Masuma Dam in the early 1960s. Evidence for iron smelting was also found in a settlement dating to the late first millennium AD.

The southern Tonga people known as the Batoka/Tokalea called the falls Shungu na mutitima. The Matabele, later arrivals, named them aManz' aThunqayo, and the Batswana and Makololo (whose language is used by the Lozi people)