Matabeleland, traditional region in southwestern Zimbabwe, inhabited mainly by the Bantu-speaking Ndebele people. It includes the southwestern portion of Zimbabwe’s High and Middle velds, plateau country that ranges in elevation from 3,000 to 5,000 feet (900 to 1,500 m). The region slopes downward to the north and south; it is drained by tributaries of the Zambezi River to the north and by affluents of the Limpopo River to the south. Matabeleland consists mostly of savanna (tropical grassland) with wooded savanna to the northwest of the city of Bulawayo.
The Ndebele were originally an offshoot of the Nguni people of Natal (now part of the Republic of South Africa) who migrated northward in 1823 after their leader, Mzilikazi, an Nguni military commander under the orders of Shaka, king of the Zulu, fell foul of his master. The Matabele (as they were then known) settled in about 1840 in what is now southwestern Zimbabwe, a region that was given the name of Matabeleland by Europeans in the mid-19th century. The British South Africa Company, a mercantile company based in London, established itself in the region in 1890. The Matabele were defeated by the British in a war in 1893; later in the 1890s what is now Zimbabwe was divided by the British South Africa Company into two provinces, Matabeleland in the west and Mashonaland (the traditional homeland of the Shona people) in the east. Matabeleland, part of self-governing South Rhodesia after 1923, became part of independent Zimbabwe in 1980.
The contemporary Ndebele live in hamlets primarily around the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s industrial centre. They raise corn (maize), peanuts (groundnuts), and cattle. Gold, coal, and tin are mined in the region.