By Andrew Kunambura for The Financial Gazette. 

On a bright day, standing atop the rolling Nyota hills in Mazowe, even in winter, the valley still offers a vast, open and green vista that over a century ago inspired a foreign visitor to declare it an “English garden”.

“… the country near the junction of the Mazowe and Tateguru rivers, we found to be literally carpeted with a profusion of colour: Pale mauve, pink and lilac predominating through the yellow and white flowers scattered amongst them, too, and there was one gem of a rich deep red. The flowers had nothing tropical in their appearance but all looked as if they might grow in the open air in an English garden, with the climate of southern Europe.”

This is an excerpt from the memoirs of one Fredrick Selous, an emissary of the British South African Company who negotiated many treaties with African leaders, paving the way for the company’s colonial exploits in southern Africa.

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Photo: Smart buildings and urban planning. ITU.