HISTORY | Lion And Elephant Mo

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OUR HISTORY

Long before borders and the arrival of Europeans, the South-East Lowveld was shaped by successive waves of migrating peoples — cultures rising, receding, and imprinting themselves on the land. Permanent settlements were rare; instead, different groups moved through the region over centuries, each leaving fragments of language, story, and memory.

According to oral tradition, the earliest inhabitants were the baTwa (Abatwa), and the land itself was known as buTwa (Butua). Said to have come from the Great Lakes region (Dumbu Kunyuka), the baTwa were small hunter-foragers famed for poisoned-arrow hunting, honey gathering, and palm wine. They lived in simple shelters and may be linked to the Shoko totem people of Mbire. Their presence waned with the arrival of the vaDuma, who pushed them deeper into forest refuges.

Another early group remembered in folklore is the Nyoni, of the Shiri (bird) totem, whose “swift-style” rock art predates San imagery — hinting at a cultural layer even older than the hunter-gatherer traditions commonly recognised.
By the first millennium AD, organised activity centred on Chisekera Springs, likely the region’s first major “settlement,” where salt was extracted. Archaeology confirms major salt production in the Zambezi Valley — at Makai, Chireya, and Kapula Vlei — between the 7th and 9th centuries (Mutema 1996; L.M. Swan 2001). Traditions also point to early Malagasy (Afro-Austronesian) seafarers, who established coastal trading posts and travelled inland along rivers like the Rufiji, Zambezi, and Save, influencing hinterland communities.

Botanical evidence supports these ancient links: the Masau tree (Ziziphus mauritiana), common in the Zambezi Valley, is not indigenous to Africa but originates in the Indo-Malaysian region. Like cassia spice, it was introduced by early traders, and today its distribution mirrors ancient trade routes.

European records from the 19th century add another layer: the elusive baNyai. Early travellers described them as secretive mountain dwellers who avoided contact, speaking a language unfamiliar even to Bantu interpreters. The explorer Mauch noted a baNyai guide at the Zimbabwe Ruins who treated the site with reverence.
Renowned hunter Mashakatsi, travelling along the Limpopo near its confluence with the Levubu, found the area inhabited by the baNyai — a peaceful people he believed would be easily conquered. Soon after, pressure from the Hlengwe advancing from the south and the vaDuma from the north pushed the baNyai steadily westward. Hlengwe oral history remembers their defeat in the Pfumbi area of Matibi (Matippa).

By 1870, records place the baNyai in the rugged hills between the Shashi, Limpopo, and Bubye. Skipper Hoste of the Pioneer Column wrote of meeting them in 1890:
“The hills were inhabited by the Banyai, whose kraals were stuck up in all sorts of inaccessible places. They came down in crowds to trade mealies, pumpkins, beans…”
The 1896 War Office Map marks baNyai settlements near Towla Mountain and east of Tuli, while the 1913 Tonga tribal map still shows them as a dominant Lowveld group before Hlengwe expansion.
Over time, the baNyai were absorbed into the Hlengwe and Kalanga communities, who themselves later came under strong Matabele influence. Today the baNyai survive only as echoes — often identified through the Moyo totem, associated with Kalanga lineage.
In a final historical twist, the name KaLanga literally means “the people of the sun” — those who came from the east, from where the sun rises. Perhaps a faint but enduring memory of distant origins and long-forgotten journeys.

The Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company—creator of Liebig and later Oxo meat extracts and stock cubes—was founded in 1865 by German chemist Baron Justus von Liebig. With British beef too costly for large-scale production, Liebig partnered with Belgian engineer George Christian Giebert, who proposed manufacturing in South America, where cattle were plentiful. A factory was soon operating in Fray Bentos, Uruguay, producing meat extract for both nutrition and cooking. The brand became globally popular, and its legacy survives today in Oxo beef bouillon.
In Zimbabwe, West Nicholson is named after prospector Andy Nicholson of the Pioneer Column. The town later hosted a Liebig’s corned beef and biltong factory, now long closed.

A key figure in the company’s early Rhodesian chapter was Henry de Laessoe, who arrived in 1896, served with the BSAP during the 1896-97 Rebellion, and later became Assistant Native Commissioner in the Sebungwe district. Known locally as “Mapalala” — “the one who sweeps everything away” — he was a formidable administrator and explorer.
De Laessoe undertook several major expeditions, including a 1903 descent of the Zambezi from the Gwaai River to Chinde using only two boats, taking a single wooden craft through the dangerous Caborra Bassa gorge. In 1906 he explored the Sabi–Lundi to Mambone route, assessing navigation potential, soils, vegetation, wildlife, and evidence of ancient trade networks.
In 1908 he guided W. Livingstone-Learmonth, a Liebig’s director searching for ranching land. Impressed, Learmonth appointed him Liebig’s first General Manager, leading to the company’s acquisition of 1,250,000 acres at West Nicholson. His tenure ended in 1914 when Liebig’s replaced single-man rule with a Board of Control. De Laessoe rejected the change, issuing the ultimatum “All or Nothing,” to which the company replied, “Nothing.” True to character, he left Rhodesia and departed for service in the First World War.

The Lion & Elephant Motel – An Icon on thе Bubye

If you travel the road south, across the Mopani scrub and over the Bubye River, there stands a place whose walls have soaked up more stories than most towns — the Lion & Elephant Motel.
It began in the 1950s, when the directors of Nuanetsi Ranch, custodians of 2.75 million acres of cattle country, decided their vast land needed a rest stop. In 1957 they opened a small lodge with a swimming pool and fuel pumps, a welcome sight on the long haul between Salisbury and South Africa. Legendary game scout, Johnnie Fulumani, had shot a lion and an elephant bull near the site during construction.

The name was sealed — half wild, half civilized, exactly like the Lowveld itself.
Travelers soon filled the rooms: ranchers, cattlemen, hunters, families on the road. The Bubye could be kind and cruel in turn — a river to cool the air, but also a danger in flood. More than once the motel found itself cut off by water, most dramatically in 1977 when helicopters had to lift guests from the rooftop.
The bush war years darkened the skies. Convoys rumbled along the tar, and an army base sprouted across the road. One night mortars arced out of the riverine shadows, one smashing through the thatch of Chalet 18. Miraculously, the guest inside survived, pinned beneath beams and kudu horns. Still, the Lion & Elephant carried on, a light on the road, its bar buzzing with soldiers, police reservists, and weary travelers.

In 1983 Chris and Nadine Lee took the reins. They were young, untested in the hospitality trade, but determined. They built chalets along the river, raised baobabs at the gate, and planted the gardens that shade the motel today. When fire gutted the main building in 1987, neighbors came with buckets and spades, and an outdoor dining hall by the swimming pool kept spirits alive until the new “Bubye Grill” opened. Weddings, auctions, and New Year revels made the motel more than a stopover — it became a community stage.
The years brought floods again, drought, hyperinflation, even land seizures. In 2000, Cyclone Eline pushed the Bubye over its banks, drowning ostriches, sweeping away livestock, and leaving a high-water mark still etched on the office wall. In 2008 the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed, prices in the bar changing three times a day. Through it all, the Lees and their managers kept the doors open, sometimes on little more than grit and hope.

By the 2010s, the game park along the Bubye was gone, swallowed by resettlement and poaching, yet the motel survived. When Covid emptied the roads, an agreement with road contractors kept the rooms full. Even as the world stopped, the Lion & Elephant found a way to endure.
Today, more than sixty years since its founding, the Lion & Elephant still belongs to the Lee family. The baobabs planted in 1991 now tower over the entrance. The Bubye still rises and falls, the tar road still hums with trucks and travelers. And inside the old motel, stories gather like dust and laughter — tales of floods and fires, wars and weddings, lions and elephants.
It is more than a stop on the road. It is a survivor, a witness, and a keeper of memory on the banks of the Bubye.

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