Lobengula Khumalo was the second and last official king of the Northern Ndebele people. Both names in the Ndebele language mean "the men of the long shields", a reference to the Ndebele warriors' use of the Nguni shield.
Matabeleland is a region located in southwestern Zimbabwe that is divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers and are further separated from Midlands by the Shangani River in central Zimbabwe. The region is named after its inhabitants, the Ndebele people who were called "Amatabele"(people with long spears – Mzilikazi 's group of people who were escaping the Mfecani wars). Other ethnic groups who inhabit parts of Matabeleland include the Tonga, Bakalanga, Venda, Nambya, Khoisan, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, and Tsonga. The population of Matabeleland is just over 20% of the Zimbabwe's total.
The Pioneer Column was a force raised by Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company in 1890 and used in his efforts to annex the territory of Mashonaland, later part of Zimbabwe.
The Northern Ndebele are a Mbo ethnic group native to South Africa who are an offshoot of the Southern Ndebele and they are concentrated in the Limpopo and North West provinces of South Africa.
The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in modern-day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the company's pioneers because he and his advisors were mindful of the destructive power of European-produced weapons on traditional Matabele impis attacking in massed ranks. Lobengula reportedly could muster 80,000 spearmen and 20,000 riflemen, armed with Martini-Henry rifles, which were modern arms at that time. However, poor training meant that these were not used effectively.
The Second Matabele War, also known as the Matabeleland Rebellion or part of what is now known in Zimbabwe as the First Chimurenga, was fought between 1896 and 1897 in the region later known as Southern Rhodesia, now modern-day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Matabele people, which led to conflict with the Shona people in the rest of Southern Rhodesia.
The Rudd Concession, a written concession for exclusive mining rights in Matabeleland, Mashonaland and other adjoining territories in what is today Zimbabwe, was granted by King Lobengula of Matabeleland to Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson, three agents acting on behalf of the South African-based politician and businessman Cecil Rhodes, on 30 October 1888. Despite Lobengula's retrospective attempts to disavow it, it proved the foundation for the royal charter granted by the United Kingdom to Rhodes's British South Africa Company in October 1889, and thereafter for the Pioneer Column's occupation of Mashonaland in 1890, which marked the beginning of white settlement, administration and development in the country that eventually became Rhodesia, named after Rhodes, in 1895.
The military history of Zimbabwe chronicles a vast time period and complex events from the dawn of history until the present time. It covers invasions of native peoples of Africa, encroachment by Europeans, and civil conflict.
Allan Wilson was an officer in the Victoria Volunteers. He is best known for his leadership of the Shangani Patrol in the First Matabele War. His death fighting overwhelming odds made him a national hero in Britain and Rhodesia.
Patrick William Forbes (1861–1918) was a leader of the paramilitary British South Africa Police, who commanded a force that invaded Matabeland in the First Matabele War.
White people first came to the region in southern Africa today called Zimbabwe in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese colonials ventured inland from Mozambique and attacked the Kingdom of Mutapa, which then controlled an area roughly equivalent to eastern Zimbabwe and western Mozambique. Portuguese influence over Mutapa endured for about two centuries before fading away during the 1690s and early-1700s (decade). During the year of 1685, French Huguenots emigrated to present-day South Africa and whilst some settled there, others moved further north into the continent. Those who did, settled within modern-day Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana, and co-existed with the indigenous people; most of whom, in Zimbabwe, were the Naletale people.
Shangani Patrol is a war film based upon the non-fiction book A Time to Die by Robert Cary (1968), and the historical accounts of the Shangani Patrol, with Brian O'Shaughnessy as Major Allan Wilson and Will Hutchins as the lead Scout Frederick Russell Burnham. Also includes the song "Shangani Patrol" by Nick Taylor.
The Ballantyne Novels are a series of novels published between 1980 and 1984 by Wilbur Smith. They chronicle the lives of the Ballantyne family, from the 1860s to the 1980s against a background of the history of Rhodesia.
The Shangani Patrol was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in pre-Southern Rhodesia, during the First Matabele War. Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland, Rhodesia. Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called "Wilson's Last Stand", achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, similarly to events such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Battle of the Alamo in the United States.
Mthwakazi is the traditional name of the proto-Ndebele people and Ndebele kingdom and is in the area of today's Zimbabwe. Mthwakazi is widely used to refer to inhabitants of Matebeleland Province in Zimbabwe.
A Falcon Flies is a novel by Wilbur Smith. It was the first in a series of books known as The Ballantyne Novels.
Men of Men is a novel by Wilbur Smith, the second in the Ballantyne Novels series. It is set in the 1880s during the colonisation of Rhodesia and the First Matabele War and climaxes with the Shangani Patrol.
The Leopard Hunts in Darkness is a novel by Wilbur Smith set in the early days of Zimbabwe's independence and is the fourth in Wilbur Smith's series about the Ballantyne family of Rhodesia.
The Battle of the Shangani took place on 25 October 1893 during the First Matabele War in what is now Zimbabwe. A British column was attacked during night by a large force of Matabele warriors. The British repulsed them with a heavy loss of life to the Matabele force. The battle is noted for being the first battle in which the Maxim gun played an important role.
The House of Khumalo is the reigning Royal Family of the former Mthwakazi Kingdom. The Mthwakazi Kingdom was founded in 1823 by Mzilikazi kaMatshobana. While the Mthwakazi Kingdom ended in 1894 with the First Matabele War, The house has endured to the present day.
