IN September 1893, makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living, the invasion of Matabeleland to complete the Christian occupation of Zimbabwe kicked off.
The first battle in that campaign was fought at Shangani on October 25 1893 in the first quarter yemwedzi weMbudzi of that year.
Th Maxim machine gun, invented and patented for colonial conquest, by Anglo-American inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, was first used in battle for that purpose at Shangani.

The weapon of mass destruction had been test-run by Henry Morton Stanley, in the genocide commissioned by Belgian King Leopold to establish his Congo Free State.
The second battle in the invasion of Matabeleland was fought at Mbembesi on November 1 1893, the second quarter yemwedzi weMbudzi.
The enemies would return to Pupu on the same Shangani for the third and last battle on December 4 1893. The spirits would have returned from matare emwedzi weMbudzi. It was at Pupu that Mtshana Khumalo, the equivalent of commander defence forces of the Matabele army, caught the settler-forces without the maxim machine gun and wiped out the 34-man Allan Wilson Patrol. The fight had been a decoy deployed to make Lobengula escape capture by the settler-forces.
It is important to note that patterns in the history of Zimbabwe show that the Shangani River is an action hotspot; a place of sorrow.
On an unknown date in 1882, Pasipamire, the medium of Chaminuka, had been assassinated by a Matabele impi around the same Shangani.
And, 80 years into the future, another great physician, Zimbabwe’s first black doctor in Western medicine who was also the first Vice-President of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), Tichafa Samuel Parirenyatwa, would be assassinated around the same Shangani on August 14 1962. His body was found in car wreckage at a railroad crossing named Heaney Junction after Maurice Heaney, a colonial brute of American extraction.
Barely a month later, in September of the same season of memory in 1962, makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living, ZAPU would be banned and go underground after only nine months of existence. Until that ban, ZAPU had been a Patriotic Front concept replicating previous inter-tribal alliances of which the first one had been in the First Chimurenga. (The interim ones would be the Youth League led by James Dambaza Chikerema and the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress and National Democratic Party both led by Joshua Nkomo.)
The first Patriotic Front, in all but name, had been the one mobilised by Mukwati to fight British occupation in 1896. Mukwati had been the spirit medium of Torwa who had led the breakaway group that went westwards and founded what would become the Rozvi Empire after the collapse of Great Zimbabwe. The breakaway group that went north to found the Mwenemutapa Empire had been led by Mutota.
The first Patriotic Front in 1896 had come apart during the indabas in the Matopos when commanders of the Ndebele resistance chapter of the war chose to negotiate with Rhodes. 
Interestingly, the point person who made it possible was Nyambezana, widow of Mzilikazi who had founded the Ndebele Kingdom. Nyambezana had been a woman commander in Zvangendaba’s army. She had remained behind when Zvangendaba proceeded north after damaging the Rozvi might. It is Nyambezana’s unit that had killed Chirisamhuru, the last Rozvi mambo at Ntabazikamambo. The strange coincidence is that the same woman who had brought about the end of the Rozvi Empire would be instrumental in bringing about the effective end of the Ndebele Kingdom that had replaced the western section of it. It is Nyambezana whom Rhodes used to mobilise and convince the Khumalo commanders of the Ndebele forces of the First Chimurenga to stop fighting and negotiate.  
There were a total of six indabas to resolve the First Chimurenga in Matabeleland. The first four were held in the Matobo Hills and all of them during the season of conflict makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living.
The first was on August 21 1896. The second was on August 28. The third was on September 9 while the last was on October 31 1896. During the fourth indaba, the Ndebele indunas accepted positions in the BSAC colonial administration and that was the end of the Matabele chapter of the First Chimurenga — the end of the first Patriotic Front. For records’ sake, the fifth and sixth indabas were in Bulawayo and respectively held on January 5 and June 23 1897.

In the interim, in Mashonaland, Paramount Chief Chingaira Makoni had been defeated on September 3 1896 and executed by firing squad at 0:15am on September 4 1896 in the same season of memory, makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living. Lieutenant Fichat, who prosecuted and ordered the killing, got promoted to captain and was himself killed by Chief Svosve in the same war.
Gumboreshumba, the spirit medium of Kaguvi, a critical leader of the fight in Mashonaland, was captured on October 27 1897 in the first quarter yemwedzi weMbudzi with the spirits sitting matare to review the preceding year which had been gore rehondo.
The break-up of the first Patriotic Front in the First Chimurenga would be echoed in the ‘first’ break-up of the Patriotic Front of the Second Chimurenga. The hardliners in ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo, who preferred to negotiate with the settler-forces broke away to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) that preferred war. ZANU was launched on August 8 1963 at the beginning of the season of conflict makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living.
To be continued…