Matabeleland South

Matabeleland South is the dry south-west of Zimbabwe between the Matobo Hills and the Limpopo, the land the Ndebele king Mzilikazi made his own in 1840 and where the war of 1896 was fought out in the granite hills south of Bulawayo. Those hills hold more than 3,000 registered rock art sites and the Njelele rain shrine, and its two border towns carry most of the traffic in and out of the country. It also carries the memory of Gukurahundi, the killings of the 1980s.

1. 1055 to 1400

   At Mapela Hill, 90 km north-west of Mapungubwe, farmers built stone terrace walls from the 11th century, with an elite living inside the walls and commoners outside, nearly 200 years earlier than Mapungubwe, which was long assumed to be the first kingdom in southern Africa. The site suggests the Zimbabwe culture of walled hill capitals grew in more than one direction rather than in a single line. source

2. about 1425 to 1683

   After Great Zimbabwe faded, the Kalanga kingdom of Butua ruled the south-west from Khami under the Torwa dynasty, the source of gold for Arab and Portuguese traders, who called it the Mother of Gold. Around 1683 Changamire Dombo conquered it and went on to found the Rozvi state, with its capital at Danamombe. source

3. 1830s

   Armies fleeing the wars in Zululand broke the Rozvi state. Nyamazana's Ngoni overran Danamombe around 1835, and the king, Chirisamhuru, was killed on the road to Manyanga. An Ndebele group reached the upper Mzingwane valley in 1839, and Mzilikazi's forces then invaded what was left; the Rozvi royal houses submitted one by one and paid tribute in young men, receiving cattle in return. The last to hold out, Tohwechipi, surrendered after a long siege in 1866. source

4. 1888 to 1890

   On 30 October 1888 Lobengula, Mzilikazi's son and successor, put his mark to the Rudd Concession, giving Cecil Rhodes's three agents exclusive mining rights over Matabeleland, Mashonaland and beyond in return for 1,000 Martini-Henry rifles, 100,000 rounds, a steamboat on the Zambezi and 100 pounds a month. Lobengula tried to disown it, but it became the basis of the royal charter for the British South Africa Company in October 1889 and of the Pioneer Column's occupation of Mashonaland in 1890, which began white settlement. source

5. 1893 to 1904

   The company's columns entered Bulawayo on 4 November 1893, the day after Lobengula burnt it and fled north. A patrol under Major Allan Wilson crossed the Shangani River late on 3 December to catch him and found the king's wagon but not the king; by morning they were surrounded, and the 34 men who stayed were all killed, while three sent back for help got across the flooded river. Lobengula died of smallpox in January 1894. Rhodes wanted the patrol to lie beside him at World's View in the Matobo Hills, and in 1904 their remains were moved there, where a memorial was unveiled that July. source

6. 1896 to 1902

   In March 1896 the Ndebele rose against company rule, the war Zimbabweans call the First Chimurenga, and after the siege of Bulawayo was lifted some 50,000 people fell back into the Matobo Hills, where the fighting was hardest. The American scout Frederick Burnham shot a priest in a Matobo cave whom the British took for the Mlimo, the voice of the war; who he really was is still disputed. Rhodes then walked unarmed into the hills to talk the leaders into peace. He asked in his will to be buried in the Matopos, and was, in 1902, with Ndebele chiefs giving him the royal salute at the graveside. source

7. 1974

   Matabeleland was split into North and South in 1974. The new province, 54,172 km² and about 14 percent of the country, took Gwanda as its capital, with Beitbridge as its largest town. It sits on the edge of the Kalahari and lives mostly off subsistence and livestock farming, and droughts and the lack of work have pushed people out of it ever since. source

8. 1983 to 1987

   Gukurahundi, the Fifth Brigade's campaign against Ndebele and Kalanga civilians and anyone taken for a supporter of Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU, began in Matabeleland North in January 1983 and spread here and to parts of the Midlands. Bhalagwe camp near Kezi and Maphisa was notorious as a detention and torture centre, and bodies were dropped down disused mine shafts. Scholars put the dead at 20,000 or more. The Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 merged ZAPU into ZANU-PF and brought what scholars call peace without reconciliation; the 1983 Chihambakwe Commission report was never made public. In 2000 Robert Mugabe called it a moment of madness. source

People

The 2022 census counted 760,345 people in Matabeleland South, fewer than any other province, Bulawayo city apart, in 193,328 households. They live across seven rural districts (Beitbridge, Bulilima, Mangwe, Gwanda, Insiza, Matobo and Umzingwane) and the three towns of Gwanda, Beitbridge and Plumtree. source

Mwali and the rain shrines

Njelele, a cave shrine in the Matobo Hills about 100 km south of Bulawayo, is where the voice of Mwari (Mwali), the Almighty, was once heard. Pilgrims may only go in August and September, before the rains, and its priests came from Venda and Kalanga families. Lobengula kept Mwali mediums at his Bulawayo settlement, and Joshua Nkomo was among the liberation leaders who consulted the shrine. The voice was last heard in 1974. Pointing at the shrine was taboo, and visits without permission are believed to bring poor rains. source

Cattle and gold

Gwanda was founded in 1900 as a settlement of European gold miners and prospectors and named after the nearby hill of Jahunda. It is still a hub for the province's cattle ranching, with gold, asbestos and chrome mines around it, and it is dry, with long hot summers, short cool winters and regular drought. Most people in town are Ndebele, with Shona and Sotho families among them. source

Plumtree School

Plumtree School began in 1902 in a rondavel in the garden of Mr and Mrs S. J. Smith, whose nine children were its first pupils, set up by the Railway Mission for the children of the men working on the line north. Classes moved to the dining room of the Plumtree Hotel and then to the customs house before it got its own ground. It began enrolling girls in 2016 and now has around 500 pupils on about a square kilometre of land on the Botswana border. source