The Khami ruins in Zimbabwe

Many people know about Great Zimbabwe, the ancient city which gave its name to the country in which it is situated, but not so many have heard of Khami, which is just as remarkable in many ways.

The ruins of Khami are 23 km north-west of Bulawayo, the second largest city of Zimbabwe. Khami grew between 1450 and 1650 after the abandonment of Great Zimbabwe, some 250 kms to the south-east, and was the capital of the Torwa Dynasty for 200 years. There is evidence of occupation in the area from much earlier than 1450, including signs that the people were in contact with traders who visited from the coastal regions hundreds of miles to the east.

Like Great Zimbabwe, Khami comprised a stone-built complex of buildings and walls, with added features that derived from local building customs. The standard building method at Khami was to raise mounds, on which huts would be erected, and to surround the mounds with strong retaining walls, some of which produced a series of terraces. This differs from the Great Zimbabwe pattern, where the walls were free-standing and served to divide the area into compounds. The Khami walls were also more highly decorated than those at Great Zimbabwe, but it is clear that there were strong cultural connections between the two cities in terms of building techniques.

The most impressive walls surrounded the highest hill, which overlooked the river. This would have been the site of the king’s residence and those of his close circle. There are several hut platforms, terraces, and well-preserved stairways. The royal hut was reached by way of a covered passage. In 1947 a secret chamber was found that contained a number of royal possessions including axes, spears and items of carved ivory.

There have been many other interesting finds on the site, including what appears to be a Christian stone cross, possibly left by a Portuguese missionary, and boards for the game of Tsoro. A balanced boulder makes a sound like a gong when it is struck, and this could have been used to sound warnings or summon the people to gather together. Items discovered at Khami may be seen in the onsite museum and in Bulawayo’s Natural History Museum.

The whole site is about 40 hectares in size, and some 7,000 people may have lived in or near the city at its height. The people would have been farmers who both kept animals and grew crops. A great deal of trade was conducted, with metals including copper and gold being exchanged for goods brought by merchants from the coast. Some of these goods came from as far away as China and Spain.

It would appear that Khami was abandoned at the time of a civil war in the 1640s, during which a Torwa king was overthrown and appealed for help from the Portuguese, who sent an army to his aid. However, during the conflict the city’s mud and thatch huts were destroyed by fire and the Torwa were forced to leave Khami for good. The Rozwi kings who succeeded the Torwa established their bases at Naletale and Danamombe (formerly Dhlo Dhlo) near modern Gweru.

The Khami ruins are a UN World Heritage Site, and are therefore recognised as being of great archaeological importance. Although they have not received the same attention as those of Great Zimbabwe, anyone who is interested in the pre-colonial history of southern Africa should make a point of visiting them if they get the chance.

© John Welford

Great Zimbabwe: the city that defied colonial racism

Great Zimbabwe is a remarkable place. Situated in the south-east of the country that bears its name, it is a complex of stone structures that once formed the heart of a vast African empire. The ruins are notable for their extent (there are ruins across a total area of 500 square kilometres, or 200 square miles, but the main city comprises about 720 hectares) and the perfection of their construction. The walls were built using dry stone techniques, meaning that no mortar was used in their construction. Massive walls and towers still stand, more than 900 years after they were built, which is a huge tribute to the skill of their builders. Some of the walls still stand more than 30 feet high, are more than twenty feet thick, and are composed of granite blocks that fit together perfectly.

There is evidence that the site was first occupied as early as 500 AD, as it was high enough above the plains to avoid the ravages of the tsetse fly, which made life intolerable. The structures we can see today were begun in about 1100 AD, and the site was in constant occupation until about 1450 AD, when its occupiers moved away. At its height, the city of Great Zimbabwe was probably home to around 18,000 people, thus making it a major population centre, and there is evidence of a highly organized and developed civilization.

The site was unknown to the outside world until 1871, when a German geologist, Karl Mauch, came across the ruins. The controversy of Great Zimbabwe then started, because of disbelief that Africans could possibly have built anything so remarkable. To many whites, Africans were inherently inferior human beings who were incapable of creating anything as splendid as this.

Cecil Rhodes, whose colony of Rhodesia included the area of Great Zimbabwe, was also convinced that the city must have been built by white men, because of his unshakeable belief in the superiority of the white race. He was also convinced that the ruins contained buried treasure, and he set up a company, the Zimbabwe Ruins Company, to dig for the gold and diamonds, with no thought being given to the archaeological evidence that might be destroyed in the process.

Rhodes was followed by other Europeans who thought similarly, and some even claimed to have found the proof that the structures were not the work of Africans. The British archaeologist Richard Hall investigated the site in 1902, and asserted in his book “The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia”, that it was built by “more civilized races” than the Africans. By digging down more than six feet and removing everything that was there to be found, he effectively destroyed all the evidence that countered his theory, even stating his aim as being to “remove the filth and decadence of Kaffir occupation”.

So, if Great Zimbabwe could not have been built by Africans, who did the imperialists think was responsible? They knew that no white Europeans had settled in this area, so they went for a candidate from the Old Testament instead, namely King Solomon. Karl Mauch was the first to suggest that this was the palace of the Queen of Sheba, who had famously visited Solomon and marvelled at his riches and splendour. He even detected, in one of the Zimbabwe buildings, a copy of Solomon’s Temple. Others thought that this was where the legendary King Solomon’s Mines must be, and the publication of Rider Haggard’s popular novel of that title, in 1886, did nothing to dispel this illusion, given his placing of the Mines in southern Africa. The implausibility of either Solomon’s wealth, or the Queen of Sheba, coming from a site some 4,000 miles from ancient Israel does not seem to have occurred to anyone at the time. Other theories included that the engineers had come from Portugal, China or Persia.

However, these views were challenged by two British archaeologists. In 1905, David Randal-MacIver gave his opinion that the dwellings on the site were “unquestionably of African origin”. This was virtual blasphemy to the imperialist rulers of the region, and no archaeologists were allowed to return for nearly 25 years.

When archaeology was once again permitted, in 1929, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who led an all-female excavation, agreed with Randal-MacIver’s view. She used all the available evidence, including the oral traditions of the Shona people, to demonstrate that Great Zimbabwe must have been built by Africans. However, that did not stop the myth of Zimbabwe’s white origin from continuing. When Ian Smith declared, illegally, the independence of Southern Rhodesia with a minority white government, he had the history and guide books rewritten to show black Africans bowing in submission to the white builders of Great Zimbabwe.

Despite systematic efforts to destroy the evidence, it is now abundantly clear that the builders of Great Zimbabwe were the Shona people who settled in the area as long ago as 500 AD. Over time, they built an empire, known as Monomotapa, that covered most of modern Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Their wealth was based on trade, exporting gold, iron, copper, tin, cattle, and cowrie shells, and importing items including glassware from Syria, and Persian and Chinese ceramics. At the time of Great Zimbabwe’s discovery, there was considerable proof of this wealth in the form of items found on the site, but the looting of these treasures and destruction of archaeological evidence makes this less obvious today.

We also know that the Shona empire was powerful and wealthy enough to support a large city at its centre, and the size of the Great Zimbabwe site is itself evidence of this fact. Clearly this was not a city of white people, presumably descended from Solomon and Sheba, living in southern Africa for hundreds of years.

The empire of Monomotapa appears to have abandoned Great Zimbabwe in about 1450, although the empire itself continued to thrive. The reason for abandoning the site is not clear. Perhaps water supply became a problem, or maybe the Shona kings preferred to live in less austere surroundings than a massively fortified palace. Whatever the reason, they left behind a remarkable relic of their ancestors’ ability to build sophisticated structures that later colonizers could not believe were products of African skill and knowledge.

(See also: The Khami Ruins in Zimbabwe)

© John Welford

Donkey mobile libraries in Zimbabwe

In some parts of the world the need for information services in remote rural areas is met by using traditional modes of transport in unusual ways. This is certainly the case in Zimbabwe, where the role of libraries is essential in supporting education in schools and also for initiatives that bring economic and social benefits to people of all ages.

Mobile libraries offer information services in rural areas, but the typical “bookmobile” is limited in terms of the places it can reach if the road network is simply not up to the job. This is true of vast regions of the developing world and not just Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe the problem is being addressed by the use of donkey-drawn libraries – simply a cart, pulled by a donkey, that offers books and other information resources and which can go just about anywhere.

The initiative is just one element of the work of the Rural Libraries and Resources Development Programme (RLRDP), which is a community based not-for-profit non-governmental organization formed in 1990 with the objective of establishing and developing community libraries and information services to empower the rural population.

According to Obadiah T. Moyo, the Secretary General of RLRDP, the organization has assisted in the establishment of “300 rural community libraries, 10 donkey-drawn mobile libraries and 130 book delivery bicycles. They provide an extension outreach service in areas where proper roads are not available. About 105 rural libraries have access to computers.”

Donkey-drawn mobile libraries were first conceptualized and developed by RLRDP in the Nkayi district of Zimbabwe in 1995. It is a very important initiative that has attracted world attention, and was recognized and commended by the World Summit on the Information Society (2003 and 2005), which has made clear that access to information leads to sustainable development.

The RLRDP also promotes community libraries by providing relevant reading materials, sponsoring debates in communities about issues and problems affecting daily life, providing the means and mechanisms for continuing education for everyone in the community, and pooling resources to benefit the wider spectrum of the community through networking activities. All these tasks have proved successful as they reinforce a sense of collective responsibility for the community libraries that have been established.

© John Welford