Synopsis
The Shona peoples of Africa are known to most non-Africans as the builders of the massively impressive fourteenth-century stone walls of Great Zimbabwe and creators of the great Mutapa state encountered by the Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century. In the last century they waged war against their neighbours, the Ndebele, and against the white settlers who created Rhodesia; today they form the majority of the population of modern Zimbabwe, one of the most economically successful of contemporary African states, though now facing most of the twentieth century's potentially catastrophic social and environmental problems. David Beach has brought to bear a lifetime's research in his study of the Shona and their neighbours the Ndebele, Gaza Nguni and others.
