Rozvi Empire

For about a century and a half, the strongest power on the Zimbabwean Plateau was the Rozvi state, a Shona kingdom founded by the warlord Changamire Dombo around 1683. Its armies drove the Portuguese off the plateau, and its kings, the Changamire dynasty, ruled from Danamombe in what is now Zimbabwe. Weakened by drought and civil war, it was overrun during the upheavals of the 1830s and finally subdued in 1866.

In the early seventeenth century the Mutapa Empire became a Portuguese vassal, and Portuguese estate-holders on the plateau raided and enslaved their Shona neighbours with little restraint. From the late 1660s, locusts, smallpox, measles and famine added to the misery. In this setting Dombo, probably a Mutapa official who used the royal cattle herds to win followers, rose to power in the 1670s. His followers took the name Rozvi, usually linked to a Shona verb meaning to destroy or plunder.

Around 1683 Dombo moved south-west and conquered the wealthy kingdom of Butua, whose people, the Kalanga, were absorbed into the new state. In 1693 his forces attacked the Portuguese market town of Dambarare, killing its inhabitants, and Portuguese traders abandoned the plateau. In 1695 he invaded Manyika, and he died around 1696.

The king, or mambo, governed with a council whose posts were held by the families of Dombo's closest advisers, including Tumbare, head of the army, and Ngomane, the chief diviner. Kingship passed from brother to brother, across the houses of different wives, before moving to the next generation, a system that often caused disputes. Losing candidates received land near the capital. The state was arranged in rings, with lands near the capital under the king's direct rule and outer zones held by royals, allies and tributary chiefs. Subjects paid yearly tribute in goods and labour and in return expected land, rain ceremonies, famine relief and protection.

The economy rested on farming and cattle, along with gold, copper, iron and ivory. The Rozvi refused to let Portuguese traders back onto the plateau, apart from one market in Manyika, and dealt with them through African go-betweens at Zumbo, founded around 1720, which relied on Rozvi protection. Gold and ivory were exchanged for cloth, beads, porcelain and guns. The Rozvi saw themselves as children of Mwari, the Shona high god, and in the late eighteenth century a Mwari cave cult arrived from the Venda kingdom.

Dombo's death set off a succession struggle, and branches of the dynasty left to found other states, including, according to traditions, the Venda kingdom at Dzata and the Nambya state at Hwange. Another civil war broke out in 1768. A severe drought from 1795 to 1800 began, in Stan Mudenge's view, a series of civil wars lasting until at least 1808, though David Beach placed the real causes of collapse in the 1830s. Another drought struck from 1824 to 1829.

During the Mfecane, at least six migrating groups invaded in the 1830s. The Rozvi army repelled several, but Zwangendaba's Ngoni caused great destruction, and around 1835 Changamire Chirisamhuru was killed by Nyamazana's Ngoni. Leaderless, the royal houses were conquered one by one by Mzilikazi's Ndebele, who arrived in the late 1830s. Chirisamhuru's son Tohwechipi resisted the Ndebele for years from the Save valley before surrendering after a long siege in 1866. His grave at Mavangwe is a national monument.

Our maps label the state Rozwi from 1650 to 1800. The 1650 map shows it some three decades before its usual founding date of around 1683. On the later maps it lies inland from Portuguese Mozambique, with the Lozi Kingdom to the north-west.