Matabeleland chapters in Bulawayo, Lupane and other districts of 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
Apostolic Prefecture of Zambesia in opposing the mission. There were unsuccessful expeditions from the base in Bulawayo, one led by Father Depelchin to the north beyond the Zambesi and one led by Father Augustus Law went 300 miles east to the Portuguese border. In 1893 Lobengula was overthrown when Bulawayo and Matabeleland were seized by the British South Africa Company. A number of other Catholic missionaries entered the new territory with the Sisters of St. Dominic starting public hospitals, and later opening schools for the children of the settlers. The progress of the mission was slow, with the adult population still attached to paganism