Facts About Zimbabwe’s Culture, Geography and History
Zimbabwe is a landlocked southern African country that is bordered by Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique. The following interesting facts provides a rough cast of this richly-endowed country.
The first people of the country were the Bantu-speaking Iron Age farmers that settled in the region around AD 300.
The Bantu people are predominant in most parts of southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. The Bantus are believed to have dispersed from the Congo Basin.
Zimbabwe is home to some of the oldest empires in southern Africa dating some centuries ago. One of these famous empires is the Mwene Mutapa Empire.
There are many archaeological sites that proves ancient civilization in Zimbabwe was remarkably advanced compared to some other parts of the world within the relevant period.
However, the first inhabitants of Zimbabwe were not the Bantus but the Khoisan that are estimated to have inhabited Zimbabwe as early as 200 BC.
Zimbabwe’s President – Robert Gabriel Mugabe – is (Update: WAS) one of the current oldest and also the longest serving leaders of a non-royal country in the world.
Prior to him being deposed through a quiet military coup towards the end of 2017, Robert Mugabe had rule Zimbabwe for over 36 years, ranking as one of the longest reigning presidents in the world.
At the time of being deposed, Mugabe had set record as the world oldest serving head of State. Now, Queen Elizabeth has a chance to overtake him.
She still has one year (till some time later in 2019) to go having been born two years and two months after Robert Mugabe.
It is illegal in Zimbabwe for the police to impound your vehicle on the road. The only occasion when they can do so is when they ask you to produce your driver’s license.
There are strict traffic laws in Zimbabwe. However, they do not give police a blanket cheque to impound vehicles as they wish. Rarely do police impound vehicles except when demanding for driver’s license.
Zimbabwe have won a total of eight medals at the Olympic Games in two sports – hockey and swimming.
Zimbabwe performs pretty well in Olympic field events. Hockey and swimming are its favorites and it has harvested plenty of medals from them. It started off its luck by winning the 1980 Olympic gold medal in Women’s Hockey.
Later on, it has won the rest of the medals in swimming. It has won two swimming Gold medals, four Silvers, and one Bronze. All the swimming medals have been won by Kirsty Coventry.
The name of the country was derived from the fortified trading hub, Great Zimbabwe, which was built in medieval times and was used by the people of the ‘Shona’ tribe.
Great Zimbabwe was a fortified trading hub whose ruins still stands today. Great Zimbabwe was built using stones without being joined by mortars.
It was the seat capital of the famous Mwene Mutapa Empire that existed some four centuries ago. The word ‘zimbabwe’ is a Shona term meaning ‘great house of stones’.
