Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
THE story of Bulawayo’s hanging tree, perched along Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street between Connaught and Masotsha Ndlovu Avenue, is a story of resilience.
For one thing, this particular tree is one of the few remaining native trees that are left on the main roads of the City of Kings.
In the early 20th century, when the British Empire sought to entrench its roots on the southernmost tip of the African continent, it did its best to import values and culture from the British Isles and other territories that it had colonised.
This did not only mean that the cultures of those people that were being colonised needed to be uprooted, but even the things that they took for granted, such as trees, also had to be replaced.
In their place, plants that were not native to the land were planted to provide both alien fruit and shade to the pioneering invaders.
Today, spring in Bulawayo and other parts of the country is celebrated for the proliferation of Jacarandas, a tree species that is native to South America.
However, in Bulawayo, one of the few survivors of the colonial onslaught is a Marula tree now known as the Hanging Tree.
While one might drive through most of Bulawayo without seeing trees that are indigenous to the city, the Hanging Tree stands proudly on JMN Street, a botanical wonder that has stood the test of time.
Last week, that lone soldier got its deserved recognition after Government identified the Hanging Tree as a national monument as it symbolises both subjugation and resistance to colonialism by the country’s citizens.
The tree gets its name from a heinous act, as British settlers publicly hung nine Ndebele soldiers on it at the height of the Umvukela (Matabeleland uprisings) in 1896-7.
The tree was declared a national monument by Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe through Statutory Instrument 125 of 2024 published in the Government Gazette dated 26 July.
For black people, the tree dredges up heartbreaking memories.
According to the Zim Field Guide, stories appeared in British papers in 1896, such as the Daily Graphic and Truth, that wholesale hangings were taking place in Bulawayo. So brutal were the executions that one tradesman said: “My stand has one big tree on it, and it is often used as a gallows. Yesterday there was a goodly crop of seven Matabele hanging there; today there are eight…”
Zim Field Guide goes on to state that Mr Labouchere, the editor of the Daily Graphic reproduced the letter in his paper as well as another in which the writer wrote of it being “quite a nice sight” to see men shot as spies. No efforts were made by the newspapers to verify whether the reports were true or not.
Frederick Selous claimed that people had not been arbitrarily executed but only three men who were caught red-handed near Solusi’s kraal, 30 kilometres west of Bulawayo, looting and burning a farmers’ property, were the ones that had been sentenced to death.
In an interview with our sister paper Chronicle this week, Mr Stanley Nyamagodo, the assistant curator of historic buildings and Matopo Heritage Site at the Natural Museum of Zimbabwe said the killing of the men, and their display on that Marula tree, were meant to instil fear in a people that were primed for insurrection.
“I would love to believe whites had two motives when they hanged those people. One, they wanted to frighten the black people and make them back down from the First Umvukela, which we believe was already there.
They knew that once they gave that as an example, black people would back down and forget about fighting for their liberation.
“The second reason could have been to devalue the sacred lands where the festival of fruits ceremony took place.
They knew the Ndebele respected their culture and were very good at preserving it. So, hanging people there was a way of showing them they did not care about their culture and to make the environment unclean because it was now filled with bad spirits,” said Mr Nyamagodo.
Over a century after the execution of those nine patriots, that strong and stubborn Marula tree has been recognised as a monument that all of Zimbabwe needs to respect. Perhaps as an illustration of its enduring legacy, the country’s Head of State, President Mnangagwa, himself a candidate for the gallows as he was waiting execution for doing what the nine patriots before him had done decades earlier.
President Mnangagwa survived the hangman’s noose because of young age as he was 18, three years shy of the age at which one could have capital punishment executed on them. His colleagues Victor Mlambo and James Dlamini who were older, were hanged.
“Lest we forget, The Hanging Tree stands as a reminder to present and future generations of the brutality and savagery of the white settler regime towards our forefathers. This national monument must inspire all of us and the youth in particular to consistently defend our Independence, territorial integrity and dignity as a nation,” he said during a visit to the tree in 2021.
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