Bulawayo

Bulawayo was the capital of the Ndebele kingdom, and Cecil Rhodes's company built its town on the ashes of the king's kraal in November 1893. For most of the twentieth century it was the industrial and railway city of the country, then the factories closed, and in the 1980s the Fifth Brigade killed thousands of civilians in the countryside around it. The wide streets, the old club and the museums make sense once you know that, and so does the slower, prouder mood of the place compared with Harare (Salisbury).

1. 1838 to 1868

   Mzilikazi, a chief of the Khumalo clan who had broken with Shaka's Zulu kingdom in 1823 and been driven out of the Transvaal by the Voortrekkers, crossed the Limpopo in 1838 and settled this country in 1840. He organised his people, the Ndebele (Matabele to the British), in regimental kraals (fortified homesteads) on the model of Shaka's, strong enough to beat off Boer attacks between 1847 and 1851. His first capital was at Inyathi, where his old friend the missionary Robert Moffat visited him. He died in September 1868 and was buried that November in a cave at Entumbane in the Matobo Hills. source

2. 1870 to 1881

   Lobengula, Mzilikazi's son, won a bloody succession fight and in 1870 moved his capital to a new site, renaming it Gubulawayo, from bulawa, to kill or persecute, after the ordeal of getting the throne. It was about a mile round inside a high wooden palisade, with a parade ground, the royal hut, a kraal for sacred goats that nobody entered without the king's permission and a hut for each of his wives. He held court under an indaba tree (indaba is a council or meeting), the London Missionary Society opened Hope Fountain nearby the same year and the Jesuits followed in 1879. In 1881, wary of the missionaries, he had the place burned and moved north to the ground where State House stands today. source

3. 1888 to 1889

   On 30 October 1888 Lobengula put his mark to the Rudd Concession, a 25 year grant of mining rights to Cecil Rhodes's agents Charles Rudd, Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson, in return for money and guns and on the understanding that it kept the Boers and Portuguese out. He could not read and only learned the real terms later. He protested to Queen Victoria on 23 April 1889, and the envoys he sent to London were held up by Alfred Beit's people; the reply from her advisers was that it was impossible to keep white men out. source

4. October 1893 to January 1894

   The company invaded in October 1893: about 700 men under Major Patrick Forbes with five Maxim guns, the first time Britain used the weapon in war, and 700 of Khama's Bechuana from the south. At the Shangani on 25 October roughly 1,500 Ndebele died for four company dead, and at Bembesi on 1 November about 2,500 more. Lobengula fled and his people burned the royal town, ivory, gold and ammunition store with it. The company moved in the next day and built its own town on the ruins of the king's residence. Allan Wilson's Shangani Patrol, sent to catch the king, was overwhelmed on the Shangani in early December, 34 men killed and three getting away, and Lobengula died of smallpox in January 1894. The izinduna (chiefs) then submitted and the kingdom of Mthwakazi was dissolved. source

5. 1896 to 1943

   In March 1896 the Ndebele rose against company rule and besieged the new town. Relief columns broke the siege in late May and the Ndebele surrendered their arms in October. Jameson had declared the settlement on 4 November 1893; Bulawayo became a municipality in 1897, and in 1940 three RAF stations were set up around it to train Empire aircrew. City status came in 1943. source

6. 1947 to 1980

   Joshua Nkomo, born in 1917 in the Matobo district to a poor Ndebele family, came back to Bulawayo in 1947 and rose to lead the union of black railway workers. He formed ZAPU here in 1961 after the National Democratic Party was banned, spent 1964 to 1974 in the Gonakudzingwa restriction camp, and in the 1980 election ZAPU won the 20 seats in Matabeleland while Robert Mugabe's ZANU formed the government. Nkomo turned down the ceremonial presidency and became Minister of Home Affairs. source

7. 1980 to 1987

   Fighting between former ZIPRA and ZANLA guerrillas broke out in the Bulawayo suburb of Entumbane in November 1980 and again in February 1981. From January 1983 the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade, answering directly to the Prime Minister's office, ran the campaign called Gukurahundi (Shona for the early rain that washes away the chaff) across Matabeleland and the Midlands. In Bulawayo, Ndebele men of fighting age were treated as dissidents; most of those detained were shot or sent to camps. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace documented at least 2,000 to 2,750 deaths and thought 8,000 possible, and scholars of genocide put the toll above 20,000. The Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 folded ZAPU into ZANU-PF and ended the killing. Mugabe called it a moment of madness in 2000; in July 2024 the government began village hearings led by chiefs, which survivors say come without any admission or accountability. source

8. 2009 to 2014

   Dollarisation in 2009 wiped out company savings and Bulawayo's factories never came back. G&D Shoes and the Zimbabwe Engineering Company (Zeco), which between them had employed about 2,000 people, were down to about 50; Merlin Textiles, Stewarts & Lloyds, Dunlop, Hunyani and Tregers are on the same list. A government rescue fund launched in 2011 was a fraction of what the industry minister said was needed. By 2014 the factories of Belmont were warehouses for South African imports and one had become a Pentecostal church, the railways were running at a tenth of capacity with staff unpaid for a year, and firms were moving to Harare (Salisbury), which many here read as deliberate neglect of a Ndebele city. source

Language

The city's language is isiNdebele, a Nguni language that shares more than 85 per cent of its words with Zulu; some linguists call it a Zulu dialect and the argument is as much political as linguistic. It has fifteen click consonants, written c, q and x, and it is one of Zimbabwe's sixteen official languages. source

The Ndebele

About 2.2 million people in Zimbabwe are Ndebele. The British took the name Matabele from the Sotho and Tswana; the people call themselves amaNdebele, and Mzilikazi named his nation Mthwakazi. The kingdom absorbed the Rozvi, who took on its language and customs, and overran the Kalanga. Most Ndebele today are Christian. source

Makokoba

Makokoba was the city's first black township. The name comes from ukukhokhoba, bending and walking with a stick, which is how people saw a Native Commissioner called Fallon. It produced the footballers Adam, Madinda and Peter Ndlovu, the Amakhosi theatre group and the Siyaya dance company, and after independence it sent ZAPU men to the council and to parliament. source

Highlanders

Highlanders, Bosso to everyone here, started in 1926 as Lions Football Club, founded by Rhodes, a grandson of Lobengula through his son Njube, with boys from Makokoba, and became Matabeleland Highlanders in 1936. Home is Barbourfields, which holds about 40,000, and a match against Dynamos of Harare is the Battle of Zimbabwe, the one to see if the dates line up. Seven league titles, the last in 2006. source

Intwasa festival

Intwasa is isiNdebele for spring, and the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo takes over seven venues around the city in September, run by the playwright Raisedon Baya. It is a mixed arts festival with a high schools drama competition, and the 2012 edition was the eighth, so it dates from the mid-2000s. source