By Abert Mpofu
In a town called Shurugwi in Zimbabwe, there is a lot of fighting happening between miners. This fighting is called the “machete wars.” It all started because the government gave mining rights to Chinese companies. This made the local miners, who are called artisanal miners or Makorokoza, very angry because they didn’t have much space to mine anymore.
A reporter named Stanley Gama talked about the fighting. He said that there have been bloody and deadly fights in Shurugwi at a place called Wanderer Mine. Some officials from a political party called ZANU PF took away gold mining areas and gave them to Chinese miners. This made the artisanal miners very angry because they couldn’t find enough space to mine gold. Before, the ZANU PF-backed gangs controlled most of the mining areas, but now they are fighting each other because the Chinese miners took over. The situation is so dangerous that the police need to help right away.
There are thousands of artisanal miners in Shurugwi, and now they don’t have jobs because there is not enough space for all of them. This means they will start fighting with each other. Some reports say that the Chinese miners came to Zimbabwe because a son of an important ZANU PF government official brought them here.
This problem is not just in Shurugwi but also in other parts of Zimbabwe. The Chinese miners are getting mining rights before the local miners. People say that the Chinese miners give money or gold to government officials so they can get the mining rights. But they don’t register the gold they mine or pay taxes to the government. Zimbabwe loses more than US$100 million because of this smuggling.
