Chinhoyi

Chinhoyi (Sinoia) is the capital of Mashonaland West, 116 km up the A1 from Harare, and most visitors meet it twice: once at the turn-off to the caves and once as the fuel stop on the way to Kariba. The name belongs to a Korekore chief who hid his people in those caves from Ndebele raiders in the 1860s and 1870s, and on 28 April 1966 seven guerrillas died on the edge of town in the fight Zimbabwe counts as the first of its liberation war. Both places are a few minutes off the highway, and the town makes more sense once you know them.

1. 1830

   Shona groups had used the caves since the 16th century to store grain and to hide from raiders. In 1830 Angoni (Nguni) raiders attacked the people living there and threw their victims into the pool, which is why it is called Chirorodziva, the pool of the fallen. source

2. 1868 to 1898

   Chinhoyi, a Korekore chief, took the chieftainship in 1868 with a royal drum handed over by his cousin. When Ndebele raids came in the 1860s and 1870s he moved his people to the caves: a stone and pole wall ringed the site, the two cave mouths could be shut with flat stones, and about 400 people retreated into the Dark Cave on the first rumour of a raid. The Ndebele named the hill Siso for the way the Shona vanished into it. In the rising of 1896 to 1898, the First Chimurenga (chimurenga is the Shona word for a war of liberation), the chief held the caves again until British South Africa Company forces drove his people out with dynamite. source

3. 1896 to 1898

   The British South Africa Police replaced the imperial troops in 1896 and settled near Chinoya's kraal, which settler tongues turned into Sinoia; the place itself they called Lo Magundi's, after the local chief. The camp was 115 km of rough track from Salisbury, and in the rains the river crossings were impassable. The Lo Magundi Hornet reported on 8 January 1898 that the police had arrested 1,100 Africans as alleged murderers during the rising, and the commanding officer wrote in December 1897 that there was still resistance in the district. source

4. 1904 to 1930

   The settlers who took the plateau were mostly Italian, and a wealthy Italian officer, Margherito Guidotti, paid for the first group settlement scheme of ten Italian farmers. The Leya and Korekore were moved to the dry Zvimba Reserve, set up in 1904, and Rhodes's company carved the Sinoia Citrus Estate out of Chief Chinhoyi's old land. The caves were fenced as a park in 1908 and fitted with steps, ladders and baboon-proof doors for tourists from 1917. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 then made the division of land by race the law of the colony. source

5. 28 April 1966

   Five months after Ian Smith's white government declared Rhodesia independent of Britain (UDI, 11 November 1965), seven ZANLA guerrillas from the Guruve, Hurungwe and Makonde districts crossed the Zambezi to cut the Kariba power line, which carried about 70 percent of the country's electricity, and then to hit the blacked-out town and its police station. A police unit found them first. A day-long fight with the British South Africa Police and a helicopter gunship ended when the seven ran out of ammunition and were killed. Nationalists held in Salisbury Maximum Security Prison, Edgar Tekere wrote, went wild with joy at the news, and 28 April is kept as Chimurenga Day, the start of the Second Chimurenga. source

6. August 2001

   The fight over farmland came to a head here. In August 2001, 21 farmers from the Chinhoyi area were in jail on charges of attacking land invaders, and more than 40 homesteads in the area had been looted and wrecked. The Herald, the government daily, accused the farmers of arranging the looting with the British embassy, which both denied, and four Daily News journalists were arrested over a report that police vehicles had been used in it. source

7. July 2017

   Robert Mugabe held a big youth rally on the Chinhoyi University of Technology grounds and recommended that the seven men of 1966, buried in Chemagamba Cemetery, be declared national heroes, with a monument carrying their names. They were Simon Chimbodza, Christopher Chatambudza, Nathan Charumuka, Godwin Manyerenyere, Ephraim Shenjere, David Guzuzu and Arthur Maramba. source

8. November 2017

   Four months after that rally the army moved on Harare on the evening of 14 November, Mugabe resigned on 21 November and Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as president on 24 November. source

Language

Chinhoyi is a Shona-speaking town, with English doing the work in schools, business and government offices, so an overseas visitor manages without a word of Shona. It is an administrative, commercial and farming centre rather than a tourist town, and the centre is small enough to walk. source

A college town

Chinhoyi University of Technology grew out of the Chinhoyi Technical Teachers' College of 1991, taught its first degrees in 1999 under the University of Zimbabwe and became a university by an Act of Parliament on 10 December 2001. It has close to 4,000 students, and because the campus has few beds most of them rent rooms in Cold Stream and Mzari, and many of the places to stay on our Chinhoyi list are student boarding houses rather than lodges. source

The caves are still sacred

Spirit mediums still come to the caves for ancestral worship and cultural ceremonies, and the site is held sacred as well as being a park. If you come across a ceremony, give it its space. source

Farm and mine country

Makonde District around the town grows cotton, maize and tobacco, raises cattle for dairy and beef, and mines copper. The district counted 209,960 people at the 2022 census. The old district name, Lomagundi, survives in Lomagundi College, one of the town's three big high schools. source