STATE Security minister Owen Ncube has been implicated in
the often violent Mazowe illegal mining activities that have seen youth gangs
popularly known as MaShurugwi, engage in machete wars over gold that have many
people dead or injured.
Most of the MaShurugwi reportedly come from the Midlands
province, where minister, a close ally of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, hails
from.
NewsDay is reliably informed that villagers from Mazowe
last Wednesday implicated Ncube, claiming the violent artisanal miners had been
boasting that they were linked to the minister and were untouchable.
The villagers made the claims last week when an
inter-ministerial task force visited the province to assess the scourge of
illegal mining.
The delegation comprised four ministers — Winston Chitando
(Mines), Kazembe Kazembe (Information and Technology Communication), Fortune
Chasi (Energy) and Monica Mutsvangwa (Information and Publicity).
Police officers and Zanu PF officials also attended the
meeting.
The villagers, who said they were now living in fear of the
machete gangs, claimed that the MaShurugwi, who have been accused of wreaking
havoc in the province, often brag about their links to the high offices,
describe Ncube as their godfather.
The gangs have been said to be behind a series of crimes in
Mazowe and some are already serving varying jail sentences for killings in the
machete gold wars, despite claiming
known as Jumbo Mine, where the MaShurugwis have been said
to be terrorising villagers.
The ministers visited Eureka Mine, a defunct gold mine that
Mnangagwa visited before last year’s election, promising to open it and create
hundreds of jobs, but is still to make good of the promise.
Jumbo Mine has become a hub of illegal miners and is
claiming life on a daily basis due to unsafe mining practices.
Three people are reported to have been killed this weekend
in machete wars.
While the ministers were locked in a meeting, some irate
villagers outside claimed the MaShurugwi had been bragging of their links to
Ncube, who is also accused of running similar gangs in the Midlands province,
in Mnangagwa’s backyard.
“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,” one Zanu PF youth told NewsDay.
“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.”
The MaShurugwi have lately clashed with Zanu PF youths who
are miffed that the people from the Midlands province are coming to terrorise
them on their home turf.
Last month, the clashes turned bloody, with the ruling
party youths torching cars the artisanal miners were using as transport.
At the height of the clashes, Zanu PF Mashonaland Central
provincial youth chairperson Lens Ruwizhi Farando indicated that the party
youths wanted to drive out the artisanal miners because they were causing
unrest in the province.
The MaShurugwi, however, hit back, claiming Ruwizhi was
simply angry because the artisanal miners refused to give him money he was
demanding.
Another villager added: “Some of the villagers told the
taskforce that the MaShurugwi openly bragged that they have protection from
Ncube and would be released even if they are arrested.”
Ncube was not picking calls yesterday, but Information
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 pernicious social practice of excessive use of
authoritative names for both criminal and patronage purposes.
“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,”
Mangwana said.
“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.”
According to some sources, during the meeting, Kazembe is
said to have called for the closure of the mine, claiming it was now a headache
for the district.
This was after Police Officer Commanding Mashonaland
Central Rangarirai Mushaurwa allegedly accused the Mines ministry of failing to
run the mine and requiring about half of the police force in the district to
control the chaos around it.
Mashaurwa suggested that people should be put in groups of
100 and then take 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.
Asked for comment, Kazembe said: “We can’t call for the
closure of a mine that is already closed. The mine was closed a long time ago.
We called for the normalisation of operations at the mine as people are
suffering.
“The ex-employees are now destitute, and the mine is lying
idle with no capitalisation for years. The country is losing and the people are
losing while such an asset is lying idle.
We are saying, the mine must be brought back to its old
days even if it means bringing in new investors, if the current owner has
failed. Anyway, that issue is being handled by the Mines minister (Chitando).”
He said if sanity was restored at the mine, the youths
would benefit more. Newsday
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