Online Reporter
Herald Reporter
The Southerton Constituency Community Development Trust (SCCDT) has finalised architectural plans and a bill of quantities worth close to a million dollars for the proposed Mbizi Heritage Hub in Highfields.
This development indicated a community-driven vision for preserving Zimbabwe’s liberation history fast, maturing into a fully costed national infrastructure project.
The disclosure, made by SCCDT chairman Cde Andrew Makahamadze, highlighted the seriousness behind a project that seeks to transform a former colonial detention facility — long associated with the suffering of black nationalists into a permanent monument to the sacrifices of the liberation struggle.
Speaking about the initiative yesterday, Cde Makahamadze emphasised that the Hub was not a symbolic gesture but a fully budgeted undertaking already attracting the attention of senior government officials.
He said the trust had moved well beyond the concept stage, having already committed resources to detailed plans and costing for the museum component of the Hub.
“We have already invested efforts and plans; we have already paid money for the plans. We already have plans for the Mbizi Heritage Hub, and it is very costly to have that,” he said.
“Even the bill of quantities we already have is close to almost a million, to construct that museum. So, definitely, it’s not child’s play — it is a serious business.”
He said the scale of official interest was confirmed only weeks earlier, when the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry led a delegation to the site as part of a broader drive to revive township tourism.
“A few weeks back, we were visited by the permanent secretary from the Ministry of Tourism, Mr Munyanyiwa, who came with his delegation of directors from the ministry, and also directors from national museums and monuments, to engage on reviving township tourism.
“So it is part of township tourism, that is what we want to resuscitate,”he said.
He added that the involvement of such senior officials was proof, in his view, that government commitment to the project went beyond rhetoric.
“Our government is not a joke, they deliver as you can see what the President is doing is is not a joke, this is a serious business,” he said.
“We believe that the President will even embrace this idea, because it’s his vision too.”
That confidence draws much of its weight from the President’s own liberation credentials and his repeated insistence that Zimbabweans must actively know, not merely inherit, the story of their freedom.
Cde Makahamadze linked the Hub directly to that philosophy, describing heritage preservation as an act of keeping independence itself alive for generations who never lived through colonial rule.
“It is his vision to revive and to teach people about our heritage, so that it doesn’t become extinct and our independence should live forever.
“That is why you see every year he lights the lamp of independence, which shows that our independence should live forever, it should outlive us,”he said.
Beyond the Hub itself, he said the trust’s understanding of heritage extends to safeguarding indigenous knowledge systems — from drought-resistant traditional grains to age-old methods of farming and land conservation, showcased recently alongside national museums and monuments partners.
“We were showcasing our traditional foods, like rapoko, sorghum and millet — those small grains that are drought-resistant — and the ancient ways of tilling and preserving food,” he said.
“We were showcasing the plows, the yokes, how traditionally people used to cultivate, the food and nutrition, and how they would protect the environment — that is part of our heritage too.”
For Cde Makahamadze, the museum’s concrete walls and the drought-resistant grains of his ancestors’ fields are cut from the same cloth — proof that heritage is not only what government builds, but what a community insists on remembering long after everyone else has moved on.
