Solusi
Founded in 1894 as the first Seventh-day Adventist mission in Africa, on land granted by Cecil Rhodes; a college from the late 1950s and a chartered university since 1994.
Solusi began a year after the war of 1893, on land the new colonial administration had just taken. In 1894 the Seventh-day Adventist Church founded its first mission station anywhere in Africa here, on about 12,000 acres (some 49 km²) granted by Cecil Rhodes to the missionaries Pieter Wessels and Asa T. Robinson.
How the church came to accept land from Rhodes, so soon after the conquest, is the subject of a study by the Adventist scholar Watson Mbiriri, which examines the position the church’s prophet, Ellen G. White, took on the grant. It is one of the more interesting threads in Solusi’s history.
Mission, college, university
The mission school grew into a training college. In 1956 the church’s General Conference approved making it a college, and by 1958 Solusi College was awarding bachelor’s degrees to church workers from across southern and central Africa. From 1984 it was affiliated with Andrews University in Michigan, and enrolment grew fivefold. In July 1994, a century after the mission was founded, it was chartered as Solusi University, the first private university in Zimbabwe. It opened as a university on 4 October 1994.
What the photographs show
The photographs in this set show the university sign and gate, the Ralph Watts Library, the Sweden Girls’ Hostel, the Beit building, and a podium shaped like Great Zimbabwe. Three photographs of Great Zimbabwe itself were found filed among these. They now have their own page.
What we don’t know yet
- Where the name “Solusi” comes from. It is often linked to a local chief’s name, but we have not found a source we trust.
- The people who were on this land before 1894. We would like to hear from families of the area as well as from former students.
- Your Solusi: if you studied, taught or grew up at the mission, tell us what you remember.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Solusi University”: founding, land grant, college and university dates.
- Rhodesian Study Circle, “Seventh-Day Adventist Church: Solusi Mission Training School”.
- W. Mbiriri, on Ellen G. White’s position on the 1894 Solusi land grant (AIIAS).
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.