The City Centre
The grid laid out by the British South Africa Company in 1894 beside the ruins of Lobengula's last capital; a municipality from 1897 and a city from 1943. Most of its main streets were renamed after independence.
Ask someone who left Bulawayo decades ago for directions in town, and you may get a map that no longer exists: the corner of Abercorn and Eighth, the bus on Grey Street, school shoes from a shop on Main Street. None of those streets has that name today. The grid is the same as it always was, and so are the wide streets and the numbered avenues. But many of the street names have changed, and the story of those names is the story of the city.
The grid
The colonial town was laid out in 1894 by the British South Africa Company, on ground beside the ruins of Lobengula’s last royal town, destroyed in the war of 1893. It became a municipality in 1897, the year the railway arrived, and a city in 1943. Its streets run one way and its numbered avenues the other. Its streets are famously wide. The usual explanation is that they had to let a wagon and a full span of oxen turn, and it is repeated so often it has become part of the city’s character. If you know where that explanation was first written down, tell us.
One street mattered more than its width suggests. Lobengula Street, together with Second Avenue, was for decades the line between white Bulawayo and African Bulawayo. Market Square, where the first market hall went up in 1895, had once been cultivated fields belonging to some of Lobengula’s wives.
The names, then and now
The names below are the changes recorded by the Herald and others. We have deliberately set them side by side, because for many readers the old name is the one in their memory and the new name is the one on the sign.
| Old name | Name today | Named for |
|---|---|---|
| Main Street | Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street | Joshua Nkomo, nationalist leader and Vice-President (renamed 22 December 2013) |
| Abercorn Street | Jason Moyo Street | Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, ZAPU leader |
| Grey Street | Robert Mugabe Way | Robert Mugabe, first Prime Minister and later President |
| Jameson Street | Herbert Chitepo Street | Herbert Chitepo, nationalist leader |
| Rhodes Street (west part) | George Silundika Street | George Silundika, ZAPU leader |
| Wilson Street | Josiah Tongogara Street | Josiah Tongogara, ZANLA commander |
| Borrow Street | Samuel Parirenyatwa Street | Dr Samuel Parirenyatwa, first Black doctor in the country |
| Selborne Avenue | Leopold Takawira Avenue | Leopold Takawira, nationalist leader |
| King’s Avenue | Masotsha Ndlovu Avenue | Masotsha Ndlovu, trade unionist and nationalist |
Some names did not change: Fife Street, Fort Street, Lobengula Street, and the numbered avenues from First to Fifteenth.
One corner, two statues
The clearest example of the change is a single junction: Main Street and Eighth Avenue.
In 1904 a twelve-foot bronze of Cecil Rhodes, by the Scottish sculptor John Tweed, was put up there. For three-quarters of a century it was the centre of civic Bulawayo. In 1934, according to the Milton School magazine, Prince George inspected the Milton cadets “at the Rhodes Statue in Main Street.” The statue was taken down in 1980–81, after independence.
On 22 December 2013, Unity Day, a statue of Joshua Nkomo was unveiled at the same intersection, and Main Street became Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street that day. That statue had its own controversy. An earlier casting was withdrawn after the family objected to its pedestal, and many people objected that the work had gone to a North Korean studio, given North Korea’s reported role in training the Fifth Brigade during the killings of the 1980s.
We do not tell you how to feel about any of this. We record it because the corner is the same corner, and a reader who left in 1975 and one who left in 2015 will remember it differently.
What the photographs show
The photographs in this set were taken around 2005–06. Many of the buildings in them have changed hands or names since. They show:
- Railway and post office: the station, the NRZ building, NRZ cabs, the Main Post Office, the grain silos in the industrial sites.
- Commerce: Haddon & Sly, Edgars, Woolworths, Fidelity Life, Stanbic Bank, the Cape to Cairo building, Pioneer House, LAPF House, Pizza Inn at night, Nando’s.
- Civic and culture: the National Gallery, the Public Library, Revenue Hall with its insignia, the Grand Hotel, the Tower Block, the “Thinking Man” statue, Famona Fire Station.
- Street scenes, including one labelled “J Moyo St”, which older readers will know as Abercorn Street.
What we don’t know yet
- When each street was renamed. Main Street’s date is known (2013). The others were renamed at various times after 1980, and we have not found a reliable list of dates. If you have a council notice, a newspaper cutting or a dated map, we would like to see it.
- What the shops were. Tell us which shop stood where, and when. A reader’s memory of which shop stood on which corner is exactly what these photographs are missing.
Sources
- The Herald, “Suburbs, street names origin explained”: old and new street names.
- The Herald, “Bulawayo: A heritage, cultural tour”: Rhodes statue at Main and 8th, Lobengula Street boundary, Market Square.
- Wikipedia, “Statue of Joshua Nkomo”; “Statue of Cecil Rhodes, Bulawayo”; “Timeline of Bulawayo”.
- Milton School Golden Jubilee magazine, 1960.
69 photographs of The City Centre →
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.