ce, and once established in Matabeleland the only enemy at hand for the most part were the hapless Mashona upon whom testing battles could hardly be fought. The fact that the amaNdebele from then on enjoyed almost universal tactical superiority in every direction is perhaps not saying a great deal.
When the amaNdebele arrived in what would later become Matabeleland those already resident immediately fled or took refuge. Behind them lay their ripening crops and other resources upon which the incoming refugees survived as they established themselves in an ostensibly strange lands. The landscape was not wholly strange, however, for although most who arrived ahead of Mzilikazi had never been in the country, nor met any of the inhabitants, raids had over recent years been mounted in the region and spoils returned to the Transvaal. Even if the amaNdebele were therefore not altogether familiar with the land and the people, the people were entirely familiar with the amaNdebele, and knew precisely what to expect.
It is also worth remembering that this expectation had already been met, for the Shangaan under their powerful leader Shoshangane had settled some eight years earlier in the highlands east of the mid-Sabi River and had been ranging far west into the central plateau on expeditions of loot and plunder. These followed an identical pattern to the amaNdebele of seizing what and whom was needed and laying to waste to the rest. Thus a powerful force began to emerge that in due course came to occupy the region of Gaza in present day Mozambique. A kind of accommodation of equals was forged between the amaNdebele and Shangaan upon the arrival in the south of the latter, and caught somewhat between a hammer and an anvil the comparatively inoffensive peoples of the central plateau became spear fodder and a general source of sustenance for both.
Added to this the third powerful centrifuge of the great wars fought in Natal too had its claim to lay on the Mashona. Yet another petty chieftain made good, the leader of the Ndwandwe clan of Jere, Zwangendaba, also chose as a route for his exodus the region of southern Mozambique. As they moved northwards the Ngoni lingered for several years in the Gaza region and added much to the bloodshed and general derangement underway. In about 1831 a war was fought between the Ngoni and the Shangaan which resulted in defeat for the Ngoni. This forced the nomadic hordes briefly southwest and into the heartland of the dwindling Rozvi nation. There they destroyed utterly the last vestiges of the once mighty Changamire empire, before surging north to fall upon the tribes of the Lake Nyasa region with a fury now established as the formula of the three fugitive Nguni kings. One section of the Ngoni however remained in the region of the central plateau, existing under the leadership of a woman named Nyamazana, or Antelope, who merged her formation with the amaNdebele in due course and became herself one of Mzilikazi’s wives.[iv]
This is a somewhat simplified map of the movements and conflagrations that took place in the region at that time, and serves only to indicate that the arrival of the amaNdebele north of the Limpopo was simply part of a much larger pattern of tribal dislocation. It also serves to illustrate the pressures being borne by the Mashona who had in centuries past, and in relative isolation, flourished as a great and powerful political entity in their own right. Again this is an over simplification, for the rise and fall of the empires of the central plateau were complex and were formed on a foundation of trade pioneered first by Arabs and later by the Portuguese. This compared to the amaNdebele that had almost no experience of the finesse of international relations, and certainly could claim little trade sophistication other than the basic barter of ivory and other primary products for beads and blankets. However the amaNdebele held the view, a view adopted later by early white colonists, that the Mashona were a largely disreputable, disunited and ignoble race.
If this was true, and certain