Matabeleland Matabeleland Modern-day Matabeleland is a region in Zimbabwe divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers. The region is named after its inhabitants, the Ndebele people. Other ethnic groups who inhabit parts of Matabeleland include the Tonga, Kalanga, Venda, Nambia, Sotho, Tswana and Khoisan. As of August 2012, according to the Zimbabwean national statistics agency ZIMSAT, the southern part of the region had 683,893 people, comprising 326,697 males and 356,926 females, with an average size household of 4.4 in an area of
Matabeleland strong empire at Khami under a powerful ruler called Dlembeu . This empire was split by the end of the 15th century and were later conquered by the Nguni people. In the late 1830s, Mzilikazi Khumalo, led a group of Nguni and other assimulated tribes into the Lozvi Empire of the Bakalanga. Many of the Bakalanga people were incorporated to create a large state called Mthwakazi Kingdom. Mthwakazi, a Zulu word which means "something which becomes big at conception", in Zulu "into ethe ithwasa yabankulu" but the territory was called Matabeleland by Europeans. Mzilikazi organised this ethnically diverse nation into