The Korekore are a subgroup of Ihe Shonas of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. They constitute the "Northern Shona" cluster of peoples.
The Korekore are living in the northern part of Zimbabwe and Zambia, and spilling over from the high plateau into the Zambezi Valley.
The Korekores are bordered on the south by the Zezurus.
The people live in scattered family hamlets, which are grouped for administrative purposes into villages.
The Korekore are organised into small chiefdoms in the Zambesi Valley. Korekore chiefdoms are loosely structured around these royal lineages. They are composed of small hamlets which are short lived and prone to fission.
They appear to have originated from the break up of the Karanga state based on Great Zimbabwe (now a complex of stone ruins), from which a number of groups migrated northwards in the fifteenth century. Many, and especially the more eastern group of Korekore chiefdoms, have at various times in their history been incorporated into the Mutapa state (see Beach forthcoming), but at the time of the colonial settlement at the end of the nineteenth century, they comprised a large number of small and mutually independent chiefdoms. The white administrators have tried to group some of the chiefdoms together into hierarchies, which however are still rejected by the peoples who were declared subordinate. In some areas, Korekore chiefdoms have received an influx of population from lands which have become over-populated, or which have been taken over by white farmers; and a few chiefdoms were taken over entirely, resulting in a mass migration of the populations (Bourdillon 1970). The chiefdoms in the east of Korekore country, however, with which this article is concerned, remain for the most part the small, mutually independent units they were before the arrival of the whites, none having a population of more than a few thousands. This study was made just prior to the outbreak of the current guerrilla war.
The Korekore are a Shona speaking people. The Korekore Ianguage is spoken south of the Zambezi River, from Lake Kariba in the west to the point where the Mazoe River exits Zimbabwe in the east.
Perhaps 15 percent of the Shonas in Zimbabwe speak a Korekore dialect
Most of them are farmers, raising cattle, millet, maize, pumpkins, and yams.
The main subgroups of the Korekore are the:
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