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Njelele Shrine
The Njelele Shrine is a cave which is of significant spiritual importance in Zimbabwe; pilgrims visit it annually for ritual purposes prior to the beginning of the rain season. The shrine is inside a cave that is located in the Matobo Hills (which is a world heritage center) in the Khumalo communal area approximately 100 kilometres south of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city. The shrine is found in a solid granite kopje which is not different from a plethora of others that are in the vicinity. The outthrust of this shrine is situated on a mountain range that runs westwards. The shrine has "three naturally hidden entrances that wind up and down among overhang granite boulders." The cave is not the main feature of Njelele but the gallery in the rocks. It is also endowed with a number of small tunnels, which lead to the shrine's various chambers from the narrow entrance which is between two tall rocks. Njelele is mainly known as the rain-making shrine however, it is visited for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matobo Hills
The Matobo National Park forms the core of the Matobo or Matopos Hills, an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2 billion years ago with granite being forced to the surface, this has eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Matopo/Matob was named by the Lozwi, who are the ancestors of Kalanga. A different tradition states that the first King , Mzilikazi Khumalo when told by the local residents that the great granite domes were called madombo he replied , possible half jest, "We will call them matobo" - an IsiNdebele play on 'Bald heads'. The Hills cover an area of about 3100 km² (1200 sq mi), of which 424 km² (164 sq mi) is National Park, the remainder being largely communal land and a small proportion of commercial farmland. The park extends along the Thuli River, Thuli, Mtshelele Riv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Ndebele Language
Northern Ndebele (), also called Ndebele, isiNdebele saseNyakatho, Zimbabwean Ndebele or North Ndebele, associated with the term Matabele, is a Bantu language spoken by the Northern Ndebele people which belongs to the Nguni group of languages. As a start and to give some context, Ndebele is a term used to refer to a collection of many different African cultures in Zimbabwe. It perhaps by default became a 'language' (for lack of better word) spoken predominantly by the descendants of Mzilikazi. As a language, it is by no means similar to the Ndebele language spoken in kwaNdebele in South Africa although, like many Nguni dialects, some words will be shared. Many of the natives that were colonized by the Matabele were assimilated into Mzilikazi's kingdom to create a version of isiZulu. The Matebele people of Zimbabwe descend from followers of the Zulu leader Mzilikazi (one of Zulu King Shaka's generals), who left the Zulu Kingdom in the early 19th century, during the Mfecane, arr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Africa
The history of Africa begins with the recent African origin of modern humans, emergence of hominids, archaic humans and — around 300–250,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans (''Homo sapiens''), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. The earliest known recorded history Classical African civilization, arose in Ancient Egypt, and later in Nubia, the Sahel, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa. Following the desertification of the Sahara, North African history became entwined with the Middle East and Southern Europe while the Bantu expansion swept from modern day Cameroon (Central Africa) across much of the sub-Saharan continent in waves between around 1000 BC and 1 AD, creating a linguistic commonality across much of the central and Southern continent. During the Middle Ages, Islam spread west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing the Maghreb and the Sahel. Some notable pre-colonial states and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balancing Rocks
The Balancing Rocks are geomorphological features of igneous rocks found in many parts of Zimbabwe, and are particularly noteworthy in Matopos National Park, and near the township of Epworth, to the southeast of Harare. Notable rocks The Domboremari, also known as the Money Rock, is a formation of three boulders that form part of the Chiremba Balancing Rocks on the northwestern outskirts of Epworth (coordinates: ): this particular rock formation is notable because it appears in all Zimbabwean banknotes issued since 1981, and is also the prominent feature of the logo of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is the central bank of Zimbabwe and is headquartered in the capital city Harare. History The bank traces its history to the Reserve Bank of Rhodesia, founded on 22 May 1964, but which succeeded the Bank of Rhodesia .... References {{Zimbabwe-struct-stub Harare Landforms of Zimbabwe Rock formations of Africa Geography of Harare Province ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) is a Zimbabwean organisation established by former guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) who served during the Rhodesian Bush War. While not considered a state entity, the ZNLWVA is dependent on funding and support from Zimbabwe's ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). In 2005, the government looked into ways to make members of the organisation part of the army of Zimbabwe. History The ZNLWVA was formed in April 1989 by disgruntled former ZANLA and ZIPRA personnel, many of whom felt that they had received insufficient rewards for their wartime service. During the Rhodesian Bush War, a number of the guerrillas and their supporters had been led to believe that they would receive land expropriated from the country's White people in Zimbabwe, white minority in the event of a military or political victory. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kalanga People
The Kalanga or Bakalanga are a southern Bantu ethnic group mainly inhabiting Matebeleland in Zimbabwe, northeastern Botswana and Limpopo Province in South Africa. They are historically related to the Nambya, Karanga, Bapedi and Venda. Current day BaKalanga people are descendants of the Leopard Kopje’s people who greatly influenced civilization in the Southern sphere of the African continent. BaKalanga history shows and tells us that they are the builders of the Mapungubwe Empire which was Southern Africa’s first uniform Kingdom. From Mapungubwe they were also part of the Karanga Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe (Nzimabwe,or Nzi we Mabwe-TjiKalanga language). Upon the fall of the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom they went on to build the Khami ruins found in today’s Matebeleland Province in Zimbabwe and lastly proceeded on to occupy the Domboshaba (Botswana) and Njelele (Zimbabwe) shrines. Kalanga people also believe in rainmaking rites like their BaLobedu and VhaVenda counterparts as wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venda People
The Venḓa (VhaVenḓa or Vhangona) are a Southern African Bantu people living mostly near the South African-Zimbabwean border. The history of the Venda starts from the Kingdom of Mapungubwe (9th Century) where King Shiriyadenga was the first king of Venda and Mapungubwe. The Mapungubwe Kingdom stretched from the Soutpansberg in the south, across the Limpopo River to the Matopos in the north. The Kingdom declined from 1240, and power moved north to the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom. The first Venda settlement in the Soutpansberg was that of the legendary chief Thoho-ya-Ndou (Head of the Elephant). His royal kraal was called D’zata; its remains have been declared a National Monument. The Mapungubwe Collection is a museum collection of artefacts found at the archaeological site and is housed in the Mapungubwe Museum in Pretoria. Venda people share ancestry with Lobedu people and Kalanga people. They are also related to Sotho-Tswana peoples Sotho-Tswana and Shona groups. All these t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. The stone city spans an area of and could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak, giving it a population density of approximately 2,500 per square kilometre. It is recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Great Zimbabwe is believed to have served as a royal palace for the local monarch. As such, it would have been used as the seat of political power. Among the edifice's most prominent features were its walls, some of which are eleven metres high. They were constructed without mortar (dry stone). Eventually, the city was abandoned and fell into ruin. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lobengula
Lobengula Khumalo (c. 1845 – presumed January 1894) was the second and last official king of the Northern Ndebele people (historically called Matabele in English). Both names in the Ndebele language mean "the men of the long shields", a reference to the Ndebele warriors' use of the Nguni shield. Background The Matabele were descendants of a faction of the Zulu people who fled north during the reign of Shaka following the ''mfecane'' ("the crushing") or ''difaqane'' ("the scattering"). Shaka's general, Mzilikazi led his followers away from Zulu territory after a falling-out. In the late 1830s, they settled in what is now called Matabeleland in western Zimbabwe, but they claimed sovereignty over a much wider area. Members of the tribe had a privileged position against outsiders whose lives were subject to the will of the king. In return for their privileges, however, the Ndebele people both men and women had to submit to a strict discipline and status within the hierarchy. Tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Peoples
The Bantu peoples, or Bantu, are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. They are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the people of Rwanda and Burundi (25 million), the Bagandapeople of Uganda (10 million as of 2019), the Shona of Zimbabwe (15 million ), the Zulu of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare. The second largest city is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 15 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona language, Shona, and Northern Ndebele language, Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu peoples, Bantu people (who would become the ethnic Shona people, Shona) built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe which became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century, controlling the gold, ivory and copper trades with the Swahili coast, which were connected to Arab and Indian states. By the mid 15th century, the city-state had been abandoned. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, fol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
