The First Matabele War

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The First Matabele War was fought between the British Empire, represented by the British South Africa Company, and the Northern Ndebele kingdom. The war ended with the defeat of the Ndebele, the death of their king Lobengula, and the conquest of their kingdom.

The Northern Ndebele kingdom was founded in the early 19th century, during the Mfecane. The Mfecane was a series of migrations, wars, and upheavals in southern Africa sparked by the conquests of the Zulu king Shaka.

Shaka was a military innovator and conqueror who founded the Zulu Empire, centered in what is now the eastern South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Shaka unified and conquered surrounding communities to form the Zulu Nation in the early 19th century.

One of Shaka’s generals, Mzilikazi, rebelled against the Zulu king. When Mzilikazi was defeated by Shaka, he fled northward, with his followers, into what is now Zimbabwe. There Mzilikazi used Shaka’s military tactics to conquer the local Shona people and establish the Northern Ndebele, or Matabele, kingdom. Mzilikazi named his capital Bulawayo, after Shaka’s capital in the Zulu kingdom. The Shona people who had previously lived in Zimbabwe were the descendants of the people who had built the large stone-walled towns of the medieval gold-mining kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.

Mzilikazi was succeeded by his son, Lobengula. It was during Lobengula’s reign that Europeans began to encroach on the Northern Ndebele kingdom’s territory. Gold and diamonds were discovered in what is now South Africa in the mid-19th century, attracting the attention of British capitalists and imperialists like Cecil Rhodes.

The British South Africa Company, formed to exploit the mineral riches of southern Africa, came into conflict with the Northern Ndebele as they began to move into what is now Zimbabwe. After defeating the Ndebele in the war, the British established the colony of Rhodesia. Rhodesia later became an independent white-run country, but its government faced an armed rebellion by the black majority. In the early 1980s the former guerrillas, led by Robert Mugabe, took control of the government and renamed the country Zimbabwe.