Where do the Shona people live today?

Zimbabwe: the heartland

Mashonaland, where most of the Shona live, is a collective term for the eastern two-thirds of the country. The core of Shona country is the high plateau of Zimbabwe, with an elevation of 1,200 meters or more, a temperate climate.

The subgroups and where they settle

The Shona are not one uniform bloc. There are a number of linguistic subgroups: the Zezuru, who inhabit the central plateau of Zimbabwe; the Karanga, to the south; the Korekore, to the north and dropping into the Zambezi Valley; the Manyika, to the east; the Tavara, in the Zambezi Valley in Mozambique and the extreme northeast of Zimbabwe; the Ndau, in the southeast of Zimbabwe and stretching down to the coast in Mozambique; and the Kalanga, in the southwest of Zimbabwe and overflowing into Botswana.

Beyond Zimbabwe's borders

Mozambique holds about 2.3 million Shona, and South Africa between 1 and 2 million. Zambia has a smaller community of around 30,000, and around 200,000 Shona live in the United Kingdom.

Their language

They speak the Shona language, called chiShona. The Penn Language Center estimates chiShona is spoken by about 75% of the population of Zimbabwe, making it one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages on the continent.

The civilization that built Great Zimbabwe between the 11th and 15th centuries did not vanish. Its descendants are tens of millions of people still rooted in the same southern African plateau, carrying forward a culture, a language, and a name that stretches back over a thousand years.