Matabeleland food shortages. Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo finally reconciled their political differences by late 1987. The roots of discord remained, however, and in some ways increased as Mugabe's rule became increasingly autocratic into the 21st century. In the early 1990s, a Land Acquisition Act was passed, calling for the Mugabe government to purchase mostly white-owned commercial farming land for redistribution to native Africans. Matabeleland has rich central plains, watered by tributaries of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, allowing it to sustain cattle and consistently produce large amounts of cotton and maize. But land grabbing, squatting, and repossessions of large white
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