Victoria Falls, Bulawayo & Matabeleland

The Matobo Hills hold rock paintings by San hunter-gatherers that stretch back thousands of years. After Great Zimbabwe declined, the Torwa state built its capital at Khami, west of present-day Bulawayo, from the fifteenth century, with terraced platforms of dressed stone; it was succeeded in the seventeenth century by the Rozvi.

In the 1830s the Ndebele, led by Mzilikazi, moved north from the upheavals in South Africa and founded a kingdom here, raiding and taxing Shona communities to the east. Mzilikazi's son Lobengula ruled from his royal town of GuBulawayo until the British South Africa Company invaded in 1893; Lobengula fled north and died, and a settler town grew up at Bulawayo. The Ndebele rose again in 1896, and the rising ended in negotiations Cecil Rhodes held in the Matobo Hills, where he was buried in 1902. Bulawayo became the railway and industrial centre of Rhodesia, and the line reached Victoria Falls in 1904.

Matabeleland was the base of Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU. After independence, between 1983 and 1987, the army's Fifth Brigade carried out the Gukurahundi massacres here and in parts of the Midlands; estimates of the civilian dead range from a conservative 8,000 to more than 20,000, mainly Ndebele and Kalanga. The Unity Accord of December 1987 ended the campaign, but the killings remain a painful and contested subject, and calls for acknowledgement and justice continue.

Ndebele (isiNdebele), related to Zulu, is the main language of the region, and Bulawayo is its cultural capital. Kalanga is spoken in the south-west around Plumtree, Nambya around Hwange, and Tonga on the Kariba shore around Binga, while Venda and Sotho communities live near the Limpopo.

Identity is strong and political. Many in Matabeleland feel neglected by governments in Harare, a sense sharpened by the Gukurahundi and by economic decline, and Bulawayo's football club Highlanders is followed with near-tribal loyalty. The city also has an active arts scene, with theatre, poetry and musicians who move easily between Ndebele, English and Shona.

The Matobo Hills are sacred ground: the Njelele shrine is linked to the Mwari cult, and pilgrims visit it each year to ask for rain before the wet season. The Tonga of Binga, displaced from the Zambezi valley when Kariba was flooded, keep a distinct culture, and Nyami Nyami, the river god of the Zambezi valley, is central to their beliefs. Across the region, church congregations are large and funerals are major community events.

Bulawayo has about 650,000 people and remains Zimbabwe's second city, laid out on a grid of broad streets originally designed to let ox-wagons turn. Once the industrial heart of the country, it has lost many factories since the 1990s. Victoria Falls, Hwange, Gwanda, Plumtree and Beitbridge are the other towns of note.

The economy is thin. Tourism around Victoria Falls and Hwange is the brightest sector, coal is mined at Hwange, gold around Gwanda, and cattle ranching dominates the dry south. Rain-fed farming is precarious, and drought regularly brings food shortages. Many people from Matabeleland work in South Africa and Botswana, and money sent home keeps many households going.

The country's currency upheavals, from hyperinflation to the US dollar and the ZiG, are felt here as elsewhere. Life in the towns revolves around informal trade, churches and football, and in rural areas around cattle, water and remittances.

The staple is isitshwala, the Ndebele name for maize porridge, and the classic pairing is isitshwala with amasi, thick soured milk, a favourite in cattle country. Relishes of greens, beans and beef stew are everyday food, and meat grilled on the braai is central to gatherings.

Mopane worms, the caterpillars of the emperor moth, are harvested in the mopane woodlands, dried in the sun or smoked, then fried or cooked with onion and tomato and served with isitshwala. On the Kariba shore at Binga, dried kapenta from the lake is an everyday protein, and restaurants in Victoria Falls cater to visitors.

Traditional sorghum beer is brewed for ceremonies and gatherings, Chibuku sells in cartons, and non-alcoholic maheu is widely drunk.

Victoria Falls, seen from the Zimbabwean bank, is best experienced along the rainforest path of Victoria Falls National Park, which faces the Main Falls, Devil's Cataract and the gorge through the spray. The town of Victoria Falls offers rafting below the falls, bungee jumping from the bridge, sunset cruises on the upper Zambezi and the Zambezi National Park upstream.

Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe's largest, lies on the edge of the Kalahari a few hours south-east; its pumped waterholes draw large elephant herds as well as lion and one of Africa's larger populations of wild dog. North of the Falls road, Binga sits on the western end of Lake Kariba, with hot springs, Tonga communities and the remote Chizarira National Park inland.

South of Bulawayo, the Matobo Hills, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, combine balanced granite boulders, painted caves such as Nswatugi, Rhodes's grave on Malindidzimu hill and a national park with white and black rhino. West of the city, the Khami Ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site of terraced stone walls. Bulawayo itself has the Natural History Museum, the railway museum and a centre with its colonial arcades.