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(HERALD) Triangle’s bitter, sweet origins

COMMENT - You could write the same narrative about Germany's highway system.

Triangle’s bitter, sweet origins
Friday, 30 March 2012 00:00
Tichaona Zindoga Features Writer

Zimbabwe’s pioneering home of sugarcane production — Triangle — which lies in the southeast of the country, is a place of many interesting tales. First, the name and the brand that has been for long associated with sugar had nothing to do with sugar in the first place.

The triangle sign was actually used by Murray McDougall as a cattle brand and the fame of this sign later rubbed onto his sugar ventures. MacDougall — or Mac as he is simply referred to — did not even have a sugar-growing pedigree, having been a driver of mules in transport.

Mac is the pioneer of vast irrigation systems that water the Lowveld.

By the way, this part of the country is one of the driest, hottest and generally not known for being hospitable to animals of the wild being more at home here.

That is, along the mainly Shangaan ethnic group, who cannot be trusted to like it much either, as thousands of young people each year flock to South Africa, sometimes risking life and limb as they walk the wild.

Yet the sugar estates present a lush, verdant, cool and even sweet environment as water that flows from the Mutirikwi River nourishes thousands of hectares of sugarcane.

The irrigation system was not born of a miracle then.

Put it to the great vision of Mac but that same vision had to be executed in the most brutal fashion costing lives and limb.

The year was 1923.

Mac spotted a place which was most favourable for his venture.

It was on a ridge of rocks which ran right across the wide river.

According to his official biography, “Murray MacDougall and the Story of Triangle”, written by C. R. Saunders: “The fact that the Government’s Irrigation Department considered him to be impudent, misguided and high-handed, and the presence of two large granite kopjes directly in the path of his proposed canal from the amended weir site, did not in any way deter this rugged and resourceful Scot.”

But he had to deploy, even cruelly, the resources of the black labour.

“Many people died while constructing the canal at Mutirikwi as people were forced to cut over solid rock,” reveals one resident.

[How many? Just a thought. - MrK]

“It is said many people were maimed cutting through rock and working night and day,” she added.

Officially, it is recognised that there was hard work done.

A National Monument plaque at Mutirikwi reads: “From this weir, built in 1923, Thomas Murray MacDougall led water from the Mtilikwe River through two tunnels, hewn by hand over seven years for a distance of 1 400 feet through solid rock, and thence to his lands through a canal eight miles long. This historic enterprise was the first development in the Lowveld’s great irrigation project.”

Saunders concedes that “all these works performed in arduous and remote conditions by a single-minded untrained Scot and his willing toiling team of Shangaans, sweating and labouring with picks and shovels, shifting earth and rocks with wheelbarrows and spans of oxen. . . ”

Natives of the Lowveld know just how “hewing” over solid rock for seven years could mean in a colonial situation where slave labour practices were in place.

“Our fathers told of exploitation, and this was besides the loss of land as our forefathers were forced off the land and pushed to areas like Bikita,” says Albert Mukanga, a butchery hand.

Saunders in his book though tries to play down the confiscation of lands from the indigenous people.

He says Mac, having travelled from South Africa in 1906, “pushed on northwards through the Lowveld bush until he reached the Mtilikwe River, in which vicinity he spent an enjoyable few weeks hunting, and making the acquaintance of the handful of Shangaans who lived along the Lowveld rivers of this wild, unexplored, and virtually uninhabited corner of Southern Rhodesia.

“MacDougall fell in love with the area, probably among the first white men to fall victim to the strange fascination of the Lowveld, and he vowed to return one day.”

(Perhaps in the same “civilising” mission narrative, Saunders further claims that Mac went to the Lowveld from Salisbury (now Harare) following the 1912 famine when “the Government appealed for help in carting grain to the starving African people of the Victoria district”.

Successive Mukangas have been working at Triangle as general labourers, though.
Mac was to face his own misfortunes in the bitter-sweet tale of Triangle.

In 1912, he had applied to the administration for rights to 300 000 acres of land between the Mtilikwe, Chiredzi and Lundi rivers, but, as there were no maps of the region and no surveys had been performed, there was an understandable delay in formalising his grant, but he was given an option on the land.

He was later to lose his venture over the grant.

Financial problems, the nationalisation of the sugar industry, his being “the supreme individualist MacDougall (who) was unable to fall in line with the management style demanded by an orderly civil service, and being a man of action more than words” meant that Mac’s dream would finally collapse.

In 1945, MacDougall left Triangle for Scotland on a twilight journey that left him dead in 1963.

However, his efforts have been recognised with a museum in his honour that tells his remarkable story.

The museum, which has paraphernalia that he used from cups, watches, blankets, kettles and Shangaan gifts shows the rugged and sometimes soft side of the Scottish highlander.

A school and a dam have been named in his honour and the present owners of Triangle, Tongaat Hullet have taken much care to preserve the history of the man.

Saunders writes: “Truly, this was a man among men, and his example of courage and determination remain as an inspiration to many of us. His memory is perpetuated by the Murray MacDougall Museum, the Murray MacDougall Scholarships and the Murray MacDougall School. I have a feeling that the rugged spirit of Mac keeps watch over his beloved Triangle from the top of the hill to this day.”

A museum guide, Nancy Mtombeni, seems to pray as much as she diligently tells visitors of the tales of Triangle.

Feedback: tichaona.zindoga@zimpapers.co.zw

Labels: LABOUR, LAND REFORM, RHODESIA

posted by MrK @ 2:27 PM