Matabele Kingdom
While Mzilikazi was generally friendly to European travellers, he remained mindful of the danger they posed to his kingdom and in later years he refused some visitors any access to his realm. The many European travellers who met with Mzilikazi include Robert Moffat the missionary, David Hume the explorer / trader, Andrew Smith the medical doctor, ethnologist and zoologist, William Cornwallis Harris the hunter and the missionary explorer David Livingstone.
During the tribe's wanderings north of the Limpopo Mzilikazi became separated from the bulk of the tribe who gave him up for dead and hailed his young heir Nkulumane as successor. However, on his reappearance after a traumatic journey through the Zambezi valley, Mzilikazi asserted control and had his son and all those chiefs who had chosen him put to death. They were all executed by being cast over a steep cliff of a hill now called Ntabazinduna (Hill of the Chiefs). He made his capital 5 km away and named it Gu-Bulawayo which means "place of slaughter". King Shaka's capital was also called Bulawayo.
Read more about this topic: Mzilikazi
Famous quotes containing the word kingdom:
“A lifetime [or, eternity] is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)