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Matabeleland
Map of Zimbabwe with Matabeleland highlighted
Coordinates:17°50′S31°3′E / 17.833°S 31.050°E /-17.833; 31.050
Country	Zimbabwe
Founded by	Ndebele people
Population  (2,633,247)
• Total	130,899 square kilometres (50,540 sq mi)

Matabeleland is a region located in southwesternZimbabwe that is divided into three provinces:Matabeleland North,Bulawayo, andMatabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between theLimpopo andZambezi rivers and are further separated from Midlands by the Shangani River in central Zimbabwe. The region is named after its inhabitants, theNdebele people whowere called "Amatabele"(people with long shields – Mzilikazi 's group of people who were escaping the Mfecani wars). Other ethnic groups who inhabit parts of Matabeleland include theTonga,Bakalanga,Venda,Nambya,Khoisan,Xhosa,Sotho,Tswana, andTsonga.

The capital and largest city isBulawayo, other notable towns arePlumtree,Victoria Falls,Beitbridge,Lupane,Esigodini,HwangeGwanda andMaphisa.^[1] The land is fertile but semi arid. This area has coal and gold deposits. Industries include gold and other mineral mines, and engineering. There has been a decline in the industries in this region as water is in short supply due to scarce rainfall. Promises by the government to draw water for the region through theMatabeleland Zambezi Water Project have not been carried out, continuing water shortages.^[2]

Part ofa series on the
History ofZimbabwe
Ancient history Leopard's Kopje c. 650 – c. 1075 Mapungubwe Kingdom c. 1220 – c. 1300 Zimbabwe Kingdom c. 1300 – c. 1450 Mutapa Kingdom c. 1430–1760 Butua Kingdom c. 1450–1683
White settlement pre-1923 Rozvi Empire c. 1660–1866 Mthwakazi 1840–1893 Rudd Concession 1888 BSA Company rule 1890–1923 First Matabele War 1893–1894 Second Matabele War 1896–1897 World War I involvement 1914–1918 Colony of Southern Rhodesia 1923–1965 World War II involvement 1939–1945 Malayan Emergency involvement 1948–1960 Federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953–1963 Rhodesian Bush War 1964–1979 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) 1965 Rhodesia 1965–1979 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia June–December 1979 Lancaster House Agreement December 1979 British Dependency 1979–1980 Zimbabwe 1980–present Gukurahundi 1982–1987 Second Congo War 1998–2003 Coup d'état 2017
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Around the 10th and 11th centuries, theBantu-speaking Bakalanga/vakaranga arrived from the south and settled inMapungubwe on the Limpopo and Shashi river valleys. Later they moved north to Great Zimbabwe. By the 15th century, the Bakalanga/vakaranga had established a strong empire atKhami under a powerful ruler calledDlembeu. This empire was split by the end of the 15th century and were later conquered by the Nguni people.

In the late 1830s, Mzilikazi Khumalo, led a group ofNguni and other ethnic groups from present-day South Africa into theRozvi Empire of theBakalanga. Many of the Bakalanga people were incorporated to create a large state calledNdebele Kingdom. Mzilikazi, a former general underShaka, organised this ethnically diverse nation into a militaristic system of regimental towns and established his capital atBulawayo ("the place of killing"). Mzilikazi was a statesman of considerable stature, able to weld the many conquered tribes into a strong, centralised kingdom.

In 1840, Matabeleland was founded.^[3]

In 1852, theBoer government in theTransvaal made a treaty with Mzilikazi. Gold was discovered in northernNdebele in 1867. The area, settled by the Zezuru people, remnants of the Mwenemutapa kingdom, while the European powers increasingly became interested in the region. Mzilikazi died on 9 September 1868, near Bulawayo. His son,Lobengula, succeeded him as king. In exchange for wealth and arms, Lobengula granted several concessions to the British, but it was not until twenty years later that the most prominent of these, the 1888Rudd Concession gaveCecil Rhodes exclusive mineral rights in much of the lands east of Lobengula's main territory. Gold was already known to exist, but with the Rudd concession, Rhodes was able in 1889 to obtain a royal charter to form theBritish South Africa Company.

In 1890, Rhodes sent a group of settlers, known as thePioneer Column, into Mashonaland where they founded Fort Salisbury (nowHarare). In 1891 an Order-in-Council declared Matabeleland andMashonaland Britishprotectorates. Rhodes had a vested interest in the continued expansion of white settlements in the region, so now with the cover of a legal mandate, he used a brutal attack by Ndebele against the Shona near Fort Victoria (nowMasvingo) in 1893 as a pretext for attacking the kingdom of Lobengula. Also in 1893, a concession awarded to Sir John Swinburne was detached from Matabeleland to be administered by the BritishResident Commissioner of theBechuanaland Protectorate, to which the territory was formally annexed in 1911 and it remains part of modernBotswana, known as theTati Concessions Land.

The first decisive battle was fought on 1 November 1893, when alaager was attacked on open ground near the Bembesi River by Imbizo and Ingubo regiments. The laager consisted of 670British soldiers, 400 of whom were mounted along with a small force of native allies, and fought off the Imbizo and Ingubo forces, which were considered bySir John Willoughby to number 1,700 warriors in all. The laager had with it smallartillery: 5Maxim guns, 2 seven-pounders, 1Gardner gun, and 1Hotchkiss gun. The Maxim machine guns took center stage and decimated the native force at theBattle of the Shangani.

Although Lobengula's forces totaled 8,000 spearmen and 2,000 riflemen, versus fewer than 700 soldiers of theBritish South Africa Police, the Ndebele warriors were not equipped to match the British machine guns.Leander Starr Jameson sent his troops toBulawayo to try to captureLobengula, but the king escaped and leftBulawayo in ruins behind him.

An attempt to bring the king and his forces to submit led to the disaster of theShangani Patrol when a NdebeleImpi defeated aBritish South Africa Company patrol led by MajorAllan Wilson at theShangani river in December 1893. Except forFrederick Russell Burnham and two other scouts sent for reinforcements, the detachment was surrounded and wiped out. This incident had a lasting influence on Matabeleland nationalism and spirit of resistance and the colonists who died in this battle are buried atMatobo Hills along with Jameson andCecil Rhodes. In whiteRhodesian history, Wilson's battle takes on the status ofGeneral Custer's stand atLittle Big Horn in the United States. The Matabele fighters honoured the dead men with a salute to their bravery in battle and reportedly told the king, "They were men of men and their fathers were men before them."

Lobengula died in January 1894, under mysterious circumstances; within a few short months the British South Africa Company controlled Matabeleland, and white settlers continued to arrive.

In March 1896, the Ndebele revolted against the authority of the British South Africa Company in what is now celebrated inZimbabwe as the FirstChimurenga, i.e., First War of Independence. Mlimo, the Ndebele spiritual/religious leader, is credited with fomenting much of the anger that led to this confrontation. He convinced the Ndebele that the white settlers (almost 4,000 strong by then) were responsible for the drought, locust plagues and the cattle diseaserinderpest ravaging the country at the time.

Mlimo's call to battle was well-timed. Only a few months earlier, the British South Africa Company's Administrator General for Matabeleland, Leander Starr Jameson, had sent most of his troops and armaments to fight theTransvaal Republic in the ill-fatedJameson Raid. This left the country's security in disarray. In June 1896, the Shona too joined the war, but they stayed mostly on the defensive. The British would immediately send troops to suppress the Ndebele and the Shona, only it would take months and cost many hundreds of lives before the territory would be once again be at peace. Shortly after learning of the assassination of Mlimo at the hands of the American scoutFrederick Russell Burnham,Cecil Rhodes walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold inMatobo Hills and persuaded the impi to lay down their arms, thus bringing the war to a close in October 1896.^[4] Matabeleland and Mashonaland would continue on only as provinces of the larger state of Rhodesia.

It was in Matabeleland during theSecond Matabele War thatRobert Baden-Powell, who later became the founder of theScout Movement, and the youngerFrederick Russell Burnham, the American born Chief of Scouts for the British Army, first met and began their lifelong friendship.^[5] Baden-Powell had already, in 1884, published a book called "Reconnaissance and Scouting". In mid-June 1896, while scouting in theMatobo Hills, Burnham passed on to Baden-Powell aspects ofwoodcraft he had acquired in America, and it was during this time with Burnham that perhaps the seeds were sown for the program and the code of honour eventually crystallised in Baden-Powell's 1899 "Aids to Scouting for NCOs and Men" and his later (1908) "Scouting for Boys", which was written after his experience of how useful and reliable the boys atMafeking had been.^[6] Practiced byfrontiersmen of theAmerican Old West andIndigenous peoples of the Americas, woodcraft was generally unknown to the British. These skills eventually formed the basis of what is now calledscoutcraft, the fundamentals ofScouting. Baden-Powell recognised that wars in Africa were changing markedly and theBritish Army needed to adapt; so during their joint scouting missions, Baden-Powell and Burnham discussed the concept of a broad training programme in woodcraft for young men, rich in exploration,tracking,fieldcraft, and self-reliance. It was also during these scouting missions in the Matobo Hills that Baden-Powell first started to wear his signaturecampaign hat like the one worn by Burnham.^[7] Later, Baden-Powell wrote a number of books on Scouting, and even started to train and make use of adolescent boys, most famously during theSiege of Mafeking, during theSecond Boer War.^[8][9][10]

British settlement of Rhodesia continued, and by October 1923, the territory of Southern Rhodesia was annexed to the Crown. The Ndebele thereby becameBritish subjects and the colony received its first basic constitution and first parliamentary election. Ten years later, the British South Africa Company ceded its mineral rights to the territory's government for £2 million. The deep recession of the 1930s gave way to a post-war boom of British immigration.

After the onset of self-government, a major issue in Southern Rhodesia was the relationship between the white settlers and the Ndebele and Shona populations. One major consequence was the white settlers were able to enact discriminatory legislation concerning land tenure. The Land Apportionment and Tenure Acts reserved 45% of the land area for exclusively white ownership. 25% was designated "Tribal Trust Land", which was available to be worked on a collective basis by the already settled farmers and where individual title was not offered.

In 1965, the white government of Rhodesia, led by Prime MinisterIan Smith, unilaterally declared independence from Britain – only the second state to do so, the other being the United States in 1776. Initially, the state proclaimed its loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II as "Queen of Rhodesia" (a title to which she never consented), but by 1970 even that link was severed, and Rhodesia claimed to be an independent republic. This was not recognised by any other state in the world; legally, Rhodesia remained a British colony.

The ruling white Rhodesian government did not gain international recognition and faced serious economic problems as a result of sanctions. Some states, such as South Africa andPortugal, did support the white minority government of Rhodesia. In 1967, theZimbabwe African People's Union began a lengthy armed campaign against Rhodesia's white minority government in what became known as the "Bush War" by White Rhodesians and as the "SecondUmvukela" (orrebellion inNdebele language) by supporters of the rebels. The Shona, backed by China, set up a separate war front from neighbouring Mozambique.

The Rhodesian government agreed to a ceasefire in 1979. For a brief period, Rhodesia reverted to the status of British colony, until early 1980 when elections were held. The ZANU party, led by the Shona independence leaderRobert Mugabe, defeated the popular Ndebele candidateJoshua Nkomo, solidified their rule over independentZimbabwe. The former state of Matabeleland and Mashonaland now exist as provinces of Zimbabwe.

Following independence in 1980, Zimbabwe initially made significant economic and social progress,

Gukurahundi was a series of alleged massacres of people inhabiting areas largely populated byNorthern Ndebele people (formerly known as Matabele). They are said to have been carried out by some military elements mainly alleged to be a now disbanded fifth brigade, a paramilitary force that was trained in North Korea, from early 1983 to late 1987. TheInternational Association of Genocide Scholars estimates that more than 20,000 people were killed and have classified the massacres as a genocide.^[11] The government has repeatedly destroyed local plaques commemorating the massacres.^[12]

By early 1984, these military elements are alleged to have disrupted food supplies in the Matabeleland regions where some inhabitants in the affected areas suffered food shortages.Robert Mugabe andJoshua Nkomo finally reconciled their political differences by late 1987. The roots of discord remained, however, and in some ways increased as Mugabe's rule became increasingly autocratic into the 21st century.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 1990s, a Land Acquisition Act was passed, calling for the Mugabe government to purchase mostly white-owned commercial farming land for redistribution to native Africans.^{[citation needed]} Greater Matabeleland has rich central plains, watered by tributaries of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, allowing it to sustain cattle and consistently produce large amounts of cotton and maize.^{[citation needed]} Butland grabbing, squatting, and repossessions of large commercial farms under Mugabe's program resulted in a 90% loss in productivity in large-scale farming, ever higher unemployment, and hyperinflation.^{[citation needed]}

• ZAPU
• Kalanga
• Gwanda
• Matopos
• Hwange
• Victoria Falls
• Bulawayo
• Joshua Nkomo
• Matabeleland football team

• Beneath the Zanu PF, MDC feud – notes for Mbeki Newzimbabwe.com(George Mkhwananzi)
• The History of the Ndebele people {Zimbabwe}
• "Free State of Matabeleland"

19°49′48″S28°09′36″E / 19.8300°S 28.1600°E /-19.8300; 28.1600

• British South Africa Company
• Former British colonies and protectorates in Africa
• Former countries in Africa
• Former monarchies of Africa
• Geography of Zimbabwe
• Regions of Africa
• Subdivisions of Zimbabwe

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