Pioneer Column

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Officers of the Pioneer Corps, c1890.

The Pioneer Column was a force raised by Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company in 1890 and used in his efforts to annex the territory of Mashonaland, later part of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The column consisted of a Pioneer Corps of 180 men, accompanied by a paramilitary police force (later christened the British South Africa Police) of 300 together with various mining prospectors; it was commanded by Major Frank Johnson and guided by the hunter Frederick Selous.

The Column's route began at Macloutsie in Bechuanaland on 28 June 1890 and proceeded north-east and then north over a distance of about 650km towards an open area explored by Selous a few years earlier that he called Mount Hampden. However, the column halted about 15km before that at a naturally flat and marshy meadow bounded by a steep rocky hill; (today's Harare Kopje) on 12 September. The British union flag was hoisted on the following day (later celebrated as a Rhodesian public holiday).

Three towns were founded; the first in early August at the head of a gentle route that led up from the low altitude area known as the Lowveld (named Providential Pass), called Fort Victoria (renamed Masvingo in 1982); the second at Fort Charter on a plateau halfway to the terminus of the column at the originally named Fort Salisbury.^[1]

The Column was set up to exploit the provisions of a treaty of 1888, the Rudd Concession, between Rhodes' British South Africa Company (on behalf of Queen Victoria in the text) and the sovereign power in the region at the time, Matabele King Lobengula. This treaty gave Rhodes the rights to mining and administration (but not settlement as such) in the area of Mashonaland which was ruled by the King by use of coercion and murderous raids involved tribute-taking and abduction of young men and women.

The Pioneer Corps was officially disbanded on 1 October 1890 and each member was granted land on which to farm.

[edit] Consequences

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The effects of the Pioneer Column were immense. With one act the destiny of the territory was changed forever. Mashonaland and Matabeleland ceased to be the poorly developed backwaters they had slipped into since the subsidance of the Mwenemutapa state about 500 years earlier and were irreversibly propelled into alignment with the world of the capitalist Christian West. A new elite snatched control from the Iron Age monarchy which had formerly held sway and retained power through demonstration of overwhelming technological superiority along with a towering confidence in its achievements. A new moral order was also imposed that has dramatically altered the culture and beliefs of the indigenous people.