Northern Ndebele people

The Matabele, also called amaNdebele ( Ndebele ), are a product derived from cleavage of the Zulu Bantu people in Zimbabwe.

Their historical importance, if not owe the emergence of the Matabele Mfecane, the migration of peoples in southern Africa in the early 19th century. The ethnic group broke up under the leadership of general Mzilikazi of the constituting itself under the rule of King Shaka Zulu.

On her train westward, they came into the area around the later Pretoria in contact with the Tswana, who gave them the name Matabele. They moved differently than the South African Ndebele further north in the area of ​​today's Zimbabwe, where they conquered the Shona.

Between 1834 and 1893 there was a sovereign Matabele kingdom. His last king Lobengula. The kingdom was conquered in 1893 by the led by Cecil Rhodes British South Africa Company, and finally destroyed by the British West Africa Corps in the suppression of the Matabeleaufstandes 1896.

In today's Zimbabwe, the Ndebele provide between one sixth and one fifth of the population. That they both are minority in Zimbabwe, winner of the last pre-colonial state and for the majority of the population were foreign conquerors, led there by the end of the white regime to considerable tensions. The Shona -dominated government of Robert Mugabe has dealt with these tensions with violent suppression of the Ndebele; 1982-1987 killed at least 10,000 Ndebele. In October 1999, Mugabe offered compensation to gain more support from the ethnic group.