The Empire of Mwene Mutapa

The empire of Mwene Mutapa was not only a typically early Bantu-speaking kingdom in Central Africa but also, by all accounts, as one scholar has remarked, it was “the most extensive, the most stable and enduring Native State Southern Africa has ever known.”2 The empire endured from the first half of the fifteenth century until the last independent Mambo or Rozwi ruler died during the Mapondera Rising in 19023. The empire of Mwene Mutapa was probably at its peak ^luring the sixteenth century, but from about 1800 it was more in name than in reality. At its height, it was bound on the north by Zambezi River; on the west by the Kalahali Desert; on the east by the Mozambique Channel down to the Sabi estuary; while to the south it extended across Limpopo River into the Northern Transvaal. It was, therefore, by all reckoning an extremely big empire in the very heart of Central Africa. Its centre was originally at the Great Zimbabwe in the south, but it was later moved to the Dande area of the Zambezi Valley.