Bruce Moffat and his wife Adele at their farmhouse. Inset: Bruce Moffat at the family cemetery at Oaklands farm

Arnold Mutemi Features Editor
ROBERT Moffat and his son, John, are well known by most history students in the country. The father and son team were pioneering missionaries in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, in the quest by early missionaries to spread Christianity to the “Dark Continent”.

Robert Moffat, of the London Missionary Society, requested Ndebele King Mzilikazi’s permission to establish a mission station in his kingdom.

Mzilikazi, suspicious of the white man’s intentions, gave them permission to set a mission in the then remote Inyathi, now the country’s oldest mission.

It was at Inyathi that John Moffat’s wife gave birth to the first recorded white child in the country.

John Moffat was to stay at Inyathi for six years before returning to his base at Kuruman in the Northern Cape.

But not known to many is that Robert Moffat’s direct descendants are still in the country.

Tucked a few kilometres away from Shangani Business Centre — about 100km north-east of Bulawayo, is Ormiston Farm, known in official documents as Oaklands.

The farm belongs to Bruce Moffat, a great-great-greatgrandson of Robert Moffat.

The farm was named Ormiston in honour of the Scottish town where the missionary was born.

Bruce’s family has been living on the farm since 1910 when he says it was bought by his grandfather, Howard Unwin Moffat.

Howard was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1927 to 1933, thrown into the hot seat after the sudden death of sitting Prime Minister Charles Coughlan, who succumbed to cerebral haemorrhage.

Bruce, speaking exclusively to The Chronicle this week, said his grandfather was not keen on being Prime Minister.

“He was called him the ‘Reluctant Prime Minister’. He didn’t want to become Prime Minister. He was unpopular with Whites because he liked Blacks,” he said.

It was under Howard Unwin Moffat, however, that the most critical piece of legislation in Zimbabwe’s colonial history was passed: the Land Apportionment Act. With that law, which became effective in 1930, the white settlers parcelled out to each other vast swathes of prime farming land in the countryside, while Blacks were driven to barren, rocky patches known as reserves, where they could only grow enough food to feed their families.

Bruce said his father, Robert Livingstone Moffat, attempted to make forays into politics but failed because White voters at the time did not approve of his policies to bring unity between Blacks and Whites under his “Build a Nation” banner.

Bruce said five generations of his family had lived in the country while three generations had worked the farm.

However, he is not sure if the next generation — his daughters — will carry on with the family’s legacy of cattle ranching. Their farm has been targeted for resettling landless blacks by the government.

Last week, Moffat was dragged to the Small Claims Court by a Bulawayo woman who claims title to the farm.

Sibongile Shava says she was allocated the farm but the Moffats were refusing to move out. Shava wants the Small Claims Court to evict Moffat from the farm, although land cases are normally dealt with by higher courts.

“We were hoping to leave the farm to our children as part of their heritage,” said Bruce’s wife Adele, a former teacher.

Bruce said he has already given up two thirds of the 3,000 hectare farm which were allocated to two new farmers about 10 years ago, and he is not sure whether he will retain the portion he was allowed to keep.

The farmhouse, built in 1933, is a rich source of information for anyone doing research on early Christian Missionaries in Zimbabwe.

There are extensive books on the famous older Scottish missionary who befriended Mzilikazi as he was on his northward march conquering new territory. Some of the utensils used by the missionaries on their way to Inyathi, including a brass pot, are still on the farm although some items have been removed.

“We sent a number of things out of the country because we were scared we could lose them,” Adele said in reference to early days of farm occupations.

The old farmhouse is in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint, but Adele said with the uncertainty over their future at the farm, she was not keen on renovating it now.

Adele claims that when the family first settled on the farm about 105 years ago, no Africans were living in the area and none were displaced.

Bruce said while he appreciated being left with a piece of land under the land reform programme, the portion was not big enough for meaningful production.

“We’ve downsized, we can’t make a living,” explained Bruce, whose older brother, Howard, left Rhodesia in protest against Ian Smith’s racist policies and went to Botswana where he later became President Festus Mogae’s personal physician.

The elderly couple now spend most of their time running a rented grocery store at Shangani business centre.