ABSTRACT
Populated principally by the Shona and Ndebele peoples of southern Africa, Zimbabwe is located on a high plateau bounded by the Limpopo River and South Africa to the south, Mozambique to the east, the Zambezi Paver and Zambia to the north, and Botswana to the west. T h e Shona peoples, a m o d e r n designation for linguistically related groups such as the Zezuru, Manica, Karanga, Ndau, and Korekore, constitute about 70 percent of the population of about eleven million and are culturally dominant, while the Zulu-related Ndebele in the southwest constitute about 16 percent of the population; other African groups and a small number of whites make up the remainder. British colonial rule created the nation later to be k n o w n as Southern Rhodesia in 1890, and the borders of the m o d e r n nation were established shortly thereafter. T h e minority white settler population declared Southern Rhodesia independent from Britain in 1965, prompting a black guerrilla struggle that won majority rule for the new Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980.
