Dambudzo Mnangagwa was born on 15 September 1942 in Shabani (now Zvishavane), a mining town in central Southern Rhodesia. Some sources give his birth year as 1946, but Mnangagwa says he was born in 1942. His parents, Mafidhi and Mhurai Mnangagwa, were politically active farmers. He belonged to a large family; his grandfather had six wives and 32 sons (daughters were not counted), and Mnanganga himself is the third of ten siblings. His father had two wives, having inherited his wife Mhurai's sister after the death of her husband. Mnangagwa thus had eight additional half-siblings who were also his cousins. The Mnangagwa family were members of the Karanga people, the largest subgroup of Zimbabwe's majority Shona ethnic group.
