This is the first instalment of Dr Felix Muchemwa’s book The Struggle for Land in Zimbabwe (1890 – 2010) that The Patriot is serialising. This week, Dr Muchemwa takes a closer look at the background to the scramble for land in Zimbabwe and how Changamire Dombo defeated the Portuguese at the battle of Maungwe.

THE total land mass of present-day Zimbabwe is 96 000 000 acres (38 400 000 hectares) land-locked between the Zambezi and the Limpopo Rivers and shares borders with Zambia in the north, Mozambique in the east, South Africa in the south and Botswana in the west.
Of this land, 26 percent, approximately 24 960 000 acres (9 984 000 hectares) is the Zimbabwean highveld.
This is the land which forms the Zimbabwean agricultural regions one, two and three of Mashonaland, and the unique Matabeleland region four, which is most suitable for intensive cattle ranching and the growing of drought-resistant crops.
By the turn of the 19th Century, this Zimbabwean highveld was sustaining more than one million Shona and Ndebele people who held it for survival.
Zimbabwe: Geography and neighbours
Outside the highveld, the rest of Zimbabwean land once lay totally within tsetse-fly and mosquito zones that were disease-ridden with sleeping sickness, malaria, black water fever and lung disease (including tuberculosis) and, in addition, perennial droughts also posed serious survival challenges.
But, even so, no land in Zimbabwe lay unclaimed at the time of colonial occupation.
The Mwenemutapa Empire
The first great state to be established in the space roughly consistent with present-day Zimbabwe was the Great Zimbabwe State which was founded in the Late Iron Age.
The Great Zimbabwe State fell due to internal power struggles in the early 1400s and was replaced by the Mwenemutapa Empire which was founded by one of the feuding princes, Nyatsimba Mutota, who had broken away from Great Zimbabwe and established himself in Dande (present north-eastern Zimbabwe).
This history of the struggle for land in Zimbabwe is first documented in Portuguese records from around 1570 which confirm that indeed there was once an empire called Mwenemutapa in the southern part of the Zambezi basin.
According to these records the Portuguese were the first European settlers to attempt to occupy Zimbabwe.
The Mwenemutapa Empire that succeeded the Great Zimbabwe State was made up of various kingdoms stretching from the Indian Ocean to beyond the present-day Botswana border with Zimbabwe and from the banks of the Zambezi River to beyond the Sabi and Limpopo Rivers.
These were: Baroe (Barwe), Manica (Manyika), Maungo (Maungwe), Boca (Bocha), Uteve, the Zambezi Tonga, Dande, Butua (Guruuswa)/Changamire Kingdom and then Mbire.
In the eastern part of the Mwenemutapa Empire, the Manyika Kingdom included within its borders present-day Nyanga District, the Manica Province in Mozambique as well as Gorongoza in the Sofala Province of Mozambique.
The Maungwe Kingdom was roughly present-day Makoni District and the Mbire Kingdom was roughly present-day Wedza District.
The Barwe Kingdom lay deep inside present-day Mozambique, bordering the Dande Kingdom in the north-west, and the Manyika Kingdom in the south-west.
The other kingdoms were Boca (Bocha), Uteve and the Zambezi Tonga.
Kingdoms of the Mwenemutapa Empire
Situated in the centre of the Empire were the kingdoms of Dande in the Zambezi valley and the Butua/Guruuswa/Changamire Kingdom which dominated all other kingdoms in the Mwenemutapa Empire and was ruled by the Rozvi-Mambo Dombo of the Togwa Dynasty which, in Shona oral tradition, is linked to Great Zimbabwe.
Stretching from Shangwe, north-west of present-day Zimbabwe, to the Sabi and the Limpopo valleys including Buhera and Njanja in the east, the Butua Kingdom enclosed most of the present-day Zimbabwe.
Its capital city, Ntabazikamambo (Manyanga), north of Inyathi, was regarded as the ‘Holy Place’ where paramount chiefs and chiefs came to pay homage to the mambo, and from where the messengers of the Togwa Rozvi-Mambo rulers were sent out to install rulers in various parts of Butua.
The Mwenemutapa Empire was famous for its rich mineral resources of gold, and for its agriculture.
In agriculture, the Empire was renowned for its production of the most impressive machira or cloths, woven from locally-produced cotton on slow looms.
The machira/clothing material held its own from south of the Zambezi to beyond the Limpopo until submerged by the cotton cloth of the 19th Century western industrial revolution.
The Mwenemutapa Empire and the Portuguese presence
Around 1589, Mwenemutapa Gatsi Rusere became Emperor after succeeding Mwenemutapa Negomo.
After 1599 Mwenemutapa Gatsi Rusere allowed the Portuguese to enter the Empire with guns, and, it was something no other Mwenemutapa before him had allowed to happen.
He then proceeded to cede mineral wealth, particularly gold mines, inclusive of alluvial deposits, to the Portuguese King in Portugal.
Further, Mwenemutapa Gatsi Rusere permitted the Portuguese to establish ‘Crown Estates’ or Prazos (mapurazi) within the Empire, notwithstanding that it was against the religious beliefs, culture and traditions of his Shona people to whom all land belonged to Mwari (God), with spirit mediums or ancestral spirits of the Rozvi-Mambo and the various chieftancies serving only as custodians with power to simply allocate land, but never to own or dispose of it.
More ‘Crown Estates’ or Prazos were ceded to the Portuguese under Mwenemutapa Nyambo Kapararidze who took over from Mwenemutapa Gatsi Rusere in 1624 and by Mwenemutapa Mavura who took over from Mwenemutapa Kapararidze.
The biggest of these ‘Crown Estates’ were ceded to the Portuguese in the Kingdom of Uteve in Sofala and the implications were serious.
Once ceded, the Crown Estates or Prazos were incorporated into Portugal as part of Portuguese territory, and therefore, legally an extension of mainland Portugal.
Consequently, from 1609 up to his death in 1622, Mwenemutapa Gatsi Rusere had lost huge tracts of land by conversion to ‘Portuguese Crown Estates’ or Prazos.
However, for the kingdoms further inland, it was a different story.
Even though the Portuguese penetrated deep into the Changamire Kingdom, as far west as Maramuca along the Sanyati River, they were never granted any prazos by the Butua or Changamire Kingdom, or by any other kingdom on the Zimbabwean plateau.
Loss of land and the rise of Changamire Dombo
Against the background of the continued granting of mineral wealth and land to the Portuguese, there was an upheaval in the Mwenemutapa Empire.
The Rozvi-Mambo of Butua, under Changamire Dombo, revolted against the Mwenemutapa who resided in Dande.
In 1684 Changamire Dombo attacked the eastern kingdoms of the Mwenemutapa Empire, and, at the battle of Maungwe, he defeated the Portuguese who had greatly believed in the superiority of European guns over African trajectory missiles (spears, arrows etc.).
The victory at Maungwe was followed in November 1693 by an assault on the Portuguese garrison at Dambarare in response to a request by Nyakumbiru, a usurper who had seized the throne of the Mwenemutapa at the death of Mwenemutapa Mukombwe.
Not a single Portuguese or Indian soldier or trader escaped from Dambarare!