Xwalile was at one time the

great wife Great Wife, otherwise appearing in West Africa as Senior Wife, is an honorific applied to contemporary royal and aristocratic consorts in states throughout modern Africa (e.g., Mantfombi Dlamini of eSwatini, who once served as the chief consort of ...

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 refere ...

, king of the Ndebele people in present-day

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 Mozam ...

. The dates of her birth and death are unknown, but she is known to have lived at least from the 1870s to the 1890s. Daughter of

Mzila King Mzila Nxumalo, Mzila kaSoshangane Nxumalo, Umzila, Muzila, or Nyamende was the son of Soshangane kaZikode, the founder of the Gaza empire, which at the height of its power stretched from southern Mozambique to the Limpopo River. He defeated hi ...

, king of the

Gaza people The Gaza were Nguni people who left what is now South Africa in the early 19th century and settled in Gazaland in what is now Southern Mozambique. An early leader was Soshangane Soshangana KaZikode (), born Soshangana Nxumalo, was the Founder ...

, Xwalile married Lobengula in 1879; seven other Gaza royal women married him in the same ceremony, which was designed as an exchange of royal wives. Conflict over the payment of

bridewealth Bride price, bride-dowry (Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dowr ...

soon caused trouble in the marriage, as did the fact that there was a dearth of Ndebele women who would marry Mzila in exchange. Furthermore, she proved to be infertile. Eventually Xwalile was forced to return home; she may in part have been driven away by witchcraft practiced against her by her sister-in-law Mncengence, who would be executed in 1880 for her behavior.

References

{{authority control Gaza Empire Ndebele 19th-century African people African queens