Gonakudzingwa National Monument is a new tourist attraction, due to open before the end of the year in Gonarezhou National Park in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe.
Gonakudzingwa, along with Sikombela in Gokwe, is one of two restriction camps that the Rhodesians established (before Independence) to confine and restrict the movement and political activities of nationalists.
The monument is located at the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique at the Sango/Chiquaquala border post, close to the Limpopo River.
National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe Director, Dr Godfrey Mahachi, noted that progress had been made and all paperwork had been completed for the development of the monument.
“We are therefore now only awaiting the official gazetting of Gonakudzingwa as a national monument,” he said.
Chiredzi South legislator, Calisto Gwanetsa, added: “This place occupies an important part of our history and it’s imperative that we bring it back. We are the generation to do that. The place remains desolate in its present form but still captures the imagination of anyone who visits it and inspires the quest for an in-depth understanding about life, values and experience of the nationalists who spent years in the jungle in pursuit of freedom.”
Some nationalists once held at Gonakudzingwa include Zimbabwe’s late Vice Presidents, Dr Joshua Nkomo and Joseph Msika, Cephas Msipa, Josiah and Ruth Chinamano, Enos Nkala, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and Willie Musarurwa.
Gonarezhou is part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP), which also includes South Africa’s Kruger National Park and Mozambique’s Gaza National Park. GLTP is home to more than 500 species of birds, 147 species of mammals, at least 116 species of reptiles, 34 species of frogs and 49 species of fish.
