Chivhu

Enkeldoorn, Chivhu’s original name, is an Afrikaans name meaning “lone thorn”. It refers to the tree acacia robusta and implies that a single specimen once grew there. The name was adopted in 1891 but was changed to Chivhu in 1980 when Zimbabwe became independent. The current name comes from the Shona language and means “anthill”.

History:
Enkeldoorn was founded by Afrikaans-speaking Boer farmers and settlers in around 1850, and was the first white settlement in Zimbabwe. It became an Afrikaner stronghold in a predominately English-speaking white Rhodesia, giving it the nickname of ‘the Republic of Enkeldoorn’.

Economy:
Chivhu has an agricultural economy, based in poultry farming and dairy cattle. Beef, pork, maize and millet are also important produce.

Famous people from Chivhu:Chivhu/Enkeldoorn is famous for producing cricketers Dirk Viljoen and Gavin Ewing. It is also the ancestral hometown of Andy Blignaut, field born Mathias Kanda — a Zimbabwean track athlete who competed in the 1964 Summer Olympic men’s marathon.

Why visit

• Chivhu is just one of those places for which you slow down to pass through on the journey down to South Africa or back to Harare.
• The Enkeldoorn Hotel, now Vic’s Tavern, was never an imposing sight, just a nondescript sprawling single story collection of buildings, but was once where a group of jokers who regularly met at the Enkeldoorn hotel for social drinks at the bar, led by a well-known local, Buck Rogers, a fighter pilot during the Second World War.
• They established a so-called independent state named the Republic of Enkeldoorn, with a written Constitution and Regulations. The Republic was the area around the bar counter. Buck Rogers was installed as President and his wife, Helen was First Lady. The Prime Minister was Henry Cook, who owned the Enkeldoorn hotel, a tall man with an aristocratic bearing who wore a monocle and had a passion for horses, and attractive women, and would be seen riding a horse every morning before breakfast.