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For some time the Company's agents avoided direct contact with the Matabele people, confining their activities mainly to the region inhabited by the Mashonas who acknowledged Lobengula's overlordship. Here they proceeded to mine, to lay out settlements, and to build forts. But friction of a minor kind seems to have been constant.

Eighteen months passed. In May, 1891, the British Government, by Order in Council, assumed the powers of a Protectorate "within the parts of South Africa bounded by British Bechuanaland, the German Protectorate, the Rivers Chobe and Zambesi, the Portuguese possessions, and the South African Republic." Matabeleland and Mashonaland were comprised within this area. It might have been assumed that this action would have secured for the native inhabitants of the country the guidance and protection in their external relations to which, as protected subjects of the Crown, they were thenceforth entitled, and which the British Government was morally bound to extend to them. But four months later we find the official representative of the British Government at Buluwayo (Mr. Moffat) an assenting party to a transaction by which the unfortunate Matabele ruler completed his undoing and that of his people. By this transaction, known as the Lippert Concession, Lobengula made over to a German banker of that name settled in the Transvaal, acting in association with an Englishman called Renny-Tailyour: