Back to Rhodesia for a visit - Salisbury and district.

Salisbury and surrounding areas

Salisbury (now Harare) is the capital of Zimbabwe with a population of 1.6M. It is the largest city and administrative and commercial capital of Zimbabwe and is at an altitude of 4865 feet with a temperate climate. The city is a trade centre for tobacco, maize, cotton, and citrus fruits. Manufactures include textiles, steel, and chemicals, and gold is mined in the area.

It was founded by Cecil John Rhodes, on 12 September 1890 as Fort Salisbury after the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the then British prime minister, and subsequently became known as Salisbury. It was declared to be a municipality in 1897 and it became a city in 1935. (wiki - edited)

Note: If you read the Wiki, it looks like a Gr. 7 English level of composition. Pretty fucking sad.

Harare was the original name of the segregated black township.

 

Salisbury late 60's and early 70's

City Park (Cecil Square) with Jacaranda trees and Flamboyant trees in Suburbia

I worked here in 1978 for about 6 months.  I was based at Lochinvar station, on section as we called it (practical training in the field).  This was at the time when they fired two RPG7 rockets at the fuel storage dumps; that was some huge fire that took weeks to extinguish. The night life here was great and LeCocdor was the place to go and three clubs in one venue catering for all different music tastes. I spent most of my evenings at the round bar and being a fairly decent darts player (played for drinks) was a way to pass the time in a city where I knew few people. I made quite a few friends there albeit short lived. The Rhodesian attitude was everyone was your friend and only if you screwed up were you ousted. I was here as a guest and was treated as such.

The RLI and SAS army folk frequented the round bar and they were easy to spot, they had short hair.

Our section was pretty big and I got to see some of the country side one seldom sees as a tourist.

The Oasis hotel had good Saturday lunch time scenes and a beer garden and if you were lucky, got invited to a private "open party" (bring your own drinks and meat for BBQ - host supplies the music and fires.)

Lake McIlwaine (pics) is a man-made lake and the fourth largest impoundment in Zimbabwe. It was formed in 1952 by the Hunyanipoort Dam and is situated on the Hunyani River some 37 km south west of Harare

Dam wall

Road to lake

To the west of Salisbury was Mazoe Citrus Estates and famous for the greatest orange crush which is available world wide.

The bottle looks like this;

There are also other flavours available.

Mazoe Dam

 
To the east is a park and has these balancing rocks.

Not quite as spectacular as the Matopos in Bulawayo.

Mermaid Pools

Farming

This is what it was like under the "evil white regime" and all you need do is google phrases and see a country in turmoil and not the prosperous land it could have been; had we been allowed to sort out our differences without external political shit.

With all the land grabs by the Mubagbe baboon cadres and "war veterans" who were all were probably in a father's testicles and a mother's ovaries in the time of the actual war, sadly this utopia will be a long time in restoration after the baboon finally kicks the bucket and law and order is restored.

Pehaps they can take a page out of Zambia's book and invite white farmers back and give them back their now unproductive lands.