Bulawayo Landmarks
A small set of photographs of the city's best-known sights, chosen as the cover of the picture section: City Hall, the courts, ZITF, the railway, the Natural History Museum, the park fountain and the city's coat of arms.
These nine photographs were chosen as the front cover of the picture section: a quick introduction to the city for someone far away. They show the City Hall, the city centre, the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair grounds, a court house, the NRZ railway headquarters, the Natural History Museum, the fountain in the park, a rhino, and the city’s coat of arms. Each has a fuller page of its own, or will have.
The city’s arms
The coat of arms is a good place to start, because it tells the city’s story about itself.
The arms were granted on 19 October 1943, the year Bulawayo became a city. The shield is divided by a chevron. In the upper half, on red, are three gold rock-rabbits, imbila. The council’s explanation was that the imbila is the isibongo (praise name) of the Khumalo, the royal family of the Ndebele, and stands for the Ndebele nation. In the lower half, on silver, is a red cross-crosslet, chosen, the council said, “to symbolize European impact on the Matabele by the Missionaries.” The crest is an elephant with raised trunk. The elephant was the emblem of Lobengula’s royal seal, after his title Ndlovu, the elephant. The motto is in isiNdebele: Si Ye Pambili, “Let us go forward.”
The red of the shield, in the council’s own words, signified “blood-shed.” The arms were designed by the settler city in 1943, and they say more about how it saw its own past than about how the Ndebele saw theirs. But it is striking that Bulawayo, unlike many colonial towns, put the royal family of the people it displaced at the top of its shield, and their language in its motto.
The landmarks
- City Hall, on the old Market Square. That ground was once cultivated by some of Lobengula’s wives, and the town’s first market hall went up there in 1895.
- The court house. The photograph’s file is labelled only “CourtHse”. Which court is it?
- ZITF, the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair, held each year in Bulawayo since 1960 (as the Central African Trade Fair before independence).
- NRZ headquarters, for the railway that made the city. See The Railway.
- The Natural History Museum in Centenary Park, opened in its present building in 1964. See Centenary Park.
- The fountain, built in Central Park for the city’s 75th anniversary in 1968.
What we don’t know yet
Who took these photographs, and when; and which landmarks you would add. The Large City Hall? The Bulawayo Club? Stanley Hall and Stanley Square? Tell us what “Bulawayo” looks like to you.
Sources
- Bulawayo City Council, description of the coat of arms (granted 19 October 1943), as reproduced on the civic heritage pages.
- Wikipedia, “Timeline of Bulawayo”; Siyabona Africa, “Bulawayo & Matobos”.
9 photographs of Bulawayo Landmarks →
Do you know more about this? Corrections, photographs and your own account are all welcome, and a correction is published on the page with the date it was made. Send something in.