DRIVING from Bulawayo towards Beitbridge, you come to Mbalabala, that bald mountain with its enchanting presence.
As you turn towards Zvishavane, lightning flashes in the yonder cascading mountains and a shower blesses you, sweetly insisting that summer still has promise, reminding you once again of Zimbabwe’s mystic beauty.
The mopani trees stealthily remind you of the distinct taste of madora and you smile; it is time.
You turn towards Masvingo, past the ancient city (Great Zimbabwe) eastwards and the brooding hills of Zaka, Jichidza.
The balding rocks, a favourable place for children to play, still smoking from the just-ended rains welcome you and you relax and feel at home.
The mishuku trees tell you to expect even more, so laden with fruit and enticing; glistening in the drizzle, you cannot resist the baskets of mashuku on sale by the roadside, each one jostling for a vantage point.
The mesmerising beauty of the smoking mountains gently nudge you, whispering: ‘The Lord cannot fail to answer this fervent prayer; after all, He is the Great One’.
This enchanting beauty, not only here, but all over this great country, is what inspired great ones like Mbuya Nehanda, Josiah Tongogara, Leopold Takawira, Herbert Pfumandini Chitepo, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, Solomon Mujuru and other heroic sons and daughters of Zimbabwe, who could not bear that a robber could brazenly claim it as theirs?
The whiteman rode on his wagons, on his horses and saw all this palatial expanse of unmitigated beauty and heartlessly said it had to belong to him, just him.
These ‘black brown things’, said the whiteman, cannot be owners of such awesome magnificence.
The majestic Mt Nyanga, its mystic heights where surely Musikavanhu must reside sometimes, for no mortal could bear those mystic smoking heights.
The bald escarpments guard her majesty, Mt Nyanga, as she stands sentinel to Zimbabwe’s eastern entrance.
Cecil John Rhodes had to claim it (Nyanga) and also the haunting Matopo Hills, the seat of Musikavanhu.
Just imagine the greediness and selfishness of this ‘king’ of the marauding robbers.
He hoped to steal forever the aesthetic incandescence of Musikavanhu by being buried at Matopo.
Rhodes had to appropriate for himself the choicest of Zimbabwe’s ecstatic beauty.
This land was irresistable to the marauding robbers, its beauty, riches, gold, diamonds, emeralds, ivory, the flora and fauna.
It is this that must have seared your hearts, you, our dear liberation forces and you could not rest until you brought this enchanting ‘bride of brides’ home, your Zimbabwe.
You had to and you did us all the greatest favour, for what would it mean to encounter all this beauty and it were still in the hands of the foreign white robber.
As we go around our magnificent land, we can show our children the excruciating beauty that our land is without the shame that it belongs to those who stole it from us at gun point.
We can gladly tell our children that Mosi-oa-Tunya (The Smoke that Thunders) was given to your ancestors a long time ago by the great God of your ancestors, Musikavanhu, and so were the enthralling incandescent hills of Matopo.
As the little ones look up at the conical tower at Great Zimbabwe and wonder where it all ends there in the sky, we can proudly tell them, there is no place like this in the world.
There are no scientists or architects like our ancestors.
Long ago before the white robbers came, they built this magnificent edifice and as the children gaze down from the acropolis, we shall remind them once again as always, that this is no land of the heathen, that the proud sweep of the grasslands where our ancestors used to graze their cattle, the granite escarpments where they flaked stone to build our Great Zimbabwe, where they mined iron to make hoes and other implements, are the signature of Musikavanhu, the Great One, worshipped here, at Matopo and at other great places of our land.
They shall be proud as you ever hoped, our great heroes, that the children of your land shall not live under the sceptre of slavery; that they shall walk tall, knowing they are second to none.
They shall know, like you dear Cdes Tongo, Mugabe, Nhongo and Chitepo, that when you are a prince or a princess, you gather your pearls and defend your wealth and people with your all, that no-one can rob you and succeed.
The song you started our dear great heroes of our land, we shall teach our young from nursery rhymes to our universities so that they too shall always celebrate the ancient gift of a Great Zimbabwe.
“So be at peace young Zimbabwe,
You have the greatest land in the world
You have the greatest history in the world
You have the greatest love in the world that never thought it too much to sacrifice its life for its land, for its people
Oh Zimbabwe, how Great You Are!”