of Salisbury, and the western part was ceded to the Fathers of Mariannhill as the mission of Bulawayo. To the Polish Jesuits of Brokenhill were added in 1931 the Irish Capuchins and in 1938 the Italian Conventuals. In the southern part of Salisbury in 1938 the Swiss Missionary Society of Bethlehem entered the missionary field.

From 1895 in Northern Rhodesia, among the tribe of the Babemba, the White Fathers worked. Msgr. Giuseppe Dupont succeeded in obtaining great successes; indeed he was elected chief of the natives. Aided by well-trained catechists, he founded flourishing Christian communities. In 1913 the Babembaland was detached from the vicariate of Niassa and erected into the apostolic vicariate of Bangweolo, divided again in 1933 and 1937.

The present ecclesiastical division of Rhodesia is as follows: Southern Rhodesia: Bulawayo, 1931 Missio sui iuris, 1932 apostolic prefecture, 1937 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Congregation of the Missionaries of Mariannhill; Fort Victoria, 1946 apostolic prefecture, 1950 apostolic vicstolic, entrusted to the Society of Foreign Missions of Bethlehem (Switzerland); Salisbury, 1879 mission, under the name of Zambesi, 1915 apostolic prefecture, 1927 name of Salisbury, 1931 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Jesuits. Northern R.: Kasama, 1913 apostolic vicariate of Banguelo, 1952 under the name of Kasama, entrusted to the White Fathers; Fort Rosebery, 1952 apostolic prefecture; Fort Jameson, 1937 apostolic prefecture entrusted to the Missionaries of Africa; Livingstone, 1936 apostolic prefecture under the name of Victoria Falls, 1950 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Capuchins; Lusaka, 1927 apostolic prefecture under the name of Brokenhill, 1946 name of Lusaka, 1950 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Jesuits; Abercorn, 1913 Missio sui iuris of the Lwangwa, 1937 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Missionaries of Africa, 1951 name of Abercorn; Ndola, 1938 apostolic prefecture, 1949 apostolic vicariate entrusted to the Conventual Friars Minor.

Giovanni Rommerskirchen