adminbelow and others beyond the rolling valleys, particularly to the west and south, which undulating land is cut at the horizon farther afield in the southwest as the form of the Domboshova Showgrounds sits on the skyline.
It is from here that one can see Ngomakurira Mountain, a vast, rocky protuberance, famous for rock paintings and some yawning caverns, to the south west.
Ngomakururira, where drums are said to have been heard playing in the times old; and its cousin called Musungwa, where a strong traditional beer is said to have been freely availed by the ancestors until someone decided to take home some, have graced the covers of a couple of Geography textbooks.
From Makumbe Hospital, to the west, one can also see a hill called Mawanga whereon a concrete model of the cross towers in memory of a Catholic priest, who is said to have met a cruel death when he fell off the cliff as he chased baboons on his motorbike.
The eulogy on the cross does not say so, of course.
Villages that are discernable hence to the Showgrounds extremity include, much without prejudice, Makumbe, Jeyi, Munemo, Chinamhora, Sasa, Mutake, Mushayapekuvaka and Chikakayi.
The views of the east and north of Makumbe Hospital are largely inhibited and cut out by hills and
knolls and forests as to prevent a clear, sweeping pan.
But these forests and knolls and hills are not uninhabited.
There are villages such as Cheza, Matukutu, Mujeki and Shereni and the road that snakes past Makumbe through the former three leads one to Mashonaland Central’s Musana Communal lands, and if one decides on it, to Bindura.
Domboshava, being generally a receiver of generous rains from Above, offers some verdant, mountainous views, (don’t compare it, though, with Nyanga or Mutare).
This is especially so from the commanding viewpoint of Makumbe Hospital.
It is said the missionaries, who so kindly set the civilising establishment called Makumbi Mission (note the holy bastardisation of Makumbe name) were so impressed with this area and were reminded of the biblical Mary’s visitation to where cousin Elizabeth lived, which is said to have been typically hilly.
The name of the mission’s High School thus is variably “Visitation”, tribute due to the early missionaries and the holy remembrance of the biblical act of visitation.
But it is not all idyllic or romantic here — it has not always been so.
Those old enough may remember Makumbe Hospital with bitterness as its vantage point was used by an enemy that killed, maimed, raped and cowed villagers around.
It is said that during the 1970’s liberation struggle, Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Forces set up a garrison at Makumbe Mission and brutally used to advantage its commanding site.
When speaking to the elders in the area, they recount the notoriety of the settler force as the young and trigger-happy white soldiers terrorised villagers.
The head of Makumbe village freely talks of these notorious soldiers, as does the Matukutu head, among other cotton tops.
“Asi pane kamurungu kainzi Bennett,” they single out regrettably of the man, Roy, who today, would be Agriculture Minister.
That young man was brutal, they add, wondering how on earth a man like that would be allowed to be leader; leader of the black man he disrespected, would want die.
Domboshava is where the worst memory of Roy Bennett lives.
It was last year that the weekly Patriot newspaper exposed Roy Bennett for his brutality during the war and villagers around Makumbe, minus the aforementioned leaders, spoke of the horror that Bennett visited this otherwise quiet piece of God’s land.
Roy Bennett was part of Ian Smith’s notorious British South Africa Police.
One source cites David Coltart, another ex-Rhodie, as saying: “Both Roy Bennett and I served in the BSAP, the Rhodesian Police force, in the 1970s during the civil war fought by Zanla and Zipra against the Rhodesian Front government.
He says: “. . . the BSAP played a major role in maintaining white minority rule and . . . torture was also systematically used by the BSAP against captured guerrillas and their supporters.”
Being one of the people who have seen an MDC-T transfigured Roy Bennett, who now masquerades as a human rights activist and champion of democracy, and in particular having seen his inordinately angry rant at the tributes for the fallen VP Landa John Nkomo, this writer couldn’t help recall Makumbe.
Not least because it is peopled with faces I know; I have known; and people who bear emotional and physical scars of Smith’s brutality.
For those who did not see Bennett’s fulmination on Facebook last week, the man was so livid that people, including the US Embassy here, were duly paying respects to the fallen teacher, businessman, politician and freedom fighter.
Even MDC-T, the party that Bennett belongs to, had glowingly described the man who was in charge of the Organ on National healing and Reconciliation.
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Nkomo was “an eminent nationalist, a liberation war icon and a committed patriot who will be sadly missed by all Zimbabweans”.
But Bennett angrily noted that, “Every time a prominent figure in Zanu-PF dies it becomes the occasion for all sorts of nonsense and stupidity.”
For America’s sin of eulogising Nkomo, Bennett dismissed the mission as “total rubbish”.
“My advice to the Americans and others who appear to be bending over backward to show their neutrality in 2013 is this: better to shut-up and say nothing than to insult the millions of Zimbabweans who have been murdered and impoverished by Zanu-PF.”
It cannot be established where in his raving imagination Bennett could have got the millions he claims have been murdered and impoverished by Zanu-PF.
It is surprising just how Bennett is lost to the irony that it is he and his ilk that have murdered and impoverished and under-developed black people of Zimbabwe and beyond from slavery to the days of colonialism.
Fifty thousand Zimbabwean blacks are said to have been killed by the white settlers, of which Bennett was a part.
There were chilling mass-slaughters like Chimoio and Nyadzonia, all carried by Bennett’s white cohorts.
Bennett and ilk, their atrocities aside, impoverished blacks as they confiscated land and minerals and used rape-like forced labour.
Roy and other white guys became the financiers of the MDC-T because of this lucre all so ill-gotten.
Or, perhaps, we should understand Bennett as a man bitter in the defeat of colonialism, the fight against which was championed by the likes of Nkomo?
Bennett does not take kindly to those who work with Zanu-PF, the champion and reminder of the defeat of colonialism and along with it, the halcyon colonial years of white plunder.
Take for example in 2011, when Old Mutual, a company of British parentage, was said to be eyeing diamond ventures in concert with Government.
He called it “reprehensible and obscene”.
Bennett urged disinvestment from Zimbabwe and brazenly assured companies that fell foul of the country’s indigenisation laws that they “will be restored by an MDC government if they are violated in the interim”.
He has said time and again his MDC-T will dissolve the current security apparatus, which is manned by veterans of the liberation struggle.
Bennett, who one writer has labelled the Great White Hope, is a bitter man.
He longs for the return of Rhodesia. He longs for white heroism.
He longs the freedom to trample over the black rights of the majority.
Maybe, in his dreams, he even sees himself slaughtering those opposed to him, friend and foe, just like in the sad tales of Makumbe.
Perhaps Zimbabwe is lucky that there still remain men cut from the same cloth as the late Nkomo, who are willing to defend the country so it does not become a colony again.
Meanwhile, for those interested in a little part of history, Makumbe is where the memory of Roy Bennett lives . . .
Online Reporter