Path of Blood: The Rise and Conquests of Mzilikazi

This is a biography of a great African conqueror - Mzilikazi, "the Great Path", founder of the warlike Matebele tribe. As a young regimental commander serving in the Zulu army, he defied the tyrant Shaka Zulu and fled, with a small group of followers, into the distant interior of Southern Africa. His arrival among in hospitable peoples coincided with a Dark Age in tribal history, a tragic era of bloody warfare which culminated in tens of thousands of starving wanderers being reduced to cannibalism and the total extermination of twenty-eight distinct tribes.

Mzilikazi was ruthless in his phenomenal rise to power. He conquered the peoples of the Transvaal, Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesia and then moulded the captive hordes into the powerful Matabele tribe. He annihilated the marauding half caste desperadoes of South Africa and repulsed the Zulu armies, failing only in his bid to drive the emigrant Boers from his dominions. In Mzilikazi's time black conquerors triumphed only to be subjugated by their enemies, killed in battle or assassinated by conspirators. Mzilikazi's reign was marred by bloodshed and tyranny, but such was the force of his personality and the quality of his leadership that not one member of his heterogeneous tribe ever attempted to plot his death. He was revered by his subjects, and among his closest friends were white pioneer missionaries such as Robert Moffat (Livingstone's father in-law), scientists, explorers, hunters and traders.