ABSTRACT
Matabeleland had been occupied by various unwarlike and pastoral tribes, some being of Swazi and others of Basuto origin, who belonged to an older period of Bantu invasion than the Zulus and Bechuanas of the south. The Matabele were not the original possessors of their present country, but were interlopers. The founder of the tribe, Mziligazi, son of Matshobana, of the Kumalo clan, was one of the principal captains of Tshaka, the Napoleon of the ama-Zulu peoples, a man of great military genius and of bloodthirsty ferocity, who built up a nation by ruthless coercion of the adjacent tribes. The “religion” of the Matabele, like that of all other Bantu tribes, consists in a belief in the active existence of the spirits of their departed ancestors, and finds expression in superstitious observances based on that belief. The Mlimo superstition was tolerated, and to a certain extent employed, by the Matabele after their arrival in the country.
