Rise to Glory: Kingdoms of the South

MAPUNGUBWE

Southern Africa’s first city probably flourished at Mapungubwe, just south of the Limpopo river, in the twelfth century AD. Yet very few people know of its existence. Discovered by a party of fortune hunters in 1933, control of it was quickly taken over by the University of Pretoria, which secured excavation rights and ownership of the land.

For almost seventy years knowledge of the site had been kept restricted only for a few academics, because it went against the official ideology of South Africa. It was proof that civilisations had existed in the area before the advent of the colonial settlers in the seventeenth century.

The ruins of Mapungubwe stand on a sandstone hill, about 100km west of Messina, near to where the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe meet. It is a hilly area dotted with baobab trees. The climate at the height of Mapungubwe’s splendour was probably wetter, with the rivers flowing throughout the year. The Shona people inhabited the area and raised cattle and grew millet, sorghum and cotton.  1     2     3