Mashonaland West

Mashonaland West runs from the tobacco and gold farms west of Harare down the Zambezi Escarpment to Lake Kariba, Mana Pools and the Chirundu bridge. It is where a German geologist reported two big goldfields in 1867, where a dam built for the Federation drowned the Tonga homeland, and where the liberation war fired its first shots in 1966. The province itself only dates from 1983.

1. 1830 and the decades after

   Shona communities used the caves outside Chinhoyi from the 16th century to store grain and hide from raiders. In 1830 Angoni 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. In the 1890s Chief Chinhoyi, who took over from Chief Nyamakwere, used the Dark Caves as a refuge from raiders, the Ndebele among them. source

2. 1866 to 1867

   The German geologist Karl Mauch met the ivory hunter Henry Hartley in 1866 and noticed quartz veins carrying visible gold. In 1867 he pushed north-west towards the Zambezi and reported two large goldfields. His reports were read closely in the Cape Colony, the Boer republics and England, and even the British colonial government took notice. source

3. 1896 to 1898

   The Shona rising, the First Chimurenga, broke out on 17 June 1896 at Mazowe with an attack on the Alice Mine and spread across Mashonaland, led by the spirit mediums Nehanda Nyakasikana and Kaguvi Gumboreshumba. Company forces brought Maxim guns against each stronghold in turn until October 1897. Nehanda and Kaguvi were captured and executed in 1898. source

4. 1955 to 1960

   The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland chose to dam the Zambezi at Kariba after Southern Rhodesia refused a site on Zambia's Kafue River. The Italian firm Cogefar-Impresit built the 128 m arch wall between 1955 and 1959, 86 workers died on the job and about 57,000 Tonga people lost their land to the rising lake. The Queen Mother opened the dam on 17 May 1960. Zambia and Zimbabwe now own it equally through the Zambezi River Authority. source

5. 28 April 1966

   Seven ZANLA guerrillas set out to cut the power line from Kariba, which carried about 70 percent of Rhodesia's electricity, and then to attack the blacked-out town and police station at Sinoia (now Chinhoyi). Police backed by helicopters killed all seven when their ammunition ran out. The fight is counted as the opening battle of the liberation war, the Second Chimurenga, and Zimbabwe marks the date as Chimurenga Day. source

6. 1979 to 1980

   Rhodesia guarded the Zambezi from Lake Kariba to the Mozambique border with camps of 30 men about 8 km apart, but after the attack on Altena Farm in December 1972 the guerrilla war grew, above all in the north-east. It ended with the Lancaster House Agreement in London in December 1979. Elections followed in March 1980 and Zimbabwe became independent on 18 April 1980 with Robert Mugabe as prime minister. source

7. 1983

   Three years after independence the old Rhodesian provinces of Mashonaland North and South were redrawn into Mashonaland Central, East and West, with Chinhoyi as the western capital and Kadoma its largest town. Company rule had known only two provinces, Mashonaland and Matabeleland; Rhodesia had seven. source

8. 2000 onward

   The fast-track land reform that began in February 2000, when war veterans led marches onto white-owned farms, took the commercial estates across the country, and by 2013 almost all of them had been expropriated. Tobacco, the main export crop, fell to 48 million kg in 2008, a fifth of the 2000 harvest. It recovered in the hands of small growers, many of them under contract to merchants such as the Chinese firm Tian Ze, which reached more than 12,000 smallholders by 2014. source

Language

Shona is spoken almost everywhere in the province, and the standard written form is based on the Zezuru dialect of the Harare region. It is one of Zimbabwe's 16 official languages, with about 9.6 million first-language speakers across the country. source

The Tonga of the lake shore

The people of the Zambezi valley before the dam were Tonga, and after it was built they settled along the shore of the new lake. Today they live from Chirundu and Kariba through Mola to Binga and Victoria Falls, speak a language they call tchitonga in Zimbabwe, and mostly farm and fish. In the 1800s the Ndebele regarded them as a very peaceful people. source

Tobacco country

Tobacco is the main cash crop on the farmland around Karoi. The government set the area aside for farming in 1945, largely for white ex-servicemen, and in 2011 the Mashonaland Tobacco Company was allowed to open auction floors and buy leaf in Karoi itself. source

Kapenta

The little sardine of Lake Kariba, brought in from Lake Tanganyika, is caught at night with lights that draw it to the fishing rigs, where a big dip net lifts it from deep water. Most of it is sun-dried, often salted first. In Zimbabwe the dried fish is fried with onion, tomato and groundnut powder and eaten with sadza, the maize porridge. Order it once. source

Nyaminyami

The river god of the Zambezi, shown with a serpent's body and a fish's head, is the figure carved on the walking sticks and pendants sold to visitors along the river. The Tonga hold that the dam wall cut him off from his wife, that he withdrew from the world of people when it was finished, and that the tremors felt around the lake are his attempts to reach her. source