Decline of Great Zimbabwe

ACCOUNT FOR THE
DECLINE OF GREAT ZIMBABWE.
Although the Great Zimbabwe area had rainfall patterns generally good enough to support the cultivation of crops like sorghum, millet, beans, and squash and promote good pasturage for cattle and sheep, droughts occurred from time to time and they contributed to the decline of the state. A drought occurring at a time the population had reached a critical point in relation to its natural resources would have destroyed Great Zimbabwe’s ability to feed itself. This problem would have been worsened by the fact that there was no technology by which the state could transport sufficient food and other supplies over long distances and the only alternatives would have involved dispersing the people or moving the state structure to another site. Either way the result would have been the collapse of the state. The progressive deterioration of the pastures for the livestock seriously undermined Great Zimbabwe’s pastoral economy and contributed to its ultimate decline. Although the state was situated in a generally grassy savanna region with reasonably good rainfall, the keeping of large herds of cattle in a densely populated but fairly compact area would have destroyed the pasturage over time. Even if the rainfall was generally good, the ability of the pastures to regenerate was also compromised by the droughts which tended to occur at least once every five years. Since much of the area surrounding the state was either too mountainous or too rocky, the people were probably forced to move much further away from the state and ultimately abandoned in search of the proverbial greener pastures. Over-population was another factor that contributed to the decline of the Great Zimbabwe state. The population of the state has been estimated to have been in the region of eleven thousand but D.N. Beach believed that further research would probably reflect a greater number. Whatever the figure it appears that Great Zimbabwe probably grew too big to be supported by its environment and the presence of so many people at “one spot would have seriously affected the ability of its site territory to supply crops, crops, firewood, game, grazing and all other necessities of life.” (Beach: 1980. P.50).
Having so many people clustered would have also generated the unwelcome problems of disease, noise and soil exhaustion. Consequently the women and men would have had to walk longer distances to their fields as soil exhaustion took its toll and also because much of the area surrounding the state was either too mountainous or too rocky to support cultivation. All this would have created competition for the available resources between or among different branches of the ruling family and their supporters and that might have created quarrels over grazing, hunting ranges and crop lands even before they became exhausted.
In the event, civil wars might have resulted and ultimately made it impossible for the state to continue. Although some historians believe that civil wars and succession disputes may have bedeviled the Great Zimbabwe state resulting ultimately in its collapse, there is not much evidence to support this view. In the absence of any records or much information from oral tradition, it seems likely that this conclusion was reached after studies of later Shona states like the Mutapa and Rozvi whose social, political and economic organisation was broadly similar to that of Great Zimbabwe. It seems reasonable to suppose therefore that the civil wars and succession disputes that affected the latter two states would have affected Great Zimbabwe as well. The well known tradition about Mutota’s emigration from Great Zimbabwe in search of salt may also have been the result of succession disputes and the civil war that it resulted in.
Historians have generally speculated that Great Zimbabwe could have fallen victim to the rivalry and imperial ambitions of various members of the ruling elite. This is a view which is not easy to substantiate given the fact that hardly any names of the ruling class and any dates have ever been advanced. Oral tradition supplies the name of Nyatsimba Mutota as the aristocrat who emigrated from the state in order to find salt which had become scarce at Great Zimbabwe. It is possible that this emigration may also have been the result of his failure to achieve political power within the Great Zimbabwe state as result of competition and his ambitions would have motivated him to move with his supporters The decline of tradable items, the emergence and growth of the rival states and the progressive decline of trade on the East African coast all conspired to undermine the trade of
Great Zimbabwe with disastrous consequences for the state’s continued existence. According to D.N. Beach, the Great Zimbabwe area was never a major gold producing area itself although there were initially considerably gold deposits especially of the alluvial variety. Those were probably sufficient to support the foundation of the state but not enough to sustain it in the long term. Evidence shows that the ancient prospectors were highly skilled in discovering and exploiting the gold deposits so much that, “little was left un-exploited.”(A.J. Wills. p.25) Given this scenario the continued existence of Great Zimbabwe would have probably depended on the ability of its rulers to control the trade in gold and other items produced elsewhere. With time the Torwa and Mutapa states emerged to the south- west and North-west of Great
Zimbabwe and these undermined the former’s capacity to trade. They were able to achieve this by taking over Great Zimbabwe’s trade routes and by attracting the Swahili-Arab merchants who had been the Great Zimbabwe’s trading partners. What emerged was a scenario where Great Zimbabwe for whom trade was the life-blood progressively lost that ability to trade According to Shona oral traditions,
Nyatsimba Mutota (c.1450-1480) led an expedition northwards from Great
Zimbabwe in the direction of the Mazoe River tributaries ostensibly to search for salt. Objective might not have been salt per se but a general quest for natural resources that might have begun to decline on the plateau owing to a combination of population pressure, over-hunting and even the efficient exploitation of the alluvial gold reserves. Population growth may have produced a competition for the available resources between or among different branches of the ruling family and their supporters and that might have created quarrels over grazing, hunting ranges and crop lands even before they became exhausted. In the event, civil wars might have resulted and ultimately made it impossible for the state to continue. The emergence of states such as the Torwa and Mutapa to the south and north of Great Zimbabwe probably contributed a great deal to the collapse of the latter. Great Zimbabwe was fully occupied for only about 300 years and the rise of the neighboring states of Torwa and Mutapa coincides with the decline of Great Zimbabwe. These were also Shona states with similar political structures, customs, religious beliefs and economic activities. Great Zimbabwe found itself having to compete with these emerging states for control of international trade, economic resources and political domination and it came off worse. The decline of Great Zimbabwe can therefore be attributed to the interplay of various factors chief of which were the succession disputes, shortage of resources, decline in trade, droughts and the emergence of rival states such as Mutapa and the Torwa