MBUYA NEHANDA WAS NOT HANGED ON THE “FAMOUS TREE” – RECORDS SHOW SHE WAS EXECUTED ON THE STREET THAT NOW BEARS HER NAME
By Fanuel Viriri
In central Harare, a Msasa tree estimated to be 200 years old became known as the “hanging tree” because of a long-standing belief that it was where the British colonial administration executed the spirit medium Mbuya Nehanda in 1898.
The tree stood on a traffic island in the middle of Josiah Tongogara Avenue between Sam Nujoma Street and Third Street, and was linked in folklore to the hanging of Nehanda and other First Chimurenga leaders. That myth was popularised by a set of stamps in the late 1990s, but as Lyn Mullin writes in Historic Trees of Zimbabwe, “There is not a shred of evidence that it was ever put to such use,” with records confirming Nehanda was hanged in the jail on Victoria Street, the road which now carries her name.
The Jesuit Father Richartz, who visited the condemned at the jail, recorded in the Zambezi Mission Record 1899: “I left Neanda (sic) and went to Kakubi (sic) who received me in good disposition. Whilst I was conversing with him, Neanda was taken up to the scaffold. Her cries and resistance when she was taken up the ladder, the screaming and yelling on the scaffold disturbed my conversation with Kakubi (sic) very much, till the noisy opening of the trap door upon which she stood, followed by the heavy thud of her body as it fell, made an end to the interruption.”
Of the Msasa itself, Mullin offered a more plausible history: “A more plausible anecdote that relates to its function is that of the old-timer who lived nearby and would drive to Meikles Hotel, in his donkey cart, for his daily sundowner.u
Frequently somewhat hors de combat by the end of the evening, his friends would accompany him to his cart, load him aboard, and slap the donkey on its rump. Off the donkey would trot to this familiar tree, where the gentleman’s servant waited to see him safely home!”
The landmark, believed to have originated around 1885, was finally lost on 7 December 2011 when it was knocked down by a vehicle re-tarring the road. #history