Gungunhana
Ngungunyane, also known as Mdungazwe Ngungunyane Nxumalo, N'gungunhana, or Gungunhana Reinaldo Frederico Gungunhana, (c. 1850 – 23 December 1906) was a king of the Gaza Empire and vassal of the Portuguese Empire, who rebelled, was defeated by General Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque and lived out the rest of his life in exile, first in Lisbon, but later on the island of Terceira, in the Azores.
Nicknamed the Lion of Gaza, he reigned from around 1884 to 28 December 1895, the day he was imprisoned by Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque in the fortified village of Chaimite.
Because he was already known to the European press, the Portuguese colonial administration decided to exile him, rather than send him to face a firing squad, as would normally be the case.
His father was the son and successor of Soshangane who, as head of an army advancing northward from Zululand, had founded the Gaza Empire.
His grandfather, Soshangane (also called Manicusse or Manukosi), was the king (or Nkosi) of a Nguni-speaking people, related to the Swazi, whose ancestral lands were in the territory of present-day South Africa.
Soshangane was also the undisputed leader of a powerful army that, following the onset of the Mfecane (The Great Scattering), migrated to the north from Zululand.
With the arrival of the Nguni, the relative quiet that had prevailed among the local peoples and the Portuguese traders, who had established themselves along the Mozambican coast, was rudely broken by a succession of massacres and forced submissions to a new power.
After a walk of nearly twenty years' duration, Soshangane and his people established the center of their power in the valley of the River Limpopo founded the village of Chaimite, and declared it his capital.
The delegation was led by Ensign Caetano Pinto dos Santos, who had instructions to establish a treaty of friendship, delivering a sword and a sash to the king in exchange for a short spear and a shield.
The Portuguese colonial administration became convinced that Mawewe was likely to be just as aggressive and fractious as his father and predecessor had been, and they, together with their Boer neighbors to the south, and many local tribal leaders, who also felt threatened by the prospect of Nguni domination, decided to unite against him.
War was declared, and, on 2 November 1861, Mzila arrived in Lourenço Marques to accept Portuguese support in return for his allegiance.
The decisive battle was waged in late November 1861, along a line of nearly twenty kilometres from the beaches of Matola to the land of Moamba.
A record of this agreement, which was approved by the Portuguese government, was published in the orders of 18 February 1863 by José da Silva Mendes Leal, then Minister of the Navy and Overseas.
Expeditions of discovery aimed at broadening European colonies Africa were more and more frequent, and there were more and more missionaries and traders visiting the land of Gaza.
Maintaining a policy of striking a strategic balance with Portuguese interests, Mzila, on 27 January 1882, accompanied by two columns of troops, visited Lourenço Marques, to pledge his allegiance and to offer his explanations of the attacks on Sofala and Inhambane.
The assignment fell to António Maria Cardoso, a man experienced in the region, who was dispatched immediately to the place where Mzila was sojourning, in the neighborhood of Bulawayo, in what is now Zimbabwe.
The same happened to the captain of artillery, Joaquim Carlos Paiva de Andrada, who went to Manica that year to speak to Mzila.
Joao Albasini supplied the Tsonga people with assault rifles and ammunition to protect themselves against the Pedi and the Venda during times of war with these tribes.
The Tsonga villages in South Africa starts from Valdezia in Louis Trichardt and end at Mkhuhlu in Hazyview, which is a distance of 315 km long.
