Nhamatanda is a town in the Sofala Province of
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...
. It is the administrative center of
Nhamatanda District.
It lies along the Beira Corridor between
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 ...
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 ...
and
Beira, Mozambique's second-largest city. It was largely destroyed by
Cyclone Idai
Intense Tropical Cyclone Idai () was one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. The long-lived storm caused catastrophic damage, and a humanitarian crisis in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, le ...
in March 2019.
Name
Nhamatanda has had many names. Early in its history, it was known as "Bambu Crick".
In the local dialect of
Chisena, this means "Mr. Crick" - a reference to a British landowner in the area. English-speakers, however, referred to the place as "Bamboo Creek", a reference to a small river near the town. Which name came first is unknown, and many residents of the area refer variously to these different stories.
Nova Fontesvila, the name given to the same place by the Portuguese (who inhabited the area along with the British), was founded in 1898 and named after
Fontes Pereira de Melo
António Maria de Fontes Pereira de Melo Order of the Tower and Sword, GCTE Order of the Golden Fleece, KGF (; Lisbon, 8 September 1819 – 22 January 1887) was a Portuguese politician, statesman and engineer. He was a leading Member of parliame ...
, a Portuguese marquis. The names of Nova Fontesvila and Bamboo Crick existed simultaneously.
In the 1920s, the town of Nova Fontesvila was officially renamed "Vila Machado", a reference to the Portuguese engineer responsible for building the railroad from Beira to Harare.
''Machado'' is also the Portuguese word for "axe", and many Mozambican residents of the area refer to the fact that the railroad was built through a large grove of trees, all of which needed to be cut down by black African workers.
The current name, Nhamatanda, was given in 1975 at Mozambican independence. It derives from the name of the river near the town and through the district. In Chisena, the word Nhamatanda may be derived from words meaning "large logs", It is said that the river has been strong enough, before current dams were built, to pass large logs down its length.
References
{{reflist
Populated places in Sofala Province