The New York Times, May 3, 1896, p.25:
GLIMPSES OF BULAWAYO.AN AMERICAN'S EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN MATABELELAND.
Pleasures and Perils of Six Days' Trip
from the Railroad Terminus--Houses Only One Story High
Because Wood is Had Only from England or America--Very Many
Improvements, Even to Electric Light--Beautiful Farms Abound.
BULAWAYO, March 5 -- Bulawayo, in Matabeleland, two and a half years ago had no existence. It is in King Lobengula's old territory, and is now under the control of the Chartered Company. It is 600 miles from the railroad terminus, Mafeking. About five months ago a party of six men made the journey in six days from Mafeking to Bulawayo, the usual time allotted, traveling night and day, allowing only three hours rest in every twenty-four hours. The stage coach used was of American make, the Concord, drawn by ten mules, met by a relay of ten mules every twelve miles.
The journey for half the way was through beautiful forests and valleys, natural parks, where wild flowers grew and bloomed in abundance. Many were at once recognized as being akin to those at home, but hundreds of others were new to the observer and nameless.
The roads for the last part of the journey were very bad, swampy and heavy, and twice the stage upset. When they reached one of the many kraals, or settlements--a krall numbering anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 natives, ruled over by an Induna, or chief--the driver wanted the party to get out, he to push on with the mail and send back for them, but a Yankee in the party objected (he was afterward dubbed "The General," because of the way he rose to the situation,) and succeeded in tying up the harness securely, and, by piling the greater part of the mail inside the coach, lightened the load on top, thus making the coach less top-heavy. He then climbed up, and perching himself on top of the mail bags, invited the others to do the same, which they gladly did, and so the party entered Bulawayo.
A room at the Charter Hotel, with the best of everything, cost at the end of one month the surprising sum of £53 10s. Other quarters were at once sought, a room in Wanderer's Chambers, with table d'hôe meals at the same hotel, brought expenses down to £13 per month--about $65. This is the cheapest good board to be had in the town.
Every unusual sight arrests the traveler's attention, and every custom that we are used to at home seems surprising in this far-away land. At 6:30 o'clock every morning a Kafir boy about ten years old, clad in a small leathern apron, knocks at the door and brings you in a cup of coffee, a necessary precaution in this country, for foreigners, against malaria. A great deal of quinine and whiskey is taken for the same purpose.
Following the first little Kafir boy is a second one, who looks as though he might be a twin brother, who takes away your shoes and returns them to you blackened. The chambers have every modern convenience, and a man can make his toilet as thoroughly and as carefully as at home.
The town boasts many buildings. Besides the Charter Hotel and Wanderer's Chambers, there are a Stock Exchange, having seventy-five members; the Wilson Memorial Hospital, having a physician and six trained nurses, all Englishwomen; a Catholic and a Methodist Church, the Standard Bank, Mining Commissioner's offices, the Maxim Hotel, Market House, Lloyds Chambers, Glass's Chambers, and a newspaper building, in which The Bulawayo Chronicle is published twice a week, consisting of six large sheets. Very often only one side of the last page is printed, but it is there, ready for use.
The town also has a tennis club, a golf club, a jockey club, and a vocal club, a quartet, and a leader who is a fine musician, and last, but not least, a bicycle club, consisting of thirteen members, all owning their own bicycles...
All the houses in the town are one story high; this is because of the scarcity of properly seasoned native timber. All the wood so far used has been brought from England and America. A company is now being formed to develop the timber resources of the country. The trees are abundant but dwarfish in size, and the wood is very hard--harder than mahogany; more like teakwood. There is plenty of it, and also of stone, which eventually will be used with wood for all building purposes.
Ancient ruins near the town show indications of a wonderful knowledge of masonry. Some of these walls are like mosaics, one stone so carefully and neatly fitted into another, and regularly constructed tunnels or passageways through them.
There is now en route an electric plant destined to light the town and mines and for street-car service, and to supply power to be used in every way in which electricity can be used. It has also an ice plant--ice sells here for 6 cents per pound--about to be started as soon as all the machinery arrives, and a cold-storage company, two soda water fountains, and all that goes toward making ice cream.
The water used is all well water, but foreigners cannot drink it; it produces malaria, and that means fever, and fever means death. Heretofore mineral waters have been used entirely for drinking purposes, imported and sold for an enormous price, but now this new company will manufacture all that the demand calls for.
All the machinery for these various enterprises, as well as the skilled labor to operate them, was ordered from America by one high in authority there, who never forgot, although in that far-away land, to be loyal to his country and his friends. After leaving the railroad at Mafeking, (pronounced Mar-fe-king,) all machinery and supplies are hauled by ox wagons the distance of 600 miles, at a cost of $100 per ton, and it takes from four to six weeks to make the journey. All the wood and cases used in packing anything that has gone from America to Bulawayo has, by request, been put together carefully with rivets and screws, so that the wood could be used again for building purposes.
There are beautiful farms all about. Irrigation has to be resorted to, but with that an abundance of fruit and vegetables could be raised. The land is very fertile, but farming is slow work, and every man who has come here expects to get rich in a hurry. That is what they have all come for, and rather than cultivate the soil, every article of canned goods known to the trade is imported. One grazing farm visited, after a delightful ride of twelve miles on horseback, consists of 32,000 acres; it is owned and managed by a wealthy Englishman.
The climate is delightful to a New-Yorker, for while the days are very hot, there is no humidity, and the nights are always cool enough for a blanket. The so-called "rainy season" so far has been just exactly like our April weather.
Looking out of the window in the early morning, the sojourner is initiated into the milk delivery service of the town--a Kafir boy, about twelve years old, is leading a donkey. Over the donkey is thrown a canvas arrangement made to hold eight bottles of milk on each side, and, very often, a little donkey trots along beside the mother donkey.
The white men in the town go around in their shirtsleeves all day long, and try to look wild and reckless.
The natives only experience with water for bathing purposes is when they swim a river to get out of the way of crocodiles. The Limpopo looks like a sweet and peaceful little stream, while, in point of fact, in crossing it every man in the boat divests himself of nearly every article of clothing before he embarks, that he may be in readiness to swim if attacked by these animals.
A Kafir gentleman considers himself in full dress when he has on a white man's shirt and a pair of suspenders dangling over that, and a silk hat, and nothing will induce him to cover his legs! In this, perhaps, we may see a sign of the savage and nomadic nature, since to cover the legs would really seem to be an impediment to running or hunting. They are all natural sportsmen, and admire, above every other accomplishment possessed by the white man, that of shooting...
Gold mining is destined to make or break the future of this country. Gold is found very near the surface, and in large quantities. One mine visited shows 3,000 tons to the surface, and assays made at every three yards while working the reefs show 25 pennyweights to the ton, or $25 to the ton. Many more as promising have been opened up.
Labor is very cheap. A Kafir will work for a few cents a day, but skilled labor, where required, commands almost its own figure. A head miner gets $5,000 a year, and a manager gets $25,000. The cost of bringing machinery for the operation of mining is enormous. But where there is an abundance of gold man will sumount all obstacles.
It costs $2,000 to build a cottage here that would cost $600 in America. There are now in point of construction about twenty, to be used by men employed at the electric works already mentioned. There are some beautifully furnished homes just out of town, for the Englishman believes in spending his money to procure for himself all the comforts of life, and he considers a large amount spent here on a house better spent than the same amount spent in the same way at home, because it procures for him here more comfort and ease and beauty, where all around him are the evidences of a new country and a savage people.
The English companies employing men for responsible positions pay them very large salaries, but they require them, in return, to spend freely. The savage mind, like that of his civilized brother, is duly impressed with the show of wealth, and a mining engineer must keep his retinue of servants and have his valet, although he may be eight months of the twelve at the mines, where, of course, the services of a valet are superfluous...
All the merchants of this country are Jews--naturally. Drinking and card playing, and music, and an occasional dance, are the only dissipations of the evenings and nights. Only one European mail a week is received, and only two a week go out, and it is a sight pathetic in its suggestiveness to watch the faces of these young men, some hardly out of their teens, when a mail comes in and is distributed. The letter is six weeks old, if it has come from New-York, and a great deal can have happened since it was written. But a cable message would have overtaken the letter, so the reader reasons, and he seizes eagerly his share, and goes a little apart from his fellows to read what those he loves at home have written to him. For there are none who come here who have not, in coming, "broken home ties."
The withdrawal at one time of all those in authority, Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, Sir John Willoughby, John Hays Hammond, and others, has been unfortunate and injudicious...
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Zimbabwe News
The hunter-gatherer San people first inhabited the area that eventually became Zimbabwe. Farming communities migrated to the area around A.D. 500 during the Bantu expansion, and Shona-speaking societies began to develop in the Limpopo valley and Zimbabwean highlands around the 9th century. These societies traded with Arab merchants on the Indian Ocean coast and organized under the Kingdom of Mapungubwe in the 11th century. A series of powerful trade-oriented Shona states succeeded Mapungubwe, including the Kingdom of Zimbabwe (ca. 1220-1450), Kingdom of Mutapa (ca. 1450-1760), and the Rozwi Empire.
The Rozwi Empire expelled Portuguese colonists from the Zimbabwean plateau but was eventually conquered in 1838 by the Ndebele clan of Zulu general MZILIKAZI during the era of conflict and population displacement known as the Mfecane.
In the 1880s, colonists arrived with the British South Africa Company (BSAC) and obtained a written concession for mining rights from Ndebele King LOBENGULA. The king later disavowed the concession and accused the BSAC agents of deceit. The BSAC annexed Mashonaland and subsequently conquered Matabeleland by force during the First Matabele War of 1893-1894 to establish company rule over the territory.
BSAC holdings south of the Zambezi River were annexed by the UK in 1923 and became the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. The 1930 Land Apportionment Act restricted Black land ownership and established structural racial inequalities that would favor the White minority for decades. A new constitution in 1961 further cemented White minority rule.
In 1965, the government under White Prime Minister Ian SMITH unilaterally declared its independence from the UK. London did not recognize Rhodesia’s independence and demanded more voting rights for the Black majority in the country. International diplomacy and a liberation struggle by Black Zimbabweans finally led to biracial elections in 1979 and independence (as Zimbabwe) in 1980.
Robert MUGABE, who led the uprising and became the nation's first prime minister, was the country's only ruler (as president since 1987) from independence until his forced resignation in November 2017.
In the mid-1980s, the government tortured and killed thousands of civilians in a crackdown on dissent known as the Gukurahundi campaign. Economic mismanagement and chaotic land redistribution policies following independence periodically crippled the economy and resulted in widespread shortages of basic commodities.
General elections in 2002, 2008, and 2013 were severely flawed and widely condemned but allowed MUGABE to remain president. In November 2017, Vice President Emmerson MNANGAGWA became president following a military intervention that forced MUGABE to resign, and MNANGAGWA cemented power by sidelining rivals Grace MUGABE (Robert MUGABE’s wife) and Jonathan MOYO of the G40 faction of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party.
In July 2018, MNANGAGWA won the presidential election after a close contest with opposition candidate Nelson CHAMISA. MNANGAGWA has resorted to the government's longstanding practice of violently disrupting protests and opposition rallies. Economic conditions remained dire under MNANGAGWA, with inflation soaring in 2019 and the country’s export revenues declining dramatically in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CIA World Factbook: Zimbabwe
Area of Zimbabwe:
390,580 sq km
slightly larger than Montana
Population of Zimbabwe:
15,418,674 (2023) | 12,311,143 (2007)
Languages of Zimbabwe:
English official, Shona, Sindebele
numerous but minor tribal dialects
Zimbabwe Capital:
Harare
(name changed from Salisbury in 1982)
Google sat photo of Harare
HARARE WEATHER
Zimbabwe Reference Articles and Links
Wikipedia: Zimbabwe - History of Zimbabwe
BBC Country Profile: Zimbabwe
US State Department: Zimbabwe Profile
Maps of Zimbabwe
Historic Maps of Africa
1885 Map of Africa
WikiTravel: Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe News Websites
Bulawayo Chronicle
Harare Herald
The Zimbabwean
Panapress: Zimbabwe
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