Mpezeni

▪ South African chief

also spelled  Mpeseni  

born c. 1830

died Sept. 21, 1900, near Fort Jameson, Northern Rhodesia [now Chipata, Zambia]

      South African chief, a son of the great Ngoni king Zwangendaba. Mpezeni found himself in the middle of European competition for control of southeastern Africa, and his unwillingness to grant land and mineral concessions to European colonists earned him their enmity. He was eventually defeated by the British.

      At Zwangendaba's death in 1845, the Ngoni kingdom split into five major groups under different sons of the old king. Mpezeni led his group to what is now southern Zambia, where they were undisturbed by external threats until the closing years of the 19th century. From 1889, however, Germany, Portugal, and Britain attempted to gain control of his territory. Mpezeni tried to play off the European powers against each other, but by 1896 his policy of procrastination began to cause dissension among his own people, and in 1897 he reluctantly consented to an attack on British settlements in the Nyasaland Protectorate (now Malaŵi). The British counterattacked in force, and in February 1898 Mpezeni was forced to surrender.

* * *