Nyamaneche Sanctuary

This article is the first in a series looking at places that are part of the National Parks Estate, but lesser known and not very often visited. It records a trip on the 13^th July 2025 to Nyamaneche Sanctuary.

Nyamaneche Sanctuary (also designated as a “field station” and – incorrectly – as a National Park on Google Maps) is a protected area in Zimbabwe, 2 480 square kilometers in extent, specifically designated as a sanctuary for wildlife. It is located in the Great Dyke region and was originally intended (alongside Sebakwe Recreational Park and its attendant Botanical Reserves) to safeguard the Great Dyke’s unique serpentine vegetation and associated wildlife. 

Nyamaneche Sanctuary was also known for its rhino population, though it unfortunately experienced poaching incidents, leading to the translocation of the remaining rhinos to safer locations. 

Directions

Nyamaneche Sanctuary is situated north of Harare, beyond Mvurwi. The drive takes about 2 hours from the northern outskirts of Harare.

• Take Sam Nujoma Street (formerly Second Street Extension) to the Golden Stairs Road, out past the turn-off to the new parliament and proceed to Mazoe Dam.
• After Mazoe Dam and the small town of Mazoe turn left onto the A12 and travel for 84 km km through Concession and past Mvurwi.
• Turn left at the shop pictured below onto Horse-Shoe Road (though there is no sign to this effect until halfway down the road).

• 19 km to Nyamaneche. (After a few kms of rough broken tar the road settles down into a reasonable quality dirt road. )

A small National Parks green sign indicates a turn to the right to the office and staff accommodation.

Down this road is the house of the original owner, now functioning as a National Parks office, set about with derelict tobacco barns. A National Parks employee materialised, astonished and thrilled to find people visiting his domain.  He required a very modest entry fee of $3.00 per person.

From the reception/office one goes back onto the road and turns right, over a causeway crossing a river and then turning left a couple of hundred meters after the river at a sign saying, “No Entry” and a rather forbidding gate, secured only with a twist of wire.

This provides access to the section of the park where day visitors can picnic.

A track runs past a great deal of evidence of infrastructure such as staff accommodation and accommodation for visitors, (now all derelict) to a rocky kopje signposted as containing rock art. The total effect is of benign neglect. Dead wood lies where it has fallen in thick, healthy undisturbed miombo bush.

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History of Nyamaneche 

Mike La Grange very kindly supplied the following history of Nyamaneche as part of the ZimParks estate.

“Nyamaneche raises interesting memories. It is a relic of a past experiment, post-independence but before the land invasions.

It had been a farm that was bequeathed to ZimParks by a farmer, Sunny Townsend, who was still in residence for some time. They had not made use of it until a special opportunity arose to put it to good use.

I had just resigned from National Parks (where I had been warden of Sinamatela) when ZimParks offered me the opportunity to explore an exciting new community wildlife initiative dedicated to developing ideas and strategies to support rural people in coexistence with wildlife and to explore new ways of dealing with the human-wildlife conflict problem.

I became the Warden of PARCU (Problem Animal and Research and Control Unit). Nyamaneche was, furthermore, established as a game park in the hopes of finding wildlife ventures that communities could become involved in to benefit them in wildlife sustainably. Unfortunately, the fast-changing circumstances in the country necessitated the development of a full Management Unit, managing all the ZimParks management programs including elephant culls, capture programs and rhino translocation, all based at Nyamaneche.

This wide range of responsibilities regrettably replacing my PARCU responsibilities, which had never been the original intention. Eventually, in late 1989, 10 years after independence, I was forced to resign completely and in-house ZimParks Management Programs except for PAC came to an end. In the early 2000 the farmland invasions began, and so an important opportunity was lost for sustainable community-wildlife coexistence.

Government priorities altered to resettling indigenous people in the previously existing state land buffer zones and on any farm that had designated game park areas on them. This meant a hard interface between communities and wildlife making relations more difficult to manage.

The whole Nyamaneche experiment itself became controversial and regrettably collapsed. The station had lost its prime objective although it did continue as a base for other activities. This was indeed unfortunate as its designation other than a national park, exempted it from national park regulations governing function so it had been able to trial various innovative initiatives to do with the farming of wildlife on small scale properties and researching new human-wildlife conflict repellence strategies and tools for the country.

Sadly, I don’t think there have been any further developments in this direction, which would have served an important function of trying to introduce wildlife into communities in a way that would have resulted in wildlife being more recognised as a commodity and a valuable asset, effectively protecting wildlife for future generations.”

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