Marondera

Marondera (Marandellas until 1982) is the farming and boarding-school town 72 km down the Mutare road from Harare, capital of Mashonaland East and, at 1,688 m, a town where June and July nights drop to about 5 degrees. It began in 1891 as a coach stop on the wagon road to Umtali, was wrecked in the 1896 rising and rebuilt beside the new railway. What draws visitors is around the town rather than in it: the Anglican shrine to Bernard Mizeki, the stone walls of Tsindi and the sable and rock paintings of Gosho Park.

1. 13th to 19th century

   On Tsindi hill, north-east of today's town, the first stone walls went up in the 13th century in the style of Great Zimbabwe and were extended in the 15th. The Nhowe people lived there for about 250 years under chiefs (hereditary rulers of a people and its land) with the dynastic title Mangwende, on land granted by their Rozvi overlords, and in the 17th or 18th century large decorated clay huts were built inside the enclosure, probably for spirit mediums. The Rozvi were broken by the Nguni invasions of the 1830s, the religious centre was destroyed in the 19th century, and the hill ended as a refuge and cattle kraal. source

2. 1891 to 1894

   A year after the Pioneer Column reached Salisbury (now Harare), Cecil Rhodes offered 20 acres to anyone who would set up a coach stop on the road to Umtali (now Mutare). Bottomley, Head and Moore, all former British South Africa Police men, took him up on it and built an inn at the Ruzawi outspan, the place now called Old Marandellas. A police post followed in 1892 and in 1894 Native Commissioner Wiri Edwards was stationed there too. source

3. June to July 1896

   The First Chimurenga (the Shona word for a rising, used for the 1896 to 1897 war against British South Africa Company rule) reached this district in mid-June 1896. Bernard Mizeki, the Anglican missionary, was killed at his home by two sons of Chief Mangwende; on Saturday 20 June Chief Marondera's followers moved on Old Marandellas. Captain Harry Bremner was killed in bed in a one-roomed farmhouse, and James White and his friend Molimile Molele were killed a couple of hundred metres from the Nengubo (Waddilove) mission church. Nine white men got away in mule wagons, east through the kopjes to Macheke and on to Headlands. Major Watts's relief column did not reach Old Marandellas until 29 July. source

4. 1896 to 1909

   Mungate, chief of the Nhowe under the Mangwende title, fought the settlers in 1896 and then made peace. His son Muchemwa kept up a guerrilla war until 1903, when it ended in a hard fight at the Bokoto Hills and he laid down his arms on condition that he was not prosecuted and lived near Murewa under watch. The settlers took the fertile land at Mahopo Masekwa, Mungate was moved to Rota, and Muchemwa was murdered in 1909. source

5. 1899 to 1900

   The railway from Umtali opened to Salisbury on 22 May 1899, built by George Pauling's firm. A year later, during the Anglo-Boer War, troops coming up from the fever flats of the Beira line filled the hospital at Marandellas: the trooper Sharrad Gilbert wrote that on top of an iron hospital of nearly forty beds, fifty large huts of mud and thatch had to be built for the sick. Graves from that war lie in a cemetery in Marondera. source

6. 1913 to 1946

   After the 1896 rising the town was moved 6 km north onto the railway. The new settlement became a village in 1913 and a town in 1943. During the Second World War it took in more than 600 Polish refugees, mostly women and children; the camp closed in 1946 and the Poles were moved to Gatooma, now Kadoma, before going back to Europe. source

7. 1955 to 1958

   Fred Snell opened Peterhouse on an estate outside the town in 1955 with 55 boys, and the roll reached about 360 within five years. Edward Paget, then Archbishop of Central Africa and one of the founders, laid the foundation stone of the school chapel in November 1956; it is modelled on Coventry Cathedral, seats over 600 and was dedicated in November 1958. Peterhouse Girls followed in 1987, and the three schools on the estate now share about 3,000 acres. source

8. 1982

   On the second anniversary of independence the government began renaming towns to get rid of the symbols of colonial rule, starting with Salisbury, which became Harare. Marandellas became Marondera in the same drive, alongside Umtali (Mutare) and Gatooma (Kadoma). Many colonial names had been written in Ndebele spelling, and Shona has no letter l, so the new forms follow Shona spelling. source

Languages and people

Shona is the majority language. A good share of the town is of Malawian origin, families whose parents came to work on the white-owned tobacco farms, and they still speak Chichewa and Chitumbuka. source

A town of boarding schools

Marondera is known across Zimbabwe for its schools more than anything else. Peterhouse Boys and Girls, Watershed College, Bernard Mizeki College, Waddilove, Nagle House and Marondera High are the senior schools, with Ruzawi and Springvale House among the junior ones. source

The June pilgrimage

Every year around the anniversary of Mizeki's death on 18 June 1896, Anglicans and other Christians make the journey to the shrine east of town. More than 30,000 pilgrims are reported, with church leaders from Zimbabwe and the neighbouring countries. The pilgrimage only became a mass event after independence in 1980. source