Staff Reporter
Mazowe artisanal mining activities have caused mayhem as some villagers lose their lives while others are injured as youth gangs popularly known as ‘MaShurugwi’ rain terror.
The machete wars are over gold and the State Security Minister Mr Owen Ncube has been implicated in these illegal violent activities, with some youths gangs claiming and boasting that they were linked to the minister and were untouchable.
Minister Ncube is from the Midlands Province and that is the same province that these ‘Mashurugwi’ gangs hail from.
The villagers made the claims when an inter-ministerial task force visited the province to assess the scourge of artisanal mining and they said that they are now leaving in fear of these thugs who are said to not hesitate to kill people.
Villagers said that, the youth gangs had wreaked havoc in the province and they often brag about their links to the high offices, describing Ncube as their godfather.
Honorable Minister Winston Chitando (Mines), Kazembe Kazembe (Information and Technology Communication), Fortune Chasi (Energy) and Monica Mutsvangwa (Information and Publicity) were among the delegation sent to Mazoe to assess the scourge of illegal mining. Police officers and other Zanu PF officials also attended the meeting.
The gangs have been said to be behind a series of crimes in Mazowe and some are already serving varying jail terms for killings in the machete gold wars.
The delegates also visited Eureka Mine, and Jumbo Mine has become a hub of illegal miners and is said to be claiming lives on a daily basis also due to unsafe mining practices.
“We told the ministers that all the chaos in this province is being fuelled by top ranking people linked to the machete-wielding artisanal miners. The panners are terrorising the province, raping, robbing and murdering people. As Zanu PF youth, we retaliated last month and the chaos resulted in the burning of two commuter omnibuses which wanted to transport the MaShurugwi out of the province,” said one of the villagers.
In past the ‘MaShurugwi’ clashed with Zanu PF youths and the clashes turned bloody, with the ruling party youths torching cars the artisanal miners were using as transport. The Zanu Pf youths are said to be trying to drive out the terror gangs who are causing unrest in the province.
The villagers are concerned by the statements of some of the gang members who brag that even if they went to jail, they would get out because of the protection of Ncube.
Conversely, Information and Publicity Permanent Secretary Ndavaningi Mangwana, who was also part of the inter-ministerial team, without confirming or denying the villagers’ claims, said most Zimbabweans now have a malicious social practice of excessive use of authoritative names for both criminal and patronage purposes.
Mangwana said, “But that does not mean the person doing the name-dropping would have been sent by the person they claim to be their principal. It is tragic that we are in this place where some are taken by such simple con jobs. The use of a name of someone in a position of influence seems to have the effect of immobilising and disempowering the victim. The police should not be fazed by the use of the senior official’s name. This is why we have the trendy charge of ‘abuse of public office’ against those who misuse their positions of public trust for personal gain.”
Police Officer Commanding for Mashonaland Central Mr Rangarirai Mushaurwa allegedly accused the ministry of Mines for failing to run the mine and that it now needs more police force to control the chaos around it. He then suggested that people should be put in groups of 100 and then takes turns to mine while responding to allegations that the police were giving different charges on artisanal miners, raising suspicion of corruption in the conduct of the law enforcement agents.
Add comment