The son of Mzilikazi, he was the second and last Ndebele king (1870–93). After his father’s death there was civil war until 1870, when Lobengula acceded to the throne. He compromised Ndebele independence by land concessions to the British (1886) and in 1888 signed the concessions which gave mining rights to Rhodes’s British South Africa Company. Later, Lobengula tried to resist the expanding European settlement and influence in his country. In 1893 he went to war against the British, but was defeated. He died as he was escaping from Bulawayo, his capital.