Harleigh Ruins (now Zvipadze Monument)

Location:

The Harleigh Ruins now renamed Zvipadze Monument are 14km from Rusape on the Silver Bow Road, on the former Harleigh Tobacco Farm.

They are two ancient ruins within 500 metres of each other and provide a diversion of historical interest on the way to Nyanga.

Description:

The San rock art paintings nearby are underneath an overhang that looks like a giant granite mushroom. The paintings at the panel are clear, but the red ochre paint has faded. At the top a mass of stippling, made up of short dashes of red ochre paint, weaves its way across the rock interspersed with images of trees. This is not a representation of a lake, river or grassland, birds or bees, or the wind, or pollen.
Stippling in rock art is much more enigmatic than is supposed and probably indicates n/um (or spiritual energy) which has been activated in trance dance, boiled over and is released from the body during trance. (For a full explanation see the Thetford Game Reserve Rock Art Site http://www.thetfordgamereserve.com/ article under Mashonaland Central).

The stippling effect and association with trees is quite a common rockart theme in Mashonaland; the paintings at Murehwa Cave, Gambarimwe Cave, Glen Norah East and Bushman Point at Lake Chivero do the same. To reinforce this explanation, a large figure of a man with elongated limbs is below the scene of stippling and below him are a line of at least eleven humans engaged in a trance dance. Some lean forward and appear to be supported by the dance participant in front of them.

There are two Monuments of different date and style:

Zvipadze No 1

This Zimbabwe-type ruin has a massive outer enclosure with well-laid dry-stone walling and a single entrance with rounded corners. The 1959 excavation by P.A. Robins and Anthony Whitty entitled Excavations at Harleigh Farm, near Rusape, Rhodesia 1958-1962 revealed pottery and finely made dhaka hut floors and walls that date to the seventeenth century and are contemporary with Great Zimbabwe. A human skeleton was also recovered from beneath a hut floor. The authors state this Zimbabwe-type ruin is rare in the district – the only two examples being here and another on neighbouring Devonia Farm, about 3 kilometres NNE with a clear line of sight between the two. 

After being initially deserted, the building was then briefly reoccupied. Early European travellers reported that this ruin was held in great respect by neighbouring villagers with Chief Zvipadze being buried within it. His grave and three others originally had thatched huts over the graves, but only stone circles survive today.

Zvipadze No 2

This ruin is at an isolated kopje 500 metres away. It is in the style of the Nyanga Lowland Culture in its siting and in its building technique; but differs from them in that, very unusually for Zimbabwe, the ruin is surrounded by an elaborate ditch and bank system. The inner bank of the outer ditch originally had a wooden palisade, which have taken root and today form trees. Heaps of stone are often interpreted by visitors as graves, but they are not and may be the result of clearing the land for cultivation.

The central rocky outcrop contains many circular hut and grain bases and is encircled by a wall with a lintelled entrance. Several early travellers, including F.C. Selous, described this place as his diary on 19th October 1890 records. “On this day I left Makoni’s and passed some very curious ruins. First, there was a hill on which were built several concentric walls and the stone foundations of round huts, the whole being surrounded by a moat. A little further on there was a small kopje composed of a few large blocks of granite, some of which were piled up in the centre in the form of a tower. The whole of this kopje was enclosed by a very well built wall about two hundred yards in circumference, eight feet in thickness, and ten feet in height. The stones comprising this wall had the appearance of having being cemented together with mud, which is the first time I have ever noticed anything of this kind in south-eastern Africa. Through this wall there were four entrances, apertures about four feet in height and two and a half feet in breadth. These apertures were let into the base of the wall, and were roofed over with large flat slabs of granite. Inside this wall were the foundations of numerous round buildings. These foundations were all very well built of closely-fitted pieces of squared granite, and were about eighteen inches in depth…Besides the four entrances into the stronghold, there were numerous small holes let into the wall, some of which may have served as loopholes through which archers discharged arrows, but others from their position, I judge to have been intended for drains to carry off water.”

Selous says it was known as “Chitekete and was the old kraal of Chipunza, or Chipadze, Chief of the Ungwe tribe, who under the same ruling dynasty (Makoni) still live in the area. “

This ruin was also described by R.N. Hall in 1892 and also by Alice Balfour in 1894 in her charming book Twelve Hundred Miles in a Waggon.