Mutoko
Encyclopedia
Mutoko is a small town in Mashonaland East
Mashonaland East
Mashonaland East is a province of Zimbabwe. It has an area of 32,230 km² and a population of approximately 1.1 million . Marondera is the capital of the province.-Districts:Mashonaland East is divided into eight districts:* Chikomba* Goromonzi...

 province, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

. It was established as an administrative station in 1911. It lies 143 km from Harare
Harare
Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...

. It is named after the local Chief Mutoko.

This town is capital of the Mutoko District which is inhabited by the Buja people. The Buja people are said to have settled in Mutoko from Mhingari in what is now Mozambique

The Buja people are known for being amongst the best tomatoes and mango
Mango
The mango is a fleshy stone fruit belonging to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The mango is native to India from where it spread all over the world. It is also the most cultivated fruit of the tropical world. While...

 farmers in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

.

Mutoko area is also known for being a very mountainous region of Zimbabwe and as such is an important source granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 stone.

It is also home to Nohureka (see Nehanda and Chaminuka), a spiritual leader of the Buja people. Nehoreka's totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...

 is shumba(lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

).

In 1937 at nearby Mutemwa there was established one of the few leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...

 treatment centres in the country at which John Bradburne
John Bradburne
John Randal Bradburne MC was a lay member of the Order of St Francis, a poet, warden of the Mutemwa leper colony at Mutoko. He was killed by guerrillas and is a candidate for canonization.-Background:Bradburne's father was an Anglican clergyman and he had two brothers and two sisters...

 worked from 1969 until he was killed by guerrillas during the Rhodesian Bush War
Rhodesian Bush War
The Rhodesian Bush War – also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation – was a civil war which took place between July 1964 and December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia...

. Up to 25,000 people attend a service each year in his memory.

Mutoko is also the birthplace of Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean author and filmmaker.- Biography :Dangarembga was born in Mutoko, Zimbabwe , in 1959 but spent part of her childhood in England. She began her education there, but concluded her A-levels in a missionary school back home, in the town of Mutare...

, author if the famous post-colonial novel Nervous Conditions
Nervous Conditions
Nervous Conditions is a novel by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga. Semi-autobiographical, it is set in the post-colonial Rhodesia of the 1960s...

.

list of famous institutions in Mutoko:
Nyadire Methodist Mission :Teachers College ,mixed boarding facilities for High and primary school , hospital ,Methodist church institution
Mutoko High School Gvt Funded boarding facilities mixed
All Souls Catholic Mission : Orphanage mixed Boarding facilities for High and primary schools , hospital, church
Nyamuzuwe Methodist Mission: mixed Boarding facilities for High and primary School hospital and church

Tourist attractions:
Mutoko airport
mutoko centre
Mutoko ruins
Mudzi River

Further reading

1 A Dictionary of African Mythology (Oxford University Press) by Harold Sheub; 2000
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK