Bumbuzi

Bumbuzi belongs to the Shangani country of Zimbabwe. The Shangani River begins near Gweru, with the Gweru River among its main tributaries, and crosses the Midlands and Matabeleland North before emptying into the Gwayi. Its basin therefore links central plateaus with the drier west through a single northward drainage route.

The country is a wooded plateau of mopane and miombo woodland, with sandy soils, seasonal streams and pools that hold water through the dry months. Its people were Kalanga, Nambya and Tonga communities, who grew sorghum and millet, kept cattle and goats, and hunted elephants whose ivory was carried by traders toward the Zambezi and the Indian Ocean coast. This western part of the plateau lay within the sphere of the Torwa state, whose stone-walled capital at Khami flourished in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and later of the Rozvi rulers. For settlements near the river, its reliable drainage and route through the plateau country made the banks a natural corridor.