e life, assuming the lifestyle and social philosophy of their hosts, and in the case of young men being drafted into the army.
There are many students of amaNdebele military history who point to this moment as the beginning of the end of the amaNdebele military formation as it had previously been known. There are many reasons for this, namely the complacency that would inevitably have marked Mzilikazi himself as he began to age, the lack of a viable opposing force against which to maintain a high level of battle readiness, and the increasing dependence of regiments made up wholly of Mashona captives, or amaHoli, among whom discipline was noticeably lower and social standards perhaps less rigid. It would be interesting here to quote the observation of a Matabeleland Native Commissioner noticing the decline of the Ndebele after the white occupation of the country.
The ordinary native of this country is the dirtiest and laziest of his race I have ever encountered. They have no respect for themselves, no morals, no idea of truth and no sense of shame…Instead of being raised in the scale by the advent of the Zulus [Ndebele] with their good morals and cleanly customs, [they] have dragged the conquering race down to their own level.[v]
While this attitude fairly reflects the early colonial view that the amaNdebele were the most ‘leonine of mortals’ as Moffat saw them, and the Mashona the ‘dirtiest and laziest of his race’, there is no smoke without fire, and without doubt the amaHoli regiments reduced the extremely high standards upon which the amaNdebele army had up until then survived. It was also inevitable that in due course the amaHoli would come to outnumber both the abeZanzi, those of pure Nguni stock, and the abEnhla, or those of Sotho stock from the Transvaal period. It has been said that Mzilikazi attempted to compile and accurate census of the abeTshabi, but the process was thwarted by senior members of his inner circle who feared a public revelation of the degree to which the Zanzi had become outnumbered by their subjects. What the amaNdebele were reluctant to acknowledge the Native Department later confirmed in an official census conducted soon after the occupation, that the majority of amaNdebele were in fact abeTshabi and amaHoli.[vi]
Mashonaland, which can be defined broadly as those parts of present day Zimbabwe not at that time physically occupied by the amaNdebele, was raided regularly, while the immediate hinterland of Matabeleland was completely razed. Raiding was selective and defined by an annual rotation in order that it remain sustainable. Those groups that enjoyed sufficient numbers or political cohesion, and who might muster practical resistance, as well as others who lived in difficult or unhealthy terrain, became subject groups and paid tribute rather than suffer the direct impact of raiding.
Mzilikazi had in the meanwhile not dispensed with the notion of grand campaigning, and neither had he reached a point where he was content to let other powerful leaders go about their business without trying to bring them under the amaNdebele heel. Thus Mzilikazi brooded over the repulse he had suffered at the hands of Sebitoane and the Makololo living along the upper reaches of the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers. The land approaching the Zambezi Valley was prone to Tsetse fly which precluded any settlement on the part of cattle loving people, however Mzilikazi was determined to stamp his mark on the Makololo, and to this end he mobilized and impi of several thousand men and sent them north to engage and scatter the sons and daughters of Mantatisi.
By then Sebitoane had abandoned the unhealthy countryside spanning the Zambezi/Chobe confluence in favour of the highlands of the Kafue where he was effectively beyond the reach of amaNdebele force. In days before bridges and ferries a river the breadth of the Zambezi was a significant obstacle, and although a nation could traverse piecemeal by canoe the transportation in unified formation of a large expeditionary force such as amaNdebele impi could not be undertaken with 