THE Ndebele nation in Zimbabwe was founded by Mzilikazi Khumalo in 1821. Mzilikazi was born in 1790 (Matshazi, 2008) in Zululand, South Africa. Between 1818 and 1820 Mzilikazi had become one of King Shaka’s closest military commanders. “According to tradition, he [Shaka] and Mzilikazi became the best of friends from the moment of their meeting,” (Matshazi, 2008). Shaka made his friend one of his leading military commanders. Mzilikazi left Zululand during the Mfecane upheavals, the upheavals that saw kingdom after kingdom being overthrown in wars over land and cattle and new kingdoms being founded by fleeing commanders. But the colonialists and white racists used these upheavals as a propaganda weapon to prove that blacks were savages that needed the hand of the white man to stop them from slaughtering each other, to prove how natural it was for the white man to colonise Africa and ‘civilise’ the African by bringing peace to him. Yet the causes of the Mfecane were the colonialists themselves, for the upheavals only took place from the time when imperialists and their white settlers came to Southern Africa, that is, in the area that is now Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. Nyathi (2000) puts the case this way: “While the material culture of the Africans could have been changing slightly over years, following contact with the Arabs new artifacts were adapted. New needs were cultivated. “The trend continued with the arrival of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. “Prior to this contact, Africans had been able to manufacture their own artifacts. “Now they began getting finished products. Their economies became tied and subjected to foreign economies. “Cloth, beads and copper wire were acquired in exchange for ivory and gold. “The Arabs, who considered themselves superior to Africans, enslaved Africans, particularly the girls whom they engaged in domestic service. The desire for new items (like copper wire and beads) encouraged Africans to obtain these goods through barter trade.” One of the goods was, over and above gold and ivory, slaves. African groups turned against each other in order to obtain slaves with whom to barter for the new products. As the trade intensified, increased demand for gold and ivory tempted the Arab and Portuguese traders to enslave Africans to dig for gold and transport the heavy ivory. Such activity would, predictably, have repercussions on the African population. Inter-group rivalry resulted in population dispersal, especially away from the centres of trade. “By the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had firmly established themselves on the eastern coast of Africa. Whilst initially, they confined themselves to the coast, later they ventured further inland. They made roaring business out of the African slaves. Because European values at the time did not encourage slavery, the Portuguese sold their slaves in Africa, notably Morocco. The newly established Portuguese colonies of Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe provided an ideal climate for the cultivation of sugarcane. The West African coast witnessed increased slave trading. “African slaves were shipped to the Portuguese islands to work on the sugar plantations. When the so-called new world opened up, more and more slaves were shipped where demand was greatest … “By the end of the 1500s the number of slaves shipped out annually grew to 5 000. The figure could be a lot higher as there were many who were smuggled aboard ships and some who died before reaching the coast. “In the 18th century, guns became available generally. More and more ivory could be extracted from Africa. Slave porters came in handy. They transported the ivory to the coast. By the 1780s as many as 100 000 African slaves were being exported out of Africa. Most of the Portuguese activity was concentrated around the Delagoa Bay in Mozambique. “While the Portuguese were wreaking havoc in the Delagoa Bay area, the African population could at least flee in a southerly direction or deeper into the interior, particularly the less accessible and desolate areas. With the arrival of the Dutch and the British at the Cape, the picture changed dramatically. The Cape ‘jaw’ was extending northwards and north-eastwards. The area experienced a beef deficit. Raiding for cattle became common practice. Shortage of slave labour, the ‘Mantatee’, led to forays into the interior to capture Africans. The Griqua and the Korana, who possessed guns and horses, raided the African groups to obtain cattle and children for sale in the Cape Province. When the Afrikaners or Voortrekkers left the Cape in 1835, they brought more dislocation to the African groups that had already been squeezed out of the coastal area with the Portuguese to the east and the British/ Afrikaner to the south-west. In their effort to seek a safer area beyond the Drakensberg Mountains, they came under fire from the Griqua who were raiding for cattle. They moved on further west, where upon they faced even worse problems from the Boers who, like the Griqua, raided for cattle. Further, they wanted land on which to establish themselves. The Ndebele were forced out of the Transvaal and into Zimbabwe where they set up permanent homes. “The resulting chaos in the areas affected by Western mercantile interests saw the rise of bigger and militarised black states. Such defensive states provided refuge to displaced persons. Such states, led by enterprising men like Tshaka Zulu and Mzilikazi Khumalo, came into being in direct response to the activities of the Portuguese, the Boers, the British and the Griqua/Koran, The Griqua are a people born out of the Dutch and British settlers liaising with the local Hoi-San women and girls, that is why they were never recognised as people by the Afrikaners and the British. Before Mzilikazi joined hands with Shaka, he had become the chief of the Matshobana side of the Khumalo clans. The other clans were the Donda Khumalos and the Beje Khumalos (Matshazi, 2008, and the book “Zululand and Natal”). His father, Matshobana, had been the leader of his clan. Matshobana was also one of Zwide’s sons-in-law as he had married Nompethu, one of Zwidwe’s daughters. Nompethu was Mzilikazi’s mother. But then, Matshobana was Zwide’s nephew as his mother was Zwide’s sister (Matshazi, 2008).