Chivhu, originally known as Enkeldoorn, is a small town in

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

, with an estimated population of 10,000 in 2007. It is located south of

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

on the main road south to Masvingo and South Africa.

Name

Chivhu's original name, Enkeldoorn, is a Dutch and

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

word meaning "lone thorn". It refers to the tree '' acacia robusta'' and implies that a single specimen once grew there. The name was adopted in 1891 but was changed to Chivhu in 1982, on the second anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence. The current name comes from the

Shona language Shona ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken by the Shona people of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The term is variously used to collectively describe all the Central Shonic varieties (comprising Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore and Karanga or Ndau) or specifica ...

and means "anthill".

History

Enkeldoorn was founded by Afrikaans-speaking Boer farmers and settlers in around 1850, and was the first

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

settlement in

. It became an

Afrikaner Afrikaners () are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers who first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Casting''. Encyclopæd ...

stronghold in a predominantly English-speaking white

Rhodesia Rhodesia ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state, unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the ''de facto'' Succession of states, successor state to the ...

, giving it the nickname of 'the Republic of Enkeldoorn'.''The Reluctant President: The Memoirs of the Hon. Clifford DuPont'', GCLM., ID.
Books of Rhodesia, 1978, pages 73–75

Economy

Chivhu has an agricultural economy, based in poultry farming and dairy cattle. Beef, pork, maize and

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most millets belong to the tribe Paniceae. Millets are important crops in the Semi-arid climate, ...

are also important produce.

References

Populated places in Mashonaland East Province Populated places founded by Afrikaners {{Zimbabwe-geo-stub