Zimbabwe [ c ] , officially the Republic of Zimbabwe , is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa , between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers , bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east.
The capital and largest city is Harare , and the second largest is Bulawayo. A country of roughly Zimbabwe has 16 official languages , [ 3 ] with English, Shona , and Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age , the Bantu people who would become the ethnic Shona built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe ; the city-state became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century but was abandoned by the mid 15th century.
Company rule ended in with the establishment of Southern Rhodesia as a self-governing British colony. In , the white minority government unilaterally declared independence as Rhodesia. The state endured international isolation and a year guerrilla war with black nationalist forces; this culminated in a peace agreement that established de jure sovereignty as Zimbabwe in April Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in , when his ZANUβPF party won the general election following the end of white minority rule and has remained the country's dominant party since.
He was the President of Zimbabwe from , after converting the country's initial parliamentary system into a presidential one , until his resignation in Under Mugabe's authoritarian regime, the state security apparatus dominated the country and was responsible for widespread human rights violations. Emmerson Mnangagwa has since served as Zimbabwe's president.
The name "Zimbabwe" stems from a Shona term for Great Zimbabwe , a medieval city Masvingo in the country's south-east. Two different theories address the origin of the word. Archaeologist Peter Garlake claims that "Zimbabwe" represents a contracted form of dzimba-hwe , which means "venerated houses" in the Zezuru dialect of Shona and usually references chiefs' houses or graves.
