Zimbabwean ministers of Mines and Mining Development Minister, and State for Provincial Affairs for Midlands, in that order, Winston Chitando and Larry Mavima have slammed the shooting of two Zimbabwean employees by a Chinese employer in Gweru recently.
Speaking at Reden mine during a ministerial visit to establish circumstances that led to the mine manager, Zhang Xuelin (41) shooting two employees, Kenneth Tachiona (39) and Wendy Chikwaira (31) for demanding their salaries in US dollars, the ministers equated the incident to machete gang violence that rocked the small scale mining sub-sector last year.
The notorious machete-wielding gangs who were famously known as Mashurugwi and Al Shabab terrorised gold mine owners and residents residing close to gold mines across the country. Senator Mavima said:
It is regrettable that we have encountered this in our province and more to it the person in charge says he is busy to come and attend to us.
Such incidents are not different to those of machete wielding gangs and we will not tolerate such here.
Minister Chitando said they failed to establish what transpired leading to the shooting due to the absence of an interpreter as the Chinese nationals running the mine “cannot understand a word in English.”
More: NewZiana