Hwange

Hwange (Wankie until 1982) is the coal town between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, about 100 km short of the Falls by road, and the one most people pass on the way to the park that shares its name. It is worth more than a fuel stop. The name belongs to a Nambya chief whose people built stone capitals in this country from the 1300s, the colliery has been digging since the early 1900s, the worst mine disaster in the country's history happened here in 1972, and the chimneys you see from the road belong to the biggest power station in Zimbabwe.

1. 14th to 19th century

   The Nambya built a state of their own in the Hwange country, with dry-stone capitals in the Great Zimbabwe manner. Radiocarbon dates put the first, Shangano, in use from the 1300s to the 1800s, and Nambya tradition says the capital later moved to Mtoa and then Bumbusi. The archaeologists who dug Shangano argue the Nambya state did not come from a direct migration out of Great Zimbabwe but grew up alongside the other Zimbabwe Culture states. source

2. 18th and 19th century

   Bumbusi, in what is now the national park between Sinamatella and Robins camps, is the best known of the Nambya capitals; its main walls date from the 1700s and 1800s and the floors of eighteen houses were uncovered there in 2000. The town and the park take their name from the Nambya ruler Sawanga, whom his people later called Hwange, and his successor is still known as Chief Hwange. source

3. 1893 to 1903

   In 1893 a young German prospector called Albert Giese was told by an African informant about black stones that burn. In 1894 he pegged the first claim on a shale outcrop in the Kamandama River, the same year the Mashonaland Agency took concession rights over a large part of the Wankie district from Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company. In 1897 Giese pegged a concession of 1,036 square kilometres. Shaft sinking began in August 1901, the main incline reached coal in January 1902, and the first train arrived in September 1903 and took the first coal south. source

4. 1903 to 1913

   Cheap Wankie coal kept the gold mines and the railways running, and the colliery kept its own costs down with cheap labour: local men, workers from Barotseland in today's Zambia, convicts, and contract labourers supplied by the Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau, whom the other workers called chibaro, forced labour. Scurvy and a high death rate gave the mine such a name that in 1906 a native commissioner wrote that in the words of the Africans themselves, the colliery stinks. On 31 December 1912 about 160 of the 1,000 African miners struck; they were prosecuted and were back at work by 3 January. source

5. 1953 to 1954

   Anglo American of Johannesburg bought Wankie from Britain's Powell Duffryn in 1953 and set about running it the Rand way. In February 1954 the black workforce struck. Prime Minister Garfield Todd flew in, called out four companies of white territorial reservists and two armoured cars, and had the strikers told through a police loudhailer that anyone who would not work would be signed off and put on a train north. Hunger broke the strike on 5 February; about 300 took the train to Northern Rhodesia, and the rest went back and ran a two-month go-slow until the wage rises a labour board recommended were paid. source

6. 1964 to 1972

   Two historians have called Wankie a Zambian town in colonial Zimbabwe: fewer than a quarter of its miners came from Southern Rhodesia, and in March 1964 women led a week-long strike in which food rations given in place of wages were a big grievance; when the men went back on Monday 9 March, the rations were replaced with cash. In August 1967 a joint force of ZIPRA and South Africa's Umkhonto we Sizwe crossed the Zambezi east of Victoria Falls and based itself in the Wankie Game Reserve, one of the most significant operations of the liberation war. Then on 6 June 1972 a series of gas explosions tore through No. 2 Colliery and killed 427 men. Eight were pulled out alive, three bodies came up, and on 9 June the general manager decided to leave the other 424 where they lay. source

7. 1973 to 1987

   Work on the power station began in 1973 and stopped in 1975 under sanctions; the first units ran between 1983 and 1986 and the second stage in 1986 and 1987, and it is now the biggest plant in the country. The Hwange Local Board was set up in 1974 to serve people who wanted houses of their own outside the company areas. In 1982 Wankie became Hwange. source

8. 2002 to 2023

   The colliery, which dug 5.5 million tonnes in 1991, ran short of foreign currency, spares and railway wagons from 2002, and into 2008 the power station could not run all its units for want of coal. In October 2018, with a legacy debt of US$352 million and up to US$70 million owed to its workers, the government put the company under an administrator; in February 2020 the High Court ruled the order null and void. The town's other employer went the other way: in August 2023 President Mnangagwa commissioned Units 7 and 8, built by China's Sinohydro for US$1.5 billion, adding 600 MW and taking Hwange to 1,520 MW. source

Languages and people

Nambya, closely related to Kalanga, is the home language of the district, spoken particularly in Hwange town, and one of Zimbabwe's 16 official languages under the 2013 constitution. Estimates put its speakers at nearly 100,000; no Zimbabwean census has ever counted languages. source

A company town with three landlords

Hwange has never quite been a town. The Local Board set up in 1974 has 15 wards on paper but runs seven; the other eight belong to the colliery, which owns the buildings in the centre that house the banks and supermarkets, the hospitals, the stadiums and about 5,000 houses, and runs its compounds like a council. The 2022 census counted 40,241 people in Hwange Urban District. source

Sport

Football here means Hwange FC, Chipangano, founded in 1940 as Wankie Colliery FC and still playing at the 15,000-capacity Colliery Stadium. Their honours list has the national cup in 1970, 1973 and 1991, and they were relegated from the Premier Soccer League in 2024. The Tom Kenton Oval, once the Wankie Oval, has hosted first-class cricket. source