any sort of tactical security. This was particularly so when, upon hearing that the amaNdebele had arrived in a mood for war, the Makololo army rushed to the north shore of the Zambezi and confront the amaNdebele with a barrage of lively insults.
Confronting this problem the amaNdebele contracted the local river dwelling baTonka communities to ferry the army across the river by canoe. This extremely unsound plan was devised to be conducted in stages. Most were transported across to a island midstream and left there for the boatmen to return for the next party who were to join their comrades the following day. The stranded men where abandoned overnight, however, and with no means to get back to shore they began to starve. After the death of almost all, the survivors were rescued by the Makololo and returned to Sebitoane as recruits. The significantly weakened impi on the south bank turned for home, but was now a target for lesser tribes, and unable to plunder arrived back to report on the disaster in a state of utter depletion.
This ill fated expedition, defeated without a drop of enemy blood being spilled, was a reverse on the scale of the defeats Mzilikazi had been delivered by the hand of the Griqua and the Boer. This was the last of his great military adventures, and a somewhat chastened despot settled into the security and plenty of his new situation with never a thought being given to territorial expansion beyond what currently existed as occupied territory and vassal states.
[i] Child, Harold, History of the amaNdebele, (Department of Internal Affairs, Rhodesia, 1968) p1
[ii] Rayner, William. The Tribe and Its Successors: An Account of African Traditional Life and European Settlement in Southern Rhodesia. (Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1962) p71
[iii] Child, Harold, History of the amaNdebele, (Department of Internal Affairs, Rhodesia, 1968) p1
[iv] Shattered Nation p26
[v] Ranger, T.O. Nature & Culture in the Matopos, (James Curry, Oxford, Baobab Books Harare, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999), p46
[vi] Shattered Nation p 28