The Sunday Mail
Tendai Chara
Concession Hill is one of the busiest roads in Chegutu. Trucks heavy-laden with gold ore negotiate dangerous curves, their drivers dodging recklessly-driven pirate taxis that ferry panners to and from mining claims further up the road. As one approaches Pickstone Mine, 23km from Chegutu, a small but densely forested hill springs into view. Known as Concession Hill, this landmark is of historical significance and yet remains fairly unknown to the generality of Zimbabweans.
Locals believe this is where King Lobengula’s indunas and British colonial magnate Cecil John Rhodes’ agents held the first of a series of meetings that led to Zimbabwe’s invasion.
Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson led the party that paved the way for the Rudd Concession that led to the colonisation of this country.
This is the colonial equivalent of Golgotha.
Chief Ngezi Mupawose, under whose jurisdiction Concession Hill falls, said: “It is a known fact that the actual Rudd Concession was signed in Bulawayo. However, the first meeting between Cecil John Rhodes’ agents and King Lobengula’s indunas was held here. This is a historical fact that has never been disputed and a good number of people are not aware of.”
Seventy-one-year-old Sekuru Avira Musinami, who has lived in the area since 1961, said the place was of historical importance.
“The Concession Hill story is one of the few historical accounts which are undisputable. Both oral and written historical accounts point to this hill as the place where initial contact between Rhodes’ agents and King Lobengula began.”
Rhodes set his sights on mineral and farmland-rich Southern Africa following the continent’s partitioning by Europe.
Bent on invading the territory, he duped the black population in Zimbabwe via the Rudd Concession of October 30, 1888 which gave him commercial and legal powers, including sole rights to mine countrywide.
Rudd misled King Lobengula into believing Rhodes had British government support and that the concession would guarantee his kingdom protection from other colonialists.
Although the King dispatched envoys to protest to Queen Victoria, it was too late. Five years later, Rhodes annexed the country.
An account by William “Curio” Hervey Brown, a hunter who was collecting wildlife skins and skeletons for the Smithsonian Museum in the 1880s, chronicles a meeting between Rhodes’ representatives and King Lobengula’s indunas at Concession Hill.
Hervey Brown’s account makes references to the exact location and geographical features.
The National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe has requested more time to verify the accuracy of the accounts.
