YESTERDAY’S NewsDay edition carried a story of cheeky gold diggers in Kwekwe who are digging up Globe and Phoenix School premises and barrowing like rats under classrooms in search of the precious metal.
The school head Isaac Bvupajena says: “They have been threatening the school security guard and other employees at the school with death. As school authorities, we are worried about the illegal mining activities currently happening at the school. We have alerted the responsible authorities about the situation, but there is no action being taken.”
This is more than disturbing in this day and age to hear that we have a bunch of hoodlums recklessly going about doing as they please as if Zimbabwe is now a lawless nation.
Globe and Phoenix School and the entire Kwekwe central business district (CBD) is, in fact, built on top of tunnels dug decades ago by Globe and Phoenix Mine and the tunnels are very deep below to pause serious danger to the town’s infrastructure per se.
And so for years Globe and Phoenix Mine never acted in a way that would jeopardise the safety of people living above its tunnels. The miners, therefore, dug deep into the earth’s crust so as not to disturb the earth supporting the town’s buildings and infrastructure. And it comes as a major worry that we now have people who are willy-nilly barrowing shafts and tunnels close to the surface.
If these morons are not immediately reined in, the entire town is in grave danger of caving in. If the chaotic gold digging by these nincompoops goes on unchecked the entire ground under the town will soon be weakened by the disorderly tunneling which is obviously underway at the moment.
Kwekwe has an estimated population of plus or minus 100 000 people and if disaster strikes during the day, at least a quarter of the population can be caught up in the environs of the town’s CBD.
A stitch in time serves nine and it is critical that law enforcement agents in the town act now on these errant imbeciles before disaster strikes because from the look of things these halfwits will not stop digging for gold as long as the law turns a blind eye.
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It is such seemingly small and inconsequential happenings that scare away investors as well. Zimbabwe cannot be seen to be tolerating lawlessness of any kind. If these marauding gold diggers are allowed to fester, what will stop them from multiplying and invading other established and productive gold mines?
The country is currently blacklisted as a lawless nation simply because authorities have nurtured a reputation of tolerating lawlessness. And not acting on the Globe and Phoenix disaster in the making will not help the country shake off this lawlessness tag.
