Between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers lies Matabeleland.

This was one of many regions where, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, individuals, corporations, communities, and sovereigns became tangled up in the claims of one another.

This chapter is concerned with the legal and political ramifications of this activity, constricted to Matabeleland, foregoing treatment in any detail of the surrounding geopolitical complexity.^[1256] Matabele represents a slight corruption of the plural of Ndebele, amaNdebele, who made up the predominant nation of the Matabeleland region. All were united under a single leader known as Lobengula. All amaNdebele, and, as he claimed, neighbouring amaShona, fell under his supreme rule. His was an inherited empire comprised largely of the conquests of his father Mzilikazi, who with death in 1868 vacated his throne. From 1870, ruling from Bulawayo and Umvutcha, Lobengula assumed his great

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father's mantle.

Lobengula reigned as �king' over his people, as Europeans liked to analogise. His kraal was seen as a royal council, made up of izinDuna (plural of inDuna, who was typically an appointed leader with military experience or political perspicacity). The presence of the British crown was institutionally more scat­tershot. The High Commission at Cape Town was given charge of administer­ing the Cape Colony, while gathering information from beyond its borders from collaborators, who were usually either missionaries, settlers, and semi­official �residents'. The office of High Commissioner, as representative of the British crown in southern Africa, remained at all times obedient to the direc­tives of the Colonial Office in London, which was an arm of the civil service responsible to parliament in Westminster, and obedient to whatever legisla­tion that emanated from there or the crown more directly. Weaving itself into this administrative web was the British South Africa Company, a corporation which operated under a royal charter, and derived therefrom exclusive rights of trade, basic administrative capabilities, and the power to raise police forces. Settlers were of two sorts. There were those who were subjects of the British crown, organised into communities under this administration, and gradually acquired degrees of self-government from the British crown every few years in the 1890s, with fullest autonomy not coming until 1923 (or 1965, depending on one's perspective).

This chapter identifies and describes some of the different legal personali­ties laying claims to the African region at the end of the nineteenth century. In that sense, this material is meant to complement recent studies in intellectual history that reveal how the voids of the public legal imagination came to be filled up, in Europe, with analogies drawn to people in flesh and blood. In the years between 1857 and 1939, polities beyond Europe were each allotted their places on a �roll call of abstract legal personae', while corporations, as fictitious persons, were allowed to conduct themselves abroad like states.^[1258] This was a legal mentalite peculiar to the heavily industrialised and imperially competi­tive circumstances of Europe.^[1259] Whenever this mentalite was channelled in contemplation of the political communities of Africa, what often followed was the prying away of these polities from their economic resources. This occurred in Matabeleland. Lobengula, a king observed by lawyers in Cape Town to enjoy just enough of the trappings of partial sovereignty to be treated with publicly, was met by official representatives of a foreign states, some of whom derived their authority from metaphors and abstract nouns. At the same time, Loben- gula was confronted by representatives of groups fashioned into fictitious enti­ties, agents who then advanced their proprietary claims against those of other competitors. Then he disappeared - he was likely killed - and replaced by a hybrid administration of the British crown and corporation.

Lobengula was not the only African sovereign to be swindled by contracts and conmen amid the scramble for Africa.^[1260] Still it may be more appropriate to speak in this context - if not for many others - of concessions and corporations. A distinction of this kind is subtle but needful. A contract refers to the consen­sual agreement of private interests within recognisable jurisdictions where remedies exist for neglect or misperformance. A concession was the instru­ment optimised in the nineteenth century for unconventional transactions between foreign interests and local interests in pluralistic settings where the distinction between public law and private law was thin. To the extent that this chapter is concerned with concessions, much less interest will be shown to the equity of interests and performance of obligations signalled within them, than will be shown to their consequences as contested documents of conveyance and recognition. The narrative that unfolds will show how an African king be­came disconnected from his own kingship, opening up a vacuum that was to be filled up by a corporation carrying just enough attributes of a public law entity that it was able to evade regular private law jurisdiction.

Finally it is shown how a number of old disputes - over concessions and corporations - resurfaced to make their way into the courts of London. So far from Matabeleland, an extraordinary blending of anthropological and consti­tutional language took place in consideration of Matabeleland and its history within these courts. That international legal thought was dismissive of African sovereignty in order to prepare the way for future European domination is un- controversial to historians. This chapter shows international legal thought at work with a little more nuance. In the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, it was used to disqualify historic African sovereignties, in order to reconfigure the political relationship between a crown, a corporation, and a settler com­munity, so that the ongoing domination of subordinated Africans by this set­tler community could be justified into the future.

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