Chegutu

Chegutu is the town most people pass at 107 km on the Bulawayo road out of Harare without a second look, and that is a pity, because the ground around it holds the start of the whole Rhodesian story. The gold reefs at Hartley Hills, 34 km east, set off the first gold rush north in 1867, brought Thomas Baines's mining concession from Lobengula in 1871 and saw a 37-day siege in the 1896 Chimurenga. The town itself was Hartley until 1982, a prospectors' camp that became a cotton and textile town, and it is where the 2023 cholera outbreak began.

1. 1865 to 1867

   Henry Hartley, who left England as a child with the 1820 settlers, hunted elephant up here and from 1865 camped every year at the hills that now carry his name, at the end of the old Hunter's Road. He saw gold reef in the old African workings north of the Mupfure (Umfuli) River, but Mzilikazi, the Ndebele king, had banned prospecting and Hartley could not carry samples away. In 1867 he guided the German geologist Karl Mauch to the reefs, and that December at Potchefstroom the two men announced the goldfields, which set off the first gold rush north. source

2. 1869 to 1871

   The artist and explorer Thomas Baines came up for the South African Gold Fields Exploration Company in 1869. Lobengula, only proclaimed king on 26 January 1870, let him dig between the Gweru and Manyame rivers, Baines and Nelson pegged the company's first claim on the Chimbo River and named the spot Hartley Hills, and the written concession followed on 29 August 1871 with the king's X mark beside a boxwood seal Baines had carved himself. Hartley's son Willie died of fever on the trip on 29 May 1870. The surface gold did not continue at depth, the company ran out of money and never repaid Baines, and the concession was never taken up. Had Baines lived longer it would probably have prevailed over the later Rudd Concession. source

3. 1890 to 1891

   When the Pioneer Column, the armed column of settlers Rhodes's Company marched into Mashonaland, was disbanded at Fort Salisbury on 1 October 1890, many of its men went straight to Hartley Hills. William Harvey Brown, who had come with the column collecting specimens for the Smithsonian, spent that rainy season there and noticed the old miners had been thorough: any quartz outcrop they had left alone was barren. Local Shona guided the prospectors to the workings for blankets, beads and cartridge cases. Lobengula sent indunas (headmen) over with a dry message that he was glad the white men had reached Mashonaland safely, and Lord Randolph Churchill came through the following September, decided Mashonaland was neither an Arcadia nor an Eldorado, and bought a half share in a mine anyway. source

4. 1896 to 1897

   Chimurenga is the Shona word for a rising, and the first one came to Hartley in mid June 1896, when Indian traders were killed at their store near the Mupfure; Native Commissioner Mooney and two prospectors died soon after. Twelve of the 34 settlers at Hartley Hills fortified Fort Hill and held it under fire until Captain White's patrol relieved them on 22 July. Behind the rising here was Chief Chinengundu Mashayamombe (a chief is the hereditary head of a Shona territory), whose stronghold of caves and dry-stone walls on the north bank of the Mupfure lay about 20 km away, allied with the spirit medium Kaguvi. Alderson's troops burnt the kraals in October 1896 and left, the people moved back in, Mashayamombe attacked Fort Martin, built 1.5 km from his home, with 300 to 400 men on 17 March 1897, and on 24 July 1897 the BSA Police stormed the stronghold and blockaded the survivors in a cave until they gave up. How the chief died is told at least four different ways. Kaguvi surrendered on 27 October 1897 and was sentenced to death with Nehanda in 1898. source

5. 1899 to 1982

   The settlement moved 34 km west to its present site in 1899, the railway reached it in 1901, and Hartley became a village in 1903 and a town in 1942, with the Butterfly and Giant gold mines close by. After the Second World War the land around it went under maize and cotton, one of the country's largest textile mills was built, the Cotton and Grain Marketing Boards set up depots, and by 1984 there were 16 grain silos. A town council came in 1968 and municipal status in 1974. Bizek Mapuranga was mayor from 1981, and in 1982 the name changed to Chegutu. source

6. 1994 to 2002

   The platinum of the Great Dyke, the ridge of mineral-rich rock that runs the length of Zimbabwe, reached Chegutu when BHP (two thirds) and Delta Gold (one third) began building Hartley Platinum Mine at Selous in 1994. It missed its targets and BHP put it on care and maintenance in 1999. Delta had demerged its platinum interests as Zimplats in 1998, Zimplats took over BHP's share, and in 2002 it opened an open pit at Ngezi and trucked the ore to Selous, exporting the first converter matte in April 2002. Implats of South Africa holds 87 percent of Zimplats today. source

7. 2000 to 2011

   The land invasions that began in February 2000 reached Mount Carmel, Mike Campbell's farm in Chegutu district. The High Court threw out the first acquisition notice in July 2001; Amendment 17 of September 2005 then took land acquisition cases away from the courts. Campbell went to the SADC Tribunal in October 2007, and on 29 June 2008, with the case still running, he, his wife Angela and his son-in-law Ben Freeth were abducted and beaten. The Tribunal ruled for them on 28 November 2008, finding racial discrimination and holding that compensation was payable. Zimbabwe's High Court refused to register the judgment, the government pulled out of the Tribunal in August 2009, and the Campbells were forced off the farm; Freeth's homestead burnt on 30 August 2009. Campbell died on 6 April 2011, his family said of complications from the beating, and in May 2011 SADC's leaders decided not to reappoint the Tribunal's members, which left it suspended. source

8. 2023 to 2024

   Zimbabwe's 2023 cholera outbreak was first reported in Chegutu District on 12 February 2023 and spread to all ten provinces and 62 districts. By the time the Ministry of Health declared it over in August 2024 it had reached 34,549 suspected cases and 718 deaths, the last case on 30 June 2024. source

Who lives here and what they call it

The 2022 census counted 66,260 people in Chegutu Urban, up from 50,590 in 2012 and 43,424 in 2002, with another 178,911 in the surrounding rural district. The town grew by nearly a third in that last decade. source

Suburb names that carry the history

The high-density suburbs are Chinengundu, Pfupajena, Chegutu and Kaguvi, names shared with the chief and the medium of 1896, while the low-density side keeps the settler names Hartley Hills, Hintonville and Rifle Range. Locals shorten Pfupajena to kumaPee and Chegutu suburb to kumaCee, and two parts of Chinengundu go by Heroes and ZMDC. source

Lion spirits

Mhondoro means lion in Shona and is the name for a royal ancestral spirit tied to a territory, the go-between for Mwari (God) and the living, and also for the svikiro, the medium the spirit speaks through. The Zezuru Shona hold a Rukoto ceremony each year at the important mhondoro shrines to thank the spirits for rain, with sweet beer offered. source

Cotton and cloth

The David Whitehead textile mill shut for more than a decade, and its closure touched most families in Chegutu. The revived plant, now under Agro-Value Chain of the ETG Parrogate group, was commissioned on 5 October 2022 as a US$20 million facility with a cotton ginnery and an oilseed crusher alongside, and the President said it would be the sole maker of fabric for the army's fatigues and the country's school uniforms. source

Gold, legal and otherwise

Chegutu District is first a mining district. The two big gold mines are Butterfly, which began as a pre-colonial working, and Giant, and artisanal gold digging is common, often using mercury to separate the gold. source