MDC-T Harare council ordered the felling of Mbuya Nehanda tree

Harare - City of Harare authorities say Zimbabwe's famed colonial-era "hanging tree" crashed into the street after being struck by a workers' truck during highway repairs. MDC-T councillors believes that the felling of the myth tree might assist them in their change agenda.

THE tree where legendary spirit medium and First Chimurenga heroine Mbuya Nehanda was reportedly hanged by white settlers was hacked down by City of Harare workers.

Mbuya Nehanda and other icons of the first uprising against white settlers were said to have been hanged from the tree in 1898.

Myths and legend surrounded the tree where another spirit medium and hero Sekuru Kaguvi is believed to have been hanged on the same day with Mbuya Nehanda on April 27, 1898.

BAD OMEN
The msasa tree is believed to have been used by British settlers to hang Mbuya Nehanda, a Shona spirit medium who was also a hero of the struggle against colonial forces. Local lore has it that she could bring rain in times of drought and that she said before dying: "My bones will rise again."

Other sources, however, say the "magic tree" story is an urban myth and that the woman was hanged on a normal gallows at the then Salisbury, Rhodesia, central police station.

Zimbabweans saw the death of "Nehanda's tree" as a bad omen and others as a harbinger of political change in a country ruled and riven by Robert Mugabe since independence in 1980. He was prime minister from 1980-87 but became the first executive head of state in 1987. Since then the country has been run into the ground with graft, political favours and corruption.

Perhaps Mbuya Nehanda should rise again then the truck driver will have done the country a favour...

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Other reports said the tree was used to hang leaders of the first uprising against European settlers, including the ancestral grandmother of the nation Mbuya Nehanda, in 1898 after she was found guilty of ordering the beheading of native commissioner Henry Pollard.

A n'anga (witchdoctor) performed rites over the split trunk and gnarled branches on Thursday demanding homage be paid and forgiveness sought at Nehanda's grave site north of Harare for the destruction of the tree. Crowds gathered at the felled tree to take pieces of its billowing green leaves, splinters and bark.

The tree fell on the same day as Mugabe marked the country's national tree planting and re-forestation campaign by planting a tree in the Bulawayo.

Witnesses said the 200-year-old Msasa tree, declared a historic site and national monument, fell on Wednesday and some workers fled, believing it a sacred omen of "bad things to come". Crowds gathered at the felled tree on Thursday to take pieces of it.

The indigenous African tree, or brachystegia speciformis, was commemorated on a Zimbabwe postage stamp in 1996 and political rallies have been held there. Historians, however, have cast doubt it was ever used for hangings.