Zimpapers Logo

for sleepiness.
The relatively small human population here, a consequence of historical processes spanning over centuries, effects to the same and an observer might impetuously conclude that nothing good can ever come out of this place.
This disquiet is not helped by the view of the picturesque countryside.
The vast expanses of land, heavily populated with mopane trees along with lesser celebrated species and punctuated here and there by the majestic baobab tree, makes Mhondoro Ngezi to pass for a dry unproductive farming area.
Which generally is true, and locals testify that the weather does not do things in halves – having an idiosyncrasy to give rains and drought in similar, abundant but alternating measures.
Yet this is not the whole picture.
In fact, Mhondoro Ngezi is the platinum face of Zimbabwe, as its belly – over the scraggy overland – is home to the precious group of platinum minerals.
Zimbabwe, and in particular this area, hold a significant amount of this precious mineral relative to the whole wide world and Mhondoro Ngezi also has other minerals such as chrome and gold and bears scars to show for it.
Mhondoro-Ngezi is also home to the mining company Zimplats whose parent is the South African giant Impala Platinum to which the products of munching monsters on the ground and the Mulota mountain range are conveyed by equally monstrous hissing and puffing “abnormal load” trucks.
And if the area should be said to be the face of the platinum of Zimbabwe, it has but two distinct faces as well.
One is the less glorious one illustrated above where dust roads wretchedly crawl above the land and the other that of Zimplats is a world of mighty machines and production and destruction and plants and tarred roads.
While the former houses its own in generally humble dwellings made chiefly of mud and poles, the latter flaunts its apartness with colourful houses that form the newly formed mining town which in turn drew a US$2 million investment in a shopping complex.
This state of affairs is not one to amuse Mr Kidwell Machaka, the chief designate of Mhondoro Ngezi chieftainship.
The traditional and cultural leader, who has seen Zimplats come, see and conquer his ancestral lands including the shrines of departed chiefs, believes the mining giant should be held to scrutiny as it has done precious little to help his community.
The company started operating here at the turn of the millennium.
“If you see those tarred roads, the houses they built and even the cosmetic improvements to our schools, it is for their convenience rather than our benefit,” he told The Herald in an interview at his homestead in the area.
“Unless and until the company builds roads in the areas not directly involved in the extraction and exploitation of platinum, we cannot say the company is benefiting the community,” said Mr Machaka.
All the dust roads in the area do not directly serve the company. These include Turf to Battlefields, Bandawa-Kadoma and Ngezi National Park to St Michaels Hospital through Manyene and Mamina.
The man who was the chairman of the parents’ association that built Wanganui Secondary School in 1992, related that schools and clinics in the area had been built by the community and Government with the help of former Member of Parliament of the area, Webster Shamu.
“There is nothing new that they have initiated here and they even employ very few of our children because they say our children lack the skills. The recruitment exercise is one that excludes our own even in general labour.
“Yet they do not train locals to acquire the necessary skills for the next intake.”
Mr Machaka says that although there has been movement by way of incorporating locals in a system that allow surrounding chiefs to forward candidates, the results had been heartbreaking.
He said: “You find that when there are vacancies for 60 people and a chief recommends 30 of his people perhaps only three are taken from each chief and the rest of the vacancies are mysteriously filled up with candidates from outside.
“You will be embarrassed if local chiefs were to stand with their own who have been incorporated into this system; they are very few.”
This sentiment is echoed by a local school teacher and businessman one Mr Chitani who says he has seen very few of his students being absorbed by the mining firm.
But half a loaf is better than none for 28-year-old Tonderai Mufandareva of Village 6 who, having no qualifications to be absorbed or luck or both, has been recently contracted along with 160 others for a brick-moulding project by the mine.
The project was initially earmarked for women in the area, but they have been failing to meet production targets.
He says this contract will be slightly better than his own brick-moulding venture that he has been sustaining his family and himself.
On the other hand, the company says it can only employ a limited number of people.
In a press statement last April, Zimplats said that it “realised that while its operations had significantly expanded over the last 10 years, the company is only able to employ a limited number of people.”
Ominously, the mining giant has even trudged on the spiritual.
Mr Machaka, a spirit medium of his clan relates how the company had initially pledged to work with the underworld he represents only to renege on it.
“In 1999, the company sponsored rituals and we interceded to the ancestors on their behalf so that the company would not face the wrath of the ancestors in the Mulota Hills.
“They promised to work with us and pledged to build a homestead for us near the plant, buy a car and sponsor our rituals,” said Mr Machaka.
Present at the ceremonies were Shamu and senior management of the firm.
While none of the pledges have materialised, worse have come as the company has razed to the ground sacred spots like Chemakudo, an important ancestral shrine which was overseen by baboons, now part of what is known as Portal 3.
“The baboons were killed in the dynamite blasts,” said Mr Machaka regretfully.
He added that sewage and chemical waste from Zimplats facilities was flowing into the Mungezi River, home to the sacred mermaids revered in local culture.
“Now where I used to dig my roots are chemicals,” he mourned; turning to the deformed face of Mulota range, “and Mulota will never be the same again.”
He feared accidents could soon bedevil the operations of the company if the area’s inhabitants continued to feel isolated.
Mr Machaka is a more than a strong believer in Government’s programme of indigenisation and economic empowerment.
He says what he has seen with companies exploiting riches in his area, many of them foreign, including Zimplats, has hardened his belief that local people should have a say in the extraction and enjoyment of their God-given resources.
He said: “The Government says talks about 51 percent indigenous ownership but we believe in even more. These companies only bring their capital and machines but we have the minerals, the land on which they build their offices and the labour.
“So we have to have more than 51 percent. However, if it is in the wisdom of Government to let locals have that 51 percent we have to follow.”
Zimplats is 87 percent owned by South African company Impala Platinum Holdings Limited of South Africa and lists on the Australian stock Exchange.
Mr Machaka also envisions foreign companies being compelled to set up value addition and skills transfer facilities in the country to plug any siphoning of resources outside as under-priced raw materials.
While Mr Machaka might talk of grand, futuristic ideas, the general workers at the mine who have set base at an unhygienic, prostitute-infested mud-and-pole houses compound on the perimeters of Zimplats have bigger and immediate ghosts to deal with.
The sprawling compound, known as “Kumahuswa” because the houses are thatched with grass, which houses over 150 general workers who do not qualify to have company housing at the colourful Turf township will shame anyone who thought platinum mined here was such a precious mineral.
Residents of this eyesore are workers who come from outside the area and those whose areas in Mhondoro couldn’t allow them to make daily trips to and from home.
Worker after worker who spoke to The Herald when the paper visited the compound expressed dismay at the company’s alleged empty promises and uncaring attitude.
“When I came here about two years ago we were promised that we would be having new houses at Turf,” said one worker who cannot be named for professional reasons.
“Right now we are still here and have to make do with what is available. I come from Chegutu where my family is and I can’t commute from there everyday so I have to put up here.”
He related how he was now an owner of his own hut at this compound.
“At first (a colleague and me) we rented a hut here,” he said pointing to a hut nearby whose mud and pole structure with a cap of grass thatch threatened tilted to the side as if exhausted and about to fall to the ground.
“It was so small and we set out to build our own and we paid US$100 to the builder and US$42 for the poles and US$10 for plasterers.
“But these houses are so prone to the rains and at times you might have to stand in a corner all night to avoid the rain dripping onto you. And next morning you have to go to work,” he said.
He added that as there were no ablution facilities here – a health time bomb in itself – workers had to bath and relieve themselves at work.
He craved the company of his family which he had to see once in a while.
But he wouldn’t seek the comfort of prostitutes who are available in generous measure here.
“You have to know what you came here for,” he said.
“I do not consort with them because it only brings trouble.”
He was disheartened that the workers’ plight was no secret to his superiors.
“They even refer to this compound as “kumahuswa” and the company bus even waits on us at a point where we make our way from here,” he said.
The enterprising have been building the huts and renting them out to workers desperate to have a roof – even a leaking one – over their head.
Some workers put up at the compound of the disused Amble mine some five kilometers away where they pay between US$10 and $20 for wooden cabins and brick houses, respectively.
As enterprising are ladies of the world’s oldest profession, prostitutes, who have seen a window of opportunity in the sex-starved male kind who are as frustrated with their lot as they are so far from their loved ones.
One of this kind is Precious Muchererwa who said she comes from Chinhoyi to glean platinum dollars from Zimplats’ employees.
“They get money twice a month,” she said of her clients’ pockets, “a bonus and regular salaries.”
“Business is good here and we charge US$20 or US$15 per night,” said she.
Zimplats claims it has set aside US$2,5 million for housing and other community projects.
The company says it seeks to build 2 000 houses between this year and the next on top of the 920 that make the Turf Village.
Statistics show that the company employs a total of 2 200 workers 1 700 of whom are contract workers.
Some of the community projects that the company have done include face-lifting Nyangwene Primary School, which had been damaged by a hailstorm, and the supply of textbooks to five schools in the area.
Similar minor projects have been seen in the fields of health, water and sanitation.
[email protected]