Zimbabwe

Between about 1100 and 1450, Shona ancestors built Great Zimbabwe on a granite hill and valley near today's Masvingo. Its Great Enclosure has an outer wall about 250 m long and up to 11 m high, built from dressed granite blocks without mortar, and a solid conical tower whose purpose is still debated. At its height perhaps 10,000–18,000 people lived there.

The city grew rich on cattle and on gold carried to Swahili ports on the Indian Ocean coast; Chinese celadon, Persian pottery and glass beads have been found on the site. Its decline in the 15th century is usually linked to overgrazing, shifting trade routes and the rise of new states to the north.

Successor states continued the stone-building tradition: the Mutapa kingdom in the north traded with the Portuguese, and the Torwa and Rozvi states built at Khami near Bulawayo. The word 'dzimba dza mabwe', houses of stone, gave the country its name at independence.

Colonial writers claimed that Africans could not have built Great Zimbabwe and credited Phoenicians or the Queen of Sheba. Archaeologists proved its African origin early in the 20th century, but the Rhodesian government suppressed the evidence; today the Zimbabwe Bird, a soapstone carving found at the site, is on the flag.

The Zambezi, Africa's fourth-longest river, drops about 108 m into a narrow basalt gorge at Victoria Falls, forming a curtain about 1.7 km wide. The Kololo name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means 'the smoke that thunders'; at peak flow in April the spray rises hundreds of metres and can be seen from 30 km away.

The falls are moving upstream. Over the last 100,000 years or so, the river has cut a zigzag of eight gorges below the present falls by eroding weaknesses in the basalt; the Batoka Gorge's rapids are among the world's best for rafting.

David Livingstone reached the falls in 1855 and named them after Queen Victoria. The railway bridge, built in 1905 as part of Cecil Rhodes's dream of a Cape-to-Cairo line, still carries trains, cars and bungee jumpers between Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Downstream, the Kariba Dam (1959) created one of the largest artificial lakes in the world and displaced the Tonga people from the valley; Operation Noah rescued thousands of animals from the rising water. Further down, Mana Pools' floodplain is a UNESCO site known for walking safaris among elephants.

In the 1830s the Ndebele under Mzilikazi moved north from South Africa and founded a state around Bulawayo, dominating the Shona to the east. His son Lobengula signed the 1888 Rudd Concession, which Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company used to justify occupying Mashonaland in 1890 and conquering the Ndebele in 1893.

In 1896–97 Ndebele and Shona rose together in the First Chimurenga, led partly by spirit mediums such as Nehanda and Kaguvi, who were executed. Their memory became central to later nationalism. Rhodes was buried in 1902 in the Matobo Hills, at a site the Ndebele considered sacred.

Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony in 1923. Laws gave half the land to a white minority of about 5 per cent, pushing Africans into 'tribal trust lands'. In 1965, facing British pressure for majority rule, Ian Smith's government declared independence unilaterally.

The liberation war, the Second Chimurenga, was fought from 1966 to 1979 by ZANU's ZANLA (mainly Shona, backed by China) and ZAPU's ZIPRA (mainly Ndebele, backed by the Soviet Union). About 30,000 people died. The Lancaster House agreement led to elections, and Zimbabwe became independent on 18 April 1980.

Robert Mugabe's early government expanded schools and clinics fast, giving Zimbabwe one of Africa's highest literacy rates. It also launched the Gukurahundi campaign in Matabeleland (1983–87), in which the army's Fifth Brigade killed an estimated 20,000 civilians; it remains largely unacknowledged.

From 2000, fast-track land reform seized most white-owned commercial farms, often violently. Farm output collapsed, the economy shrank by half, and inflation reached an estimated 79.6 billion per cent a month in November 2008. The Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned in 2009 for the US dollar and the rand.

Mugabe was removed in November 2017 in a military-backed takeover and replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa, re-elected in disputed polls in 2018 and 2023. Attempts to bring back a local currency, bond notes, the RTGS dollar and a new Zimbabwe dollar, each lost value quickly.

In April 2024 the Reserve Bank launched ZiG (Zimbabwe Gold), backed by gold and foreign reserves. It has held more steadily, around 26–27 to the dollar in 2026, and larger notes followed, but most prices, and almost everything a visitor pays, remain in US dollars.

Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest park at about 14,600 km², lies on Kalahari sand with no permanent rivers. Its famous elephant population, around 40,000–50,000, depends on pans kept full by solar-powered boreholes in the dry season. Cecil the lion, killed by a trophy hunter just outside the park in 2015, made Hwange's lions world news.

Mana Pools on the Zambezi floodplain is one of the few big-game parks where visitors may walk unguided in parts (walking with a guide is the safer choice). Its elephants are famous for standing on their hind legs to reach albida pods.

Zimbabwe's guide qualifications are among the strictest in Africa: professional guides train for years and pass rigorous exams, which is why walking and canoe safaris are a speciality.

The economic crisis hit parks hard with poaching and neglect, but private and community partnerships, rhino conservancies such as Save and Bubye, and restored parks such as Gonarezhou have brought recoveries.

About 16 million people live in Zimbabwe, with millions more in South Africa, the UK and elsewhere, whose remittances keep many families going. Shona speakers are about 70 per cent and Ndebele speakers about 20 per cent; the constitution lists 16 official languages.

Shona stone sculpture emerged in the 1950s–60s around the National Gallery in Harare and the Tengenenge community, carving serpentine and springstone into flowing figures; it is collected worldwide. Mbira music, played on a thumb piano of metal keys, is central to Shona spiritual ceremonies and was carried into popular music by Thomas Mapfumo's chimurenga songs and Oliver Mtukudzi.

Christianity is the main faith, with large Pentecostal and apostolic churches whose white-robed congregations gather outdoors; ancestral spirits (vadzimu) and spirit mediums still matter in rural life.

Sadza, stiff maize porridge, with a relish of meat, greens in peanut butter or beans, is the daily meal. Kapenta from Lake Kariba, mopane worms and Mazoe orange crush are national tastes; Zambezi Lager is the beer.