Dambudzo Mnangagwa was born on 15 September 1942 in Shabani (now Zvishavane), a mining town in central Southern Rhodesia. Some sources give his birth year as 1946, but Mnangagwa says he was born in 1942. His parents, Mafidhi and Mhurai Mnangagwa, were politically active farmers. He came from a large family; his grandfather had six wives and 32 sons, including his father (daughters were not counted), and Mnanganga is the third of ten siblings. His father had two wives, having inherited his wife Mhurai's sister after the death of her husband. Mnangagwa then had eight additional half-siblings who were also his cousins. The Mnangagwa family were members of the Karanga people, the largest subgroup of Zimbabwe's majority Shona ethnic group.