Online Reporter
Chronicle Writer
A local cultural organisation, Manyanga Eva Rozvi/Lozwi Cultural and Community Group, recently planted 70 indigenous fruit trees at the Khami Ruins National Monument (Khami), 22 km west of Bulawayo.
Mr Emmanual Kanjoma, a spokesperson for the group said they, on Saturday, planted umnyi (munyii in Shona), umkhiwa (muwonde), umvebe (mumvee), umkhomo (muuyu), and uxakuxaku (mutohwe) among others.
They planted them along the road from the entrance to the reception office, around the interpretive area as well as along the path to the passage platform and around the monolith platform.
“We chose Khami for obvious reasons,” said Mr Kanjoma, a descendent of Mambo Tohwechipi, the last known King of the Rozvi State.
“The Rozvi have a direct association with Khami through Torwa. The Rozvi are the successors of the Torwa Empire. Around Khami there are few indigenous fruit trees mainly due deforestation. People are cutting trees for firewood.”
Covering about 108 hectares, Khami was the capital of the Torwa/Togwa dynasty which rose after the fall of the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom and governed much of present-day Zimbabwe between 1450 and 1650. The Rozvi State succeeded the Torwa and abandoned Khami in the late 1830s.
“We want to restore the forest around Khami Monument to its original state, where the inhabitants would gather fruits from the forest around their habitat for consumption. Indigenous fruits also have medicinal value.
Khami is also close to town thus locals can go and learn about indigenous fruits and their health benefits,” he added.
Manyanga Eva Rozvi/Lozwi Cultural and Community Group has about 120 members, among them historians and archaeologists based locally, in the UK and Botswana where some descendants of the former empire are resident.
A group of children from Green Gables High School, which is located near Khami, attended the tree planting event and recited poems on biodiversity.
They were later taken on an educational tour of the monument. Zimbabwe Welcome Association, a team of volunteers based in Harare, was present as well.
Looking ahead, Mr Kanjoma said the organisation is preparing to host an event on Africa Day in May.
“We want to be seen through the work that we do, especially at shrines which are associated with the Rozvi State such as Khami, Dlodlo (now known as Danan’ombe Monument),” he said.
“In the long run, we want to have a chance to tell our own history, not that written by whites. We want to have a place at Khami or Dlodlo where we will put up a display depicting some elements of the Rozvi State. We want to restore that civilisation — the quarrying, iron smelting, structural engineering and so on that were done there in the olden days.”
