When speaking about history long ago (kare kare), many Ndau in central Mozambique and eastern Zimbabwe recall a past marked by a shifting political and cultural terrain of invasion and domination in the nineteenth century. This turbulent period, known by many as a time of terror, began with the migrations of several northern Nguni peoples, most notably the Gaza Nguni, who first settled in the Ndau heartland in the 1830s and returned later for an extended occupation from 1862 to 1889. Most of the population in this corner of southeast Africa submitted to Gaza Nguni overrule and came to be known as Ndau partly in response to the presence of these outsiders. This conquest by the Gaza Nguni in the nineteenth century acted as a foil for the Ndau to re-create their identity and assume a sense of Ndauness with a powerful salience that reverberated into the twentieth century.

The previous chapters argue that Ndau speakers shared a collective identity long before these more recent events. However, this nineteenth-century episode of common suffering at the hands of others reinforced a sense of being Ndau as earlier relationships had not.