Pelandaba is a suburb of
Bulawayo
Bulawayo (, ; Ndebele: ''Bulawayo'') is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council cl ...
in Zimbabwe. It has nearly 30,000 residents as of 2007. It houses
Sizane Secondary School
Sizane High School is a high school that is located in the suburb of Pelandaba, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It was established in 1963 by the Society of Women of Southern Rhodesia under Lady Edna Caddick's supervision and was gifted to the AME Church i ...
, Induba Primary School and the house of late
Joshua Nkomo
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (19 June 1917 – 1 July 1999) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and Matabeleland politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. He founded and led the Zimbabwe African People's ...
, the former leader of Zimbabwe's African Peoples Union.
Origins
The neighborhood was built in the 1950s as an "elite African community". J. H. Sobantu (who in the 1930s was "an emerging member of Southern Rhodesia's Westernized African elite"), was one of the chairmen of the residents' association. Its founding was the result of the boom in the Zimbabwe economy of the early 1950s, when the number of jobs as well as wages increased, a development from which Zimbabwe's black residents profited as well; moreover, labor unrests of the late 1940s showed the need for a more stable social situation. This led to a demand for better housing in better neighborhoods, and "both the government and employers began to pay more serious attention to the housing problems of urban blacks". Bulawayo, while opposing black landownership, "grudgingly introduced an African Home Ownership Scheme on a thirty-year leasehold basis". So, residents did not actually own the land on which they built "even the
rplushest houses": the 1930
Land Apportionment Act
Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1980 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, as an effort to more equitably distribute land between black subsistence farmers and white Zimbabweans of European ancestry, who had traditiona ...
had reserved significant chunks of the country (the most fertile ones) to whites, including the white suburbs. The land on which Pelandaba (and the similar suburb Pumula) was built was leased from the city. The suburb proved successful enough in attracting the African elite (including such notables as
Joshua Nkomo
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (19 June 1917 – 1 July 1999) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and Matabeleland politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. He founded and led the Zimbabwe African People's ...
), and became "the trendiest black community in Bulawayo"; by 1957 its houses rivaled those of expensive white neighborhoods.
[West 115-16.]
See also
*
Land reform in Zimbabwe
Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1980 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, as an effort to more equitably distribute land between black subsistence farmers and white Zimbabweans of European ancestry, who had traditional ...
References
Suburbs of Bulawayo
{{Zimbabwe-geo-stub