There is a kind of culture you cannot package behind museum glass, and that is the kind Nyanga has kept alive. Up in the Eastern Highlands, where the air is cool and the mountains hold mist in the mornings, culture is not a performance for visitors. It is how people greet each other, how they farm, how they mourn, how they celebrate, how they keep secrets in the waManyika way, and how they make things with their hands.
If you want to understand what a true culture market looks like in Zimbabwe, you should go to Chiredzi District, not Bulawayo, and not Victoria Falls. Chiredzi works because the district let the community lead. The markets there are built around the people who live there. The baskets, the carvings, the music, the food, all of it comes from everyday life, and that is why it feels real. Nyanga has that same foundation. It just has not been given the same microphone yet.
Nyanga is Hwesa and Manyika territory. The languages, storytelling, secrecy, costumes, pottery, music, and dance have been passed down for generations and are celebrated at Yasu/Yathu Arts Festivals. This generation needs support because our arts and culture have faded. Right now, Nyanga has very little visible art and culture to share with visitors and to sell.
The landscape itself is part of the art. The ancient Ziwa Ruins and pits scattered across Nyanga National Park continue to inspire visitors, but our artists have lacked access and assistance to market their work. You cannot separate the craft from the place here. A sculpture made in Nyanga carries the cold of the highlands in it. A song sung here carries the echo of the mountains. That connection is what makes Nyanga’s arts and culture different. It is not imported. It is not copied. It grows from the soil.
What Nyanga needs now is the same thing that made Chiredzi stand out: spaces where makers meet the public directly. Imagine small markets in Nyanga town and around Troutbeck where elders sell beadwork they made that week, where young people demonstrate weaving, and where visitors are invited to try, not just to buy. Imagine evenings where storytelling and dance happen in community halls, with no tickets, just people coming together. When culture is lived in public like that, it stops being fragile. It becomes an economy, an identity, and a reason for young people to stay and create.
We do not need to turn Nyanga into another big tourism hub. Bulawayo has its museums and Victoria Falls has its crowds, and that is fine. Nyanga’s strength is intimacy. It is sitting with an artist and hearing why a particular sculpture has that meaning or look. It is walking on mates made by Zuva weaving. It is leaving with an object and knowing exactly whose hands made it.
Promoting Nyanga arts and culture starts with believing that this is enough. Film the makers at work. Share their stories online so someone in Harare or abroad can order directly. Link the art to the heritage sites so a walk through the ruins also becomes a walk through contemporary creativity. Put schools and lodges in conversation with artists so children learn the songs and guests leave with more than photos.
Nyanga does not have to shout to be heard. It just needs to be seen clearly. Like Chiredzi, it can show Zimbabwe that the best culture markets are not the biggest ones. They are the ones where the community is still the author of its own story.
Come to Nyanga for the mountains. Stay for the culture. And leave carrying a piece of it that was made by people who call these highlands home.
By Bright Barwe
