e 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 certainly the weight of anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that it was, it is a fact hardly to be marvelled at. How else could a people in the twilight of their magnificence, battered relentlessly from first one side and then another, respond? Their best blood was either shed or stolen, after which they were culturally smashed into tiny fragments. If they became obsequious, ingratiating, callow and underhand they were simply reflecting the traits best suited to survival under those circumstances. Even just the simple use of the a general appellation by the amaNdebele to describe their neighbours is an indication how little thought they gave. That the Europeans who came later did likewise, initially regarding the mass of the ChiShona language group as Makalanga, and recording fanciful and often hopelessly ill-informed orthographies and anthropological divisions, also implies a general lack of interest or respect for a once great people.
Like their Zulu brethren, however, the amaNdebele have always tended to be regarded by their subjects as being tough and aggressive, but also insensitive, unintelligent and lacking in any particular individuality or creativity. Among the great achievements of the Mwane Mutapa and associated political and social groupings was the recognition to a greater or lesser extent the merits of individual achievement. This may have been in trade, the arts, theocracy or politics, and as such the wealth and creativity of a nation was unlocked, evidenced in no more startling an example than the fabulous achievement of the walled city now known as Great Zimbabwe. In the early days of the occupation Europeans went to great length to debunk the notion that the Mashona could possibly have been responsible for the construction of this edifice, preferring to attribute the ruins to fanciful theories involving the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon’s mines, lost tribes of Israel and other only slightly more plausible hypothesis.
The Mashona were made up of closely allied groups who spoke a language that differed f