Year of the Uprising

by Stanlake Samkange

(African Writers Series 190)

A messenger brings the news that Lobengula had, before his death, instructed him to bring back his sacred headring to Matabeleland so that a new king can be appointed and the Matabele can be reunited after their defeat. Their despair at the loss of their lands gives way to a sense of purpose as the individuals gather to see their chief and word goes round that the time for rebellion is near - The great uprising of the Matabele and Mashona in 1896.

Genres: African Literature, Africa

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Stanlake John William Thompson Samkange (1922–1988) was a Zimbabwean historiographer, educationist, journalist, author, and African nationalist. He was a member of an elite Zimbabwean nationalist political dynasty and the most prolific of the first generation of black Zimbabwean creative writers in English.
Samkange was born in 1922 in Zvimba, Mashonaland West Province, in the British southern African colony of Rhodesia. He was the son of the Reverend Thompson Samkange, a Methodist minister and nationalist politician, and his wife, Grace Mano, a Methodist evangelist. The family lived in Bulawayo, Matabeleland and in Mashonaland during Samkange’s childhood. He took his higher education at Adams College in Natal, South Africa and the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (the first institution of higher learning in Africa that was open to Africans).

He graduated with honors from Fort Hare in 1948 and returned to Rhodesia to become a teacher. While pursuing his teaching career he began to make plans for Nyatsime College, a secondary school to be controlled by blacks rather than government or missionaries. The school, which opened in 1962, provided academic, technical and commercial education for Africans. He was deeply involved in the liberal politics of Southern Rhodesia during the 1950s and 1960s, but became disillusioned when he realized that the white minority in Rhodesia would reject any multiracial options for government in the colony.

Samkange moved to the United States where he took further education at the Indiana University at Bloomington. After earning his Ph.D. from that institution, he worked as a journalist and then opened a public relations firm. He also taught African history at various universities in the U.S. and in 1978 he was professor of African American studies at Northeastern University, Boston.