C.D. Bell’s illustration of Mzilikazi receiving Robert Moffat and Andrew Smith at Mosega.
Under their leader Mzilikazi, originally of the Khumalo clan, the people who came to be called the Ndebele moved from present-day KwaZulu-Natal in order to expand their zone of power westwards – not, as usually has been thought, as a result of Zulu aggression. They headed northwards, eventually settling in and controlling approximately the same area as what later became the Transvaal. From the mid-1820s, they embarked on a process of state-building.
Small in number at first, the Ndebele expanded by
Mzilikazi and his warriors dancing.
incorporating conquered peoples into their ranks. Indeed, during the whole of its brief ten-year period of militaristic existence, the Ndebele state was one of raiding and conquering local communities. These were incorporated into Ndebele society as servants, soldiers or client communities located on the periphery of Ndebele settlements. This was partly a defensive tactic, to protect the Ndebele from possible Griqua and Kora raids, and from the Zulu, who coveted Mzilikazi’s increasing cattle herds.
Ndebele towns and military outposts were located mainly in the Mosega Basin on the upper Madikwe River. In the east, cattle posts extended from the upper Odi River to the Pilanesberg mountains. The average population of an Ndebele town was about 700 people. Apart from military preoccupations in every Ndebele settlement, food production by women was also a major undertaking.
After the Griqua/ Ndebele confrontations of 1829 and 1831, a scientific explorer from the Cape, Dr Andrew Smith, linked up with the London Missionary Society’s Robert Moffat at Kuruman, and travelled together to Mosega where Mzilikazi expressed his wish to have white missionaries and traders in his kingdom. Mzilikazi also established diplomatic relations with the Cape authorities.
In 1833 he moved northwest, settling between the Marico (Madikwe) and Crocodile rivers. During their occupation of the Madikwe valley, the Ndebele were preoccupied with defence against external aggressors and establishing ‘proper’ political relations with their subject communities. Mzilikazi was extremely sensitive to armed parties entering his kingdom, especially from the south, from where he thought danger was most likely to come. When the Ndebele were eventually displaced from the highveld by the Voortrekkers in 1837, they trekked over the Limpopo River to present-day Zimbabwe.
