Zimbabwe is a landlocked country in southern Africa, lying between the Zambezi River in the north and the Limpopo in the south. Most of it is a high plateau more than 1,000 m above sea level, which keeps the climate pleasantly mild. In the east rise the green Eastern Highlands, in the north the Zambezi flows past Lake Kariba and the wild floodplains of Mana Pools, and in the far northwest the river plunges over Victoria Falls, which Zimbabwe shares with Zambia.
The country takes its name from Great Zimbabwe, a city of dry-stone walls built by ancestors of the Shona people from the 11th century onwards. Later came the Mutapa and Rozvi states and, in the 19th century, the Ndebele kingdom around Bulawayo. From 1890 the British South Africa Company took control, and the territory became the colony of Southern Rhodesia. After a long struggle it became independent as Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980.
Memories fade faster than photos. Ask these over a meal or a phone call, and write the answers down.
Zimbabwe's story runs from San hunters and their rock paintings, through the stone city of Great Zimbabwe and the kingdoms that followed it, to the Ndebele state, ninety years of British and settler rule, a long war and independence in 1980. In recent decades the country has lived through hard economic times and several new currencies.
By about 1300 the stone city of Great Zimbabwe, near today's Masvingo, had become the capital of a wealthy Shona kingdom that traded gold and ivory with the Indian Ocean coast. Its Great Enclosure, with walls up to 11 m high built without mortar, dates from the 13th and 14th centuries.
In 1531 Vicente Pegado, captain of the Portuguese fort at Sofala, recorded that local people called the great stone buildings 'Symbaoe'. It is the first written record of the name Zimbabwe.
Around 1840 the Ndebele under their king Mzilikazi, who had broken away from the Zulu kingdom, settled for good in the southwest, in the land later called Matabeleland. Their capital grew into the city of Bulawayo.
On 12 September 1890 the Pioneer Column of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company raised its flag at Fort Salisbury, today's Harare, and began company rule over Mashonaland.
The railway bridge across the Zambezi gorge just below Victoria Falls was completed in 1905 and officially opened on 12 September. It linked today's Zimbabwe and Zambia and brought the first steady stream of visitors to the falls.
The Kariba Dam across the Zambezi, built between 1955 and 1959, was officially opened in May 1960. The lake behind it, Lake Kariba, filled up over the following years and became one of the largest artificial lakes in the world.
Talks at Lancaster House in London ended with an agreement on 21 December 1979. The war came to an end, the country returned briefly to British rule, and elections open to all adults were held in early 1980.
After the Zimbabwean dollar lost almost all its value in the hyperinflation of 2008 and again in later years, the country used the US dollar and other foreign money. In April 2024 a new currency, Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG), backed by gold and foreign reserves, was introduced alongside the US dollar.
Cook one of the recipes, print the large-print pack about Zimbabwe, and finish with the big-screen quiz or the words crossword. Grandchildren can colour the flag.
