ly 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 from one end of the realm to the other only in dialect. Thus an Ndau speaker from Chimanimani could easily understand another speaking the dialect of the Korekore in the northeast, or a Zezuru speaker living in the vicinity of Chief Harare where the capital of Zimbabwe is now sited. On the whole the various Mashona groups pursued a similar lifestyle as agriculturalists and herders, failing most of the time to fall under any leadership that could be regarded as central. Inter-tribal or clan warfare was rare, and on the whole the broad outlook of life was uniform, and the various groups were peaceful and tolerant of one another. They were, and remain highly creative, with developed art forms in terms of sculpture, art, dance and song, and in particular in the use of such instruments such as drums, mbira and marimba.
By comparison the amaNdebele show a striking lack of cultural expression. There is little art or music that has been uniquely developed by the amaNdebele of Zimbabwe, being primarily a martial society their expression was in war and military display. Individual creativity and expression tended to be brutally discouraged while no means for social advancement existed outside the pleasure and patronage of the king. War was the supreme expression of the nation and a kind of dull aristocratic expectation defined an existence that required nothing more elaborate than brute force to secure itself. In the world of the Mashona these men were like foxes in a chicken coop, and by using their innate military cohesion and vastly superior tactical ability they were able to do what they did best, achieving their most spectacular results thus far as a predatory nation.
As usual the twin objectives of amaNdebele raiding were cattle and slaves. Cattle added to the rapidly increasing wealth of the nation while slaves added to the strength of manpower. Mashona slaves were marched home and either claimed directly by Mzilikazi or allocated to their individual captors. As such they were acculturated and absorbed into amaNdebel