Shona

The Shona group includes the Shona themselves, the Kalanga and the Venda. Venda tradition links its first kings to the kingdom of Mapungubwe, which declined around 1300 as power moved north to Great Zimbabwe. From the eleventh century the Karanga formed kingdoms on the plateau, and Great Zimbabwe, the largest stone structure of precolonial southern Africa, became their capital in the thirteenth century.

Butua was ruled by the Torwa dynasty, and the Mutapa Empire reached the Mozambique coast, exporting gold to Swahili, Arab and East Asian traders. Succession wars let the Portuguese gain ground in the 1500s, and in the 1830s the Ndebele destroyed the weakened Rozvi Empire.