Shurugwi

Shurugwi, called Selukwe until 1982, is a chrome and gold town on the southern end of the Great Dyke, 32 km south of Gweru (Gwelo). Few places pack this much of Zimbabwe's twentieth century into one district: Ian Smith, who declared Rhodesia independent in 1965, was born here, and so was Josiah Tongogara, the guerrilla commander who fought him. Most visitors come for the Boterekwa pass on the road to Zvishavane, but the mines are the real story, and they are still eating away at the ground under the town.

1. 19th century

   The old name Selukwe is usually traced to Selukwe Dlodlo, a local Ndebele chief (the Ndebele are the Nguni-speaking people of the south-west, as opposed to the Shona majority), and a brother of Somabhulane and Nalatale Dlodlo. source

2. 1899

   Prospectors found the Selukwe goldfield in the early 1890s, shortly after the British South Africa Company's Pioneer Column took the country for Cecil Rhodes. The Company and Willoughby's Consolidated Company laid out the town in 1899, and it became the end of a branch railway from Gweru. source

3. 1919

   Ian Douglas Smith was born in Selukwe on 8 April 1919. His father Jock had emigrated to Rhodesia in 1898 aged 19, and his mother's family came out from Cumberland around 1906. He boarded at Chaplin School in Gweru (Gwelo) and flew Hurricanes and later Spitfires for the RAF in the Second World War. source

4. 1926

   Chrome took over from gold. The ferrochrome company now called Zimasco has mined around the town since 1926, on the southern edge of the 550 km Great Dyke, and the underground workings spread under what later became housing. source

5. 1948 to 1965

   In 1948 Smith and his wife Janet bought a 3,600 acre farm near Selukwe, bounded by the Lundi (Runde) and Impali rivers, and called it Gwenoro, the local Karanga name for its stream. It ran cattle, tobacco and maize. On 11 November 1965, as prime minister, he signed Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), the break with Britain meant to keep the country under white minority rule. source

6. 1976 to 1979

   The liberation war hit the district hard. There was heavy fighting between ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) guerrillas and Rhodesian forces from 1976 to 1979, and many civilians died in it. Since independence the district has been a ZANU-PF stronghold. source

7. 1982 to 2012

   Selukwe became Shurugwi in 1982. Smith later lived in Harare; he died in Cape Town on 20 November 2007 and his family scattered his ashes at Gwenoro. His stepchildren ran the farm until December 2012, when the government seized it under the land reform programme and gave it to a technical college. source

8. 2011 to 2020

   Illegal gold diggers started tunnelling under the Gweru to Zvishavane road at the Boterekwa escarpment in 2011. The road was repaired and the digging came back, and in June 2020 a stretch caved in over a tunnel about 15 m deep and 7 m wide. The Roads Department found more tunnels under the highway while it filled the hole. source

People and languages

The Karanga, the southern Shona, are the majority across the district. There are Ndebele-speaking communities around the Rockford farms and Dlodlo, and families of former Zimasco mine workers, mostly of Malawian descent. source

Mission and boarding schools

Rural Shurugwi is dotted with boarding schools that pull pupils from far away. Pakame Mission, a Methodist school, sits about 40 km south by road towards Zvishavane, near Guruguru mountain. Tongogara High, about 40 km east, is a government boarding school named after the district's most famous guerrilla, and Hanke, a Seventh-day Adventist high school, is 10 km north of it. source

Cha Cha Cha growth point

Shurugwi's growth point (the main rural business centre) is Cha Cha Cha, about 24 km south-east on the Beitbridge road. It began as Donga Township, after the erosion gullies, and takes its current name from the Happy Cha Cha Cha Hotel, where local cha-cha-cha dancers performed. In 1980 it was renamed after Herbert Chitepo, but that name never stuck. When it took over the growth point role from Tongogara Township it got a post office and supermarkets. source

A name with baggage

By 2019 "MaShurugwi" had become the national word for the machete gangs who rob gold panners and small mines. There is general agreement the behaviour started here, but it spread to almost every major mining area, and chiefs Banga and Ndanga of Shurugwi have objected to the label, saying the attackers come from all over the country. source