Declaration of National Monument Harare Kopje Monument

The Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage has declared the Harare Kopje Monument, formerly known as Top Scope and as Salisbury National Monument No. 73, a National Monument with redefined boundaries.

The Kopje is the granite hill at the western edge of Harare's central business district, the point from which the city was laid out in 1890. This instrument does not create a new monument so much as redraw an existing one, replacing the old colonial-era designation with a boundary described in modern UTM grid references.

The boundary is a polygon of seventeen points. From point A it runs south along the edge of Ivan Maguire Road through a series of legs of 99m, 34m, 20m, 139m and 119m, then south-west along the same road for 165m and 120m. It then follows the back of the properties at the foot of the Kopje west and north-west for 66m, 133m and 260m, reaches the edge of Abdel Gamal Nasser Road (formerly Rotten Row) and runs north along it for 52m, 37m and 44m, continues north to a point, turns east for 200m, runs east along the foot of the hill for 247m to a boom gate, and closes north-east for 14m back to point A.

What this means on the ground is that the hill, its slopes and the strip between the road edges and the back of the surrounding properties are protected heritage land. Development, excavation, quarrying or construction inside that line requires authority from National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe. Property owners at the foot of the Kopje and the City of Harare should check whether their boundaries touch the redefined line.

Caveats on the published text. The letter "I" is used for two different points, and one grid reference sequence runs southwards through a value (point B at 8026557) that reappears later at point F, so the surveyed diagram held by NMMZ, not this description, is the reliable source for an exact boundary. This is one of three monument declarations gazetted on 26 July 2024, with Kamungoma (S.I. 123 of 2024) and Altena Farm (S.I. 128 of 2024).