Bulawayo

Bulawayo, my hometown, is hot and dry at this time of year, but there is a stark beauty in the heat, and the hustle and bustle of African life makes it an exciting, chaotic place to visit.

The township of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe had its origins in the early part of the 19th Century and it was a place where kings and intrigue ruled. During the latter half of the century, colonial powers began to take an interest in Bulawayo because of its strategic position, and it was declared a settlement under the rule of the British South Africa Company in the 1890s. In 1943 it became a city.

Since the end of the last century Bulawayo has suffered population decline as people have drifted away because of economic concerns, lack of opportunity, and declining infrastructure. Long a second cousin to its more prosperous rivals – Harare, Johannesburg and Cape Town – the city was nevertheless once a powerhouse of industrial manufacture and the wealth that it once created is still evident in its wide streets and buildings. In the twenty years that have elapsed since our last visit the decline has been startling. In a blink of an eye, it seems, the roads have deteriorated because there is no money to maintain them, the buildings are in desperate need of paint and maintenance, and the dry season adds its own hue of dust and slow decay to the streets.

Yet, there is a strange anachronistic vibrancy to Bulawayo. The Natural History Museum in Centenary Park (above) may be suffering from a lack of funding to preserve and maintain its collections, signage and exhibits, but the staff are friendly and welcoming and a group of school children excitedly scampered around the exhibits, stroking the handling exhibits of taxidermied animals. This striking 1960s circular building continues its work despite economic hardship. The Bulawayo Theatre nearby is also looking very tired and worn but we were invited to “Zambezi Express”, a stage show of athletic prowess that is loosely based on a story of a young man who dreams of becoming a footballing star. The show was exhilarating and energetic, and the theatre was full.

The streets are also filled with people, some selling and some buying goods that the shops do not offer, and in the old Haddon and Sly department building that was once THE place to purchase everything one needed and is now host to a multitude of small stallholders, one can purchase streetwear designed locally and imported and local wedding outfits. A tour to the outer suburbs is marked by occasional green lawns where once that was the standard outside each house, and deteriorating infrastructure. Yet, even here, there are positive signs with new houses being built and new businesses opening.

In the manufacturing centre of town a small social enterprise – Marigold Beads – proved to be a highlight. Upon seeing beautifully designed necklaces in Stellenbosch in South Africa, we managed to get in touch with the managers at Marigold and asked for a tour. This proved to be a delight – a small group of women in a few rooms dextrously stringing beads in beautiful designs without the benefit of written patterns. Even the most complex of the pieces was memorised and with a few deft flicks of the wrist a row of threaded beads would appear to be added to a necklace or a beaded picture (above).

Then there are the Matobo Hills (above). A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this area of granite hills, balancing rocks, dry plains and wetlands, has been home to people for millennia. The ancient evidence can be found in paintings on rock walls and in caves. Matobo is a strangely disquieting yet magical place where time seems to move on unnoticed and aeons slip by with nothing to show their passage. Yet in its seemingly unchanging landscape there is plenty of activity, with birds and wildlife, plants and trees, and people marking the seasons in their characteristic way, just as they have for centuries.

A little distance from town, along another road was once tarred but is now pitted and gouged into dusty holes and grooves by thundering trucks that ply the route, lie the ruins of Khami (above). A trading post in the 15th and 16th Centuries, this mesmerising and captivating set of rock-built structures was a sophisticated settlement that was once a kingdom’s capital and is now another UNESCO site. Less well-known than its earlier counterpart, Great Zimbabwe, the site shows skilful patterning in its stone walls, and innovative use of the local stone to produce retaining walls and terraces that not only helped to keep the inhabitants cool but also eliminated malaria in those areas. These royal dwellings were on raised platforms while the populace at large lived below in the more open areas. It was a moving experience to go back to the ruins and to remember that Zimbabwe has a long and venerable history.

The visit to the historic archives in town (above) with its more-than-a-century old newspapers and journals lying on shelves and captivating books behind glass doors, captured for me some of the essence of the issues facing the city. In the archive (below) new publications are lying in piles, seemingly uncatalogued and therefore, to all intents and purposes, lost. It makes for questions. Does it really matter if these things fade into the past? What is the purpose of this repository of memory and what is its purpose now? Is there a life for such a place outside of specialist knowledge, and what is that life? Where do such old and the new worlds meet? The questions seem to apply equally to the wider townscape.

Our last visit was to Tshabalala Game Reserve (above). Situated on the very outskirts of town – houses and radio masts are visible from the reserve – Tshabalala (pronounced “Chah-bha-la-la) was once fenced and gated, and it was a regular treat to visit on the search for eland, zebra and giraffe. Nowadays there are caged lionesses in the reserve, grumpy in the heat, but the other fences are long gone, due in part to poachers cutting the wires, and the game is free to roam. Yet the zebra and impala still stay, and life continues, just as it does in Bulawayo in the purple of jacaranda season.