Zimbabwe

Between about the 11th and 15th centuries, the ancestors of the Shona built Great Zimbabwe, a city of mortarless granite walls that was the capital of a gold-trading state linked to the Indian Ocean coast — the largest stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa, and the origin of the country's name. Later Shona states such as Mutapa and the Rozvi succeeded it, and in the 1830s the Ndebele, moving north under Mzilikazi during the upheavals in southern Africa, founded a kingdom in the southwest.

Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company conquered the region in the 1890s, crushing Ndebele and Shona risings (the First Chimurenga), and it became the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, run by and for a white minority. In 1965 Ian Smith's government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence to avoid Black majority rule, bringing international sanctions and a guerrilla war (the Second Chimurenga) waged by Robert Mugabe's ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU.

Independence came in 1980 as Zimbabwe, with Mugabe as leader for the next 37 years. Early gains in education and health were overshadowed by the Gukurahundi massacres of the mid-1980s, in which a North Korean-trained army brigade killed an estimated 20,000 people in Ndebele-majority Matabeleland. From 2000 a violent "fast-track" seizure of white-owned commercial farms collapsed agriculture and the economy, culminating in hyperinflation so extreme that the Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned in 2009. A 2017 military intervention forced Mugabe out (he died in 2019), and his former deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa has governed since, through disputed elections in 2018 and 2023 and continuing economic crisis, including several more failed currency relaunches.

Zimbabwe is majority Shona, with a large Ndebele minority in the southwest and smaller groups elsewhere, and this Shona–Ndebele divide has a political dimension rooted in the liberation war and the Gukurahundi. The country is strongly Christian, often blended with traditional belief in ancestral spirits (vadzimu) and consultation of a n'anga (traditional healer or diviner).

Respect for elders, greetings before any exchange, and the extended family and clan are central social values, and lobola (bridewealth) negotiations remain an important family process. Zimbabwe has an outsized cultural footprint for its size: internationally collected Shona stone sculpture, the mbira thumb piano and its trance music, sungura and gospel, and a strong literary tradition.

Sport matters — cricket and football, and a national pride in Olympic swimmer Kirsty Coventry, now the country's most prominent figure in international sport. Education is highly valued, and Zimbabwe long had one of Africa's highest literacy rates despite the economic decline.

About 16 million people live in Zimbabwe, with Harare the capital and largest city and Bulawayo the historic second city and Ndebele heartland. Millions of Zimbabweans have emigrated, chiefly to South Africa and the UK, and the remittances they send are a lifeline for families at home.

Daily life is shaped by economic hardship: a currency few trust, widespread use of the US dollar, frequent power cuts (the country depends heavily on the Kariba dam and ageing coal plants), fuel queues, and a large informal sector that absorbs those without formal jobs. Farming — maize, tobacco (a leading export again), cotton, and cattle — mining (gold, platinum, lithium, diamonds), and tourism are the mainstays.

For most people, life centres on the musha (rural home) and the extended family, the church, the market or tuckshop, and the constant work of managing scarcity, alongside a widely noted resilience and humour.

The staple is sadza, a thick maize-meal porridge eaten by hand with relish (muriwo) — leafy greens such as covo and pumpkin leaves cooked with tomato and onion and sometimes peanut butter, plus beans, matemba (small dried fish), or, for a treat, stewed or grilled meat. "Road runner" (free-range village chicken) is prized above commercial broilers.

Nyama — beef or goat, often braaied — is central to gatherings, and madora (mopane worms), dried and fried, are a protein-rich delicacy. Cornmeal also becomes breakfast porridge, sweetened and sometimes with peanut butter, and maputi (puffed maize) is a common snack.

Chibuku, an opaque, mildly alcoholic sorghum-and-maize beer sold in cartons and known as "Shake Shake", and maheu, a non-alcoholic fermented maize drink, are the traditional beverages, alongside Zambezi and Castle lagers and the enduringly popular Mazoe orange cordial.

Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi at the Zambian border, is the country's most famous sight — the Zimbabwe side has the longest stretch of the falls in view, with a rainforest walk facing the full curtain, plus rafting, bungee jumping from the bridge, gorge swings, and sunset cruises, based in the town of Victoria Falls.

Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest national park, holds one of Africa's biggest elephant populations along with lion, wild dog, and buffalo, and is an easy add-on to the Falls. Mana Pools, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Zambezi, is celebrated for walking and canoe safaris and for elephants that stand on their hind legs to reach acacia pods. Matusadona on Lake Kariba and the vast Gonarezhou in the southeast round out the wildlife circuit.

Great Zimbabwe, near Masvingo, is the cultural centrepiece — the Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure, and its conical tower — and the Matobo Hills near Bulawayo, also UNESCO-listed, combine balancing granite kopjes, some of the richest San rock art in the region, Cecil Rhodes's grave at "World's View", and a reserve with black and white rhino. The cool, green Eastern Highlands — Nyanga, the Vumba, and Chimanimani — offer hiking, waterfalls, and tea estates along the Mozambican border.