Soshangane

Soshangane (c. 1790-1859), African chief who created a powerful kingdom between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers (part of modern Mozambique) in the 1830s. In 1810 Soshangane became the hereditary ruler of a small tribe and soon after joined a confederation of tribes that was being created among the northern by Zwide. In 1818 he commanded an army of the Ndwande against the Zulus of Shaka. Soshangane's army was destroyed and scattered and he fled north with a few hundred followers to the region of Delagoa Bay (Bay de Lourenço Marques, Mozambique); there he enlarged his following, conquering local Tsonga to become their overlord and taking in other Nguni refugees from the Shaka upheavals. His group became known as the Gaza (after his grandfather) and the Shangana (after himself) although he then renamed himself Manikusa after another ancestor. He clashed with the Nguni leaders in modern southern Mozambique but by the early 1830s they had moved out of the area. In 1828 Shaka launched his final campaign against Soshangane who managed to repel the invasion of his territory. Soshangane then moved north of the Save River as a precaution, although Shaka was killed that year. After ten years he returned south again. He fought numerous battles with small groups of Portuguese and received annual tribute from Portuguese stations at Sofala, Sena, and Tete, all in modern Mozambique.