Who is mzilikazi

Captives were vital to the growth of the population, female captives of childbearing age contributed children. Male captives were recruited into the army, particularly child captives, as they would grow up culturally aligned to the amaNdebele way of life.

As the amaNdebele kingdom grew by assimilation of other people came the danger of being overrun culturally and so the amaNdebele established social structures in which absorbed people learnt and conformed to the amaNdebele culture. Mzilikazi settled initially at Inyati, but then moved to Mhlahlandlela , the site of which is today marked by the memorial featured below and erected to his memory in He incorporated the remains of the Torwa Empire with its centres at Khami, Danamombe, Nalatale and Zinjanja, then invaded the Rozwi Empire and incorporated many of the Rozvi people, although many smaller tribes joined the amaNdebele nation voluntarily because it would offer them protection from their enemies.

Others became satellite territories who paid annual tribute to the amaNdebele Kingdom. Annual raiding parties visited Mashonaland and extorted tribute of cattle. The discovery of gold in caused Mzilikazi great concern as he feared it would lead to the invasion of his country by the Boers and others seeking mineral rights.

With his health fast failing, he ordered his Indunas to resist any gold exploration and retired into the Matobo hills where at the kraal of Emanxiweni , he died 5 th September and was buried at Entumbane.

His son, Lobengula , succeeded him as King of the amaNdebele. The memorial is built beneath the tree where Mzilikazi held court, met many of the early European travellers to this country and conducted the affairs of state. The tree features in the photo taken by Lyn Mullin below when the tree was still alive behind the national monument. King Tshaka saw Mzilikazi as a future potential threat and therefore hatched a plot to get rid of Mzilikazi.

Unfortunately for King Tshaka , his plot did not produce his desired results. Mzilikazi then decided to setup his own kingdom. Links in this Section. Bulawayo has some wonderful places that you can visit. You can preview some, see Bulawayo in Pictures. If you are in Bulawayo these are the Bulawayo tourist attractions and the things to keep in mind. Mzilikazi, King of the Matebele. With nothing more than five hundred men and women, Mzilikazi departed from King Tshaka 's Zululand, by this time Mzilikazi was already had three sons, but none of these could be the heir to the throne.

In accordance with Ndebele customs, successors to the throne could not come from children the Mzilikazi bore before he was King. Thus Nkulumane was the heir. Meanwhile on learning of Mzilikazi exodus, King Tshaka sent two army contingents to stop him.

Although Shaka's program of conquest and expansion commonly involved the elimination of members of former chiefly houses, Mzilikazi received specially favored treatment and seems to have been left, after the destruction of the Ndwandwe ca.

In , after endangering his position by refusing to surrender to Shaka certain cattle captured in a raid, Mzilikazi fled Zululand. With a few hundred warriors he began a career of conquest that contributed to the Difaqane, a violent upheaval among the South African chiefdoms of the interior, which produced political consolidation in certain areas but left much of the central plateau practically uninhabited.

Shifting westward, in stages, across the Transvaal, Mzilikazi eventually settled at Mosega on the Marico River. These moves gave him greater geographical security and enhanced his power. By piecemeal conquest and absorption of Transvaal Sotho groups and by incorporating Nguni refugees from Zululand, his Ndebele state became the dominant power on the "highveld," with an army trained and regimented on the Zulu pattern. However, unlike the Tswana, the Ndebele seldom built stone walls around their kraals.

Rather, these were laid out according to the traditional Zulu pattern, with circular parallel fences of thickly interwoven branches Carruthers , p. The beehive-shaped huts were then placed in the space between the two parallel fences.

This design formed a very effective barrier to anyone seeking to capture cattle from the Ndebele. Each of these settlements typically contained a few thousand cattle and several hundred people. Within a few years of their arrival in the Magaliesberg region and the subjugation of the communities there, the Ndebele population had grown to tens of thousands, and there were dozens of Ndebele kraals on the lower slopes of the Magaliesberg. Three of the largest of these — generally known as amakhanda, or military kraals -- also served as residences of Mzilikazi.

They were Kungwini, at what is today called Wonderboompoort north of Pretoria, Dinaneni just north of Silkaatsnek, and Hlahlandlela, which was the largest of the settlements. The exact location of Hlahlandlela is uncertain Carruthers , pp.

In addition, there were many other Ndebele settlements in the area north of the Magaliesberg between Magatasnek and Wonderboompoort. One of these, near Rustenburg, has been located and surveyed by Dr Julius Pistorius Pistorius a and Pistorius b. Archaeological evidence also points to a strong military role for this site.

This is seen, for example, in the presence of large numbers of whetting stones that were used for sharpening spears Pistorius b, p. Despite having moved significantly further north, the Ndebele were still subjected to cattle raiding by the Korana and their Griqua allies.

Like the Korana, the Griqua, with their Khoikhoi and Dutch ancestry, were skilled in the military use of horses and firearms. One of the most significant raiding expeditions against Mzilikazi took place in , under a Griqua commander by the name of Gert Hooyman.

The expedition was initially successful, and thousands of cattle were captured.