Lobengula was the second and last king of the Southern African Ndebele (Matabele) kingdom. He ruled between 1868 and 1894, a period during which British interest in Africa was increasing due to its abundance of resources. In 1870, Lobengula granted his first concession to the London and Limpopo Mining Company, allowing them to mine for gold in the Tati River area, situated in the southwest of Matabeleland, in return for gifts, annual grants, and weapons. The area was discovered to be expensive and hard to mine and consequently abandoned, leading to Lobengula revoking the concession in 1880 due to failure to pay the annual fee. In 1886, however, the gold discoveries in Witwatersrand, a mountain ridge situated in today’s South Africa, drew attention to the gold in the Ndebele kingdom and the neighboring Mashonaland once again. Hence, Lobengula proceeded to grant many mining agreements after the first one in 1870, the most significant one being signed in 1888 with Cecil Rhodes’s business associates, led by Charles Rudd. The agreement was a gold concession to the entire Ndebele land, but because Lobengula was illiterate, he was tricked into believing that it was a limited mineral concession. The British government, however, accepted the document as authentic in 1889, and it was used to charter the British South Africa Company (BSAC). Lobengula refused to let them onto his land, so in 1890, the BSAC conquered neighboring Mashonaland instead. After failing to find much gold there, in 1893, the BSAC led an invasion in the Ndebele kingdom, justifying it with claims that the Ndebele were planning to attack Mashonaland. Thus, the First Matabele War began. One of the most devastating conflicts during it was the Battle of Shangani, during which the Maxim machine guns were used, leading to the deaths of many Ndebele warriors. Faced with the attacks of the BSAC’s military forces and the British imperial forces, and the large number of casualties, Lobengula burned Bulawayo, the capital of Ndebele kingdom, and fled in the direction of the Zambezi river. In late 1893, he was reported to be very sick. Although he is thought to have died in early 1894, his death and its cause remain inconclusive (56,57).