Why 1872: the year the city took its name

In 1872 after scoring victory, King Lobengula renamed his royal town. The name was changed from Gibixhegu to Bulawayo. The name derives from the verb bulala and the locative formative ko-. Bulala means, in the first instance to kill. It also means to oppose, persecute or bother. King Lobengula was thus referring to the figurative meaning of the word bulala.

When Cecil John Rhodes overpowered King Lobengula and his regiments, he ordered a new town be built on the ruins of King Lobengula’s royal town, which was sited where State House stands today.

Northlea High School was built very close to the ruins of King Lobengula Bulawayo. By 1894 a new town of a gridiron pattern was taking shape. Its name was also Bulawayo. In the same year administrator Leander Starr Jameson declared the settlement a town. In 1897 it acquired a municipal status.

Even though Bulawayo was declared a settlement town in 1894, as far as we are concerned and also as history rightly points out, Bulawayo was born in 1872. It was not born at the hands of Leander Starr Jameson, but at the hands of Lobengula King of the Ndebele.