Golden resource curse of Midlands
LOCATED at the heart of Zimbabwe, Midlands is one of the richest provinces in the country, with an array of natural resources among other endowments.
It is in the Midlands Province where over a dozen of mineral resources that include, gold, platinum, chrome and nickel are found.
Recently, the Midlands was found to have huge deposits of coalbed methane and plans are afoot to set up a coalbed methane plant in Kwekwe.
Midlands cities and towns like Kwekwe, Gweru, Zvishavane and rural areas like Mberengwa and Silobela are synonymous with huge deposits of gold.
Due to the province’s riches, people from all walks of life have often frequented the Midlands Province in search of the precious mineral.
However, the province is fast carving an unsavoury reputation; a reputation of gold clash related killings as artisanal miners often engage in fierce and ugly running battles over the control of gold claims. Due to the province’s richness in gold, gangs with a tendency to attack artisanal miners and getting away with gold have emerged.
The daring gangs at times attack well established mines and get away with gold.
There was one such notorious armed gang that operated in the mining town of Shurugwi nicknamed “Mabhuru” which went around robbing miners of their gold.
During their heinous operations, the Mabhuru gang once attacked a prominent miner, Mr Nicholas Gara of Bonsa Mine and took away his gold.
The gang, led by one Cephas Mahara, was later arrested in 2014, and four of the members, including Mahara were convicted by the courts and are still serving jail terms.
In the last few years, there have also emerged some machete-wielding gangs that normally operate in Kwekwe, wreaking havoc in the mining city attacking each other in fights which sometimes turn fatal. Only recently, Kwekwe magistrate, Mr Story Rushambwa, jailed a 35-year-old man, Fanuel Manyimbire of Gokwe to four years behind bars after being found guilty of attacking and seriously injuring a fellow artisanal miner in one of the many gold clashes to have been recorded in the Midlands Province.
Police have arrested many such notorious gangs, but some are still at large.
Speaking during an all stakeholders meeting in Kwekwe this week, Kwekwe District Hospital Superintendent, Dr Patricia Mapanda said authorities at the hospital were now living in fear, as some machete-wielding gangs, which would have clashed at the mining shafts, follow their victims admitted to hospital.
She said only last week, nurses at the hospital were left scurrying for cover, after four gun totting men stormed one of the hospital wards saying they were looking for some artisanal miners who they suspected to be admitted following clashes.
“Luckily, we had no such people in admission, but everyone was left shaken by the incident. Everyone is now living in fear, and we are afraid of admitting artisanal miners, who would have been injured during gold related clashes,” she said.
Dr Mapanda said there was need to beef up security at the institution.
Midlands provincial police spokesperson, Inspector Joel Goko, though acknowledging that police have handled a significant number of cases involving artisanal miners clashes, could, however, not immediately give statistics of such cases.
“When we classify cases of murder, we only record them as murder, we don’t classify them as gold related or what, but for us to provide the statistics of murder in the province, we need to be given timeframes and a period where such statistics should be derived from so that we compile them,” he said.