Moffat Mungazi
Lloyd Makonya
Correspondent
TUCKED away in the tranquil hills of Murambi in Mutare, where the air is perfumed with the scent of Jacaranda trees, and the horizon unfolds into the green embrace of Mozambique’s mountains, sits a house that whispers the tales of Zimbabwe’s colonial past, Utopia House Museum.
This picturesque stone house, the first modern house built in the town of Umtali (now Mutare) in 1897, was the vision of Rhys Fairbridge, a British South Africa Company surveyor whose hand drew the early maps of the Highveld, and was responsible for sitting the location for the current City of Mutare.
Built from diorite stone and anthill mud, with corrugated iron roofing and fittings imported from as far as England and South Africa, Utopia House Museum under the care of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe has weathered time with an elegance that blends nostalgia and national memory.
Rhys named his home “Utopia” after reading Sir Thomas More’s philosophical work as a schoolboy in England, a fitting label for a house perched on a hilltop that once offered him an ideal world away from the Empire’s chaos.
Even today, the scenery is breathtaking, stretching across to the Mozambican border, just as Fairbridge once saw it.
On a recent sun-drenched April morning, Mr Steve Andrews, a soft-spoken gentleman from Buckinghamshire in the UK, stepped through the gates of the Utopia House Museum, tracing the footprints of his own father’s history.
His father, Mr John Andrews, was one of the child migrants sent to Southern Rhodesia under the Kingsley Fairbridge Scheme in 1952, a movement created to give underprivileged British children a new start in the colonies.
Kingsley was Rhys’s son, a poet, and the man behind the child migrant scheme that brought thousands of British children to Rhodesia, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College (RFMC) in Bulawayo was one facility for child migrants set up in a deserted airbase in the then Rhodesia.
RFMC was very different from the other Fairbridge institutions in other countries in that emphasis was put on education instead of unskilled farm work as that was already provided by low paid native workers.
Utopia House remained in the Fairbridge family until 1975 when it was donated to the National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, now NMMZ.
Before that, it briefly served as a Boy Scouts shack in the 1950s.
Today, Utopia stands beautifully restored by NMMZ, with many of the Fairbridge family’s original possessions and furnishings still in place allowing visitors to step back into the late 19th century.
One of the most iconic features of the museum grounds is the statue of Kingsley Ogilvie Fairbridge, his African companion, Jack and his dog, Vic.
The statue was originally unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother on July 8, 1953 on her visit to the then Rhodesia at the top of Christmas Pass, before being relocated to Utopia House in 1982.
“Seeing the statue of Kingsley, and knowing that he inspired the very programme that changed my father’s life, was incredibly powerful,” Mr Andrews remarked.
“I’m writing a book about my father’s journey as a child migrant,” Mr Andrews continued, “and this museum… this house… it is like finding a piece of the puzzle.
“I was totally impressed by the renovations and the hospitality I received.”
“For some, Kingsley’s scheme offered opportunity. For others, it meant separation and hardship,” he added.
His father, had been one of those children shipped off to Rhodesia for a “better life.”
Now, Mr Andrews was here, piecing together fragments of a story long buried.
Indeed, Utopia House is not merely a museum. It is a bridge across time between empires and republics, between past and present.
It tells, not just the story of the Fairbridges, but of Zimbabwe’s transformation and its layered identity.
Mr Andrews’s visit highlights a largely untapped opportunity for Zimbabwe which is heritage tourism rooted in its colonial history.
Sites like Rhodes’ Grave in Matopos, Alan Wilson’s Memorial in the Matobo Hills, Thomas Moodie’s Monument, and the old Rhodes Nyanga Estate are not just relics, they are rich with narrative appeal for international tourists, especially those tracing ancestry or seeking to understand the imperial webs that once spanned continents.
Each site holds layers of stories that resonate with people far beyond the country’s borders.
In countries like Australia and New Zealand, the child migration schemes have been the subject of national apologies and soul-searching.
Zimbabwe, with its rich and complex role in that history, can offer a more balanced space one of education, memory, and reconciliation.
With proper branding, storytelling, and collaborative international research like Steve’s, such sites could form part of a “Colonial Heritage Trail”, appealing to a lot of potential tourists across the globe.
In Australia and New Zealand, Kingsley Fairbridge’s legacy still stirs complex feelings, yet Zimbabwe offers a unique, dignified platform for healing, rediscovery, and education.
With the right investment in branding, preservation, and marketing, colonial heritage sites could become pillars of historical tourism, attracting, not just Western visitors, but also Zimbabweans eager to understand their place in the broader global narrative.
Mr Andrews may be back in the UK, but his connection to Mutare and Bulawayo remain a testament to Zimbabwe’s potential to tell stories that matter, across generations and continents.
Online Reporter