Matabeleland area has important gold deposits. Industries include gold and other mineral mines, and engineering. There has been a decline in the industries in this region as water is in short supply. Promises by the government to draw water for the region through the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project have not been carried out. The region is allegedly marginalised by the government. Around the 10th and 11th centuries the Bantu-speaking Bakalanga arrived from the south and settled in Mapungubwe on the Limpopo and Shashi river valleys. Later they moved north to Great Zimbabwe. By the 15th century, the Bakalanga had established a
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