Arnoud Quanjer Wildlife Photography

Map of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, and formerly Republic of Rhodesia, is a landlocked country in the southern part of the continent of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It borders South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east. The name Zimbabwe derives from "dzimba dzemabwe" meaning "houses of stone" in the Shona language. Its use as the country's name is a tribute to Great Zimbabwe, site of the capital of the Munhumutapa Empire.

Iron Age Bantu-speaking peoples began migrating into the area about 2,000 years ago, including the ancestors of the Shona, who account for roughly four-fifths of the country's population today. By the middle ages, there was a Bantu civilization in the region, as evidenced by ruins at Great Zimbabwe, a Shona-speaking state. Around the early 10th century, trade developed with Muslim merchants on the Indian Ocean coast, helping to develop Great Zimbabwe in the 11th century. The state traded gold, ivory, and copper for cloth and glass. It ceased to be the leading Shona state in the mid-15th century. In 1837, the Shona were conquered by the Ndebele, who forced them to pay tribute. Later, in the 19th century, British and Boer traders, missionaries, and hunters started encroaching on the area.

In 1888, British imperialist Cecil Rhodes extracted mining rights from King Lobengula of the Ndebele. The following year, he obtained a charter for the British South Africa Company, which conquered the Ndebele and their territory and promoted the colonization of the region's land, labour, and precious metal and mineral resources. In 1895, the territory was named "Rhodesia" after Cecil Rhodes. Both the Ndebele and the Shona staged unsuccessful revolts against the encroachment on their native lands in 1896 and 1897. Both the Ndebele and Shona became subject to the Rhodes administration. This was the beginning of a larger settlement of white settlers, that also led to the land distribution favouring whites and displacing both the Shona and Ndebele and other black people. The land issue in Zimbabwe remains a controversial issue to this day. In 1911, the territory was divided into Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia, the latter becoming a self-governing British colony in 1922. In 1953, the two parts of Rhodesia were reunited together with Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, but this dissolved in 1963. The same year, Ian Smith's regime declared Unilateral Independence from Britain and Southern Rhodesia was renamed to Rhodesia.

Information courtesy of Wikipedia.com