Bindura

Bindura is the capital of Mashonaland Central, about 88 km north-east of Harare (Salisbury) in the Mazowe valley, and it has been a mining town from the first day: a gold reef in 1901, the railway in 1913, the country's only operating nickel mine from 1964 and a gold mine that still helps sponsor the agricultural show. Almost no overseas visitor stops, which is one reason to. San rock art, the pioneer memorials and Portuguese fort site at Mazowe and Umfurudzi Park all sit on the roads out of it.

1. 1600s to 1693

   Before any mine, the Mazowe valley lay inside the Mutapa state, the Shona kingdom of the north, and Portuguese traders ran fairs (feiras) in the region through the 16th and 17th centuries. Dambarare, for years probably the most important for the gold trade, had a fort on the Murowodzi (Marodzi) river, a tributary of the Mazowe, and a brick church; Matafuna, on the slopes of Tafuna Hill, was a trading post rather than a fair. In November 1693 the Rozvi army of Changamire Dombo, with the Mutapa Nyakaunembire as his ally, attacked Dambarare, killed its people before they could reach the fort and desecrated the church. After 1695 none of the northern fairs worked again except now and then. The fort site was later flooded by the Jumbo Mine dam. source

2. 1891 to 1896

   Prospectors camped where the Mazowe and Pote rivers meet in 1891, and the Glasgow Mashonaland Syndicate pegged the Star Reef on Lone Star Hill in 1893. When the Shona rose against the British South Africa Company in 1896 (the Mashona Rebellion, now called the First Chimurenga), the prospectors and traders at Deary's Store, north of Tafuna Hill near today's Shamva, were besieged for 23 days from 21 June to 13 July. A police post followed in 1898, and malaria and blackwater fever killed many of its troopers. source

3. 1901 to 1913

   In 1901 Walter Thurlow put up a thatched building with a hitching post at the Kimberley Reefs gold mine, the place that became Bindura, as a staging post on the Zeederberg coach run from Salisbury (Harare) to Abercorn (Shamva), where passengers could wash and eat while a fresh team of mules was inspanned. The coaches stopped in 1913 when the railway reached Shamva. Thurlow's post became the hotel, then single quarters for the Phoenix Prince mine, and was done up in 1968 as the Coach House Inn, for years the social hub of the town. source

4. 1964 to 2024

   The Trojan nickel mine began production in 1964 under the Anglo American group, which sold out in 2003. In September 2023 a seismic event damaged the ore hoisting gear and the mine stopped; the operator then said low nickel prices and the cost of inputs such as electricity would delay any restart, and on 2 May 2024 the government, which owns 70 percent of Bindura Nickel Corporation, put Zimbabwe's only operating nickel mine under administration. About 1,100 people worked there. source

5. December 1972 to 1980

   On 21 December 1972 ZANLA guerrillas attacked Altena Farm near the north-eastern village of Centenary, and Rhodesia answered with Operation Hurricane across northern Mashonaland, which ran until 1980. On 27 July 1974 the Protected Village programme began with Operation Overload in the Chiweshe Tribal Trust Land, moving 49,960 rural people into 21 villages in six weeks to keep them away from the guerrillas. The villages were dismantled in 1978. source

6. 1988 to 2011

   Cluff Resources opened two open pits, Freda for the oxide ore and Rebecca for the sulphides, and poured the first gold in 1988. Ashanti Goldfields bought the rights in 1996, went underground at Rebecca and worked out the Freda section the same year. The mine closed for refurbishment in March 2007, Mwana Africa restarted it in phases from 2009, with the first new gold (180 ounces) poured on 13 October 2009, and by September 2011 it was producing at 50,000 ounces a year. source

7. 2000 to 2001

   Border Gezi, governor of Mashonaland Central from 1996, won the Bindura seat for ZANU-PF in the 2000 election and became a minister for youth. He had recruited young party supporters into a militia that was implicated in violent attacks on opposition MDC supporters and in the invasions of white-owned farms. He died at 36 when his car came off the Harare-Masvingo road on 28 April 2001. source

8. 2008 to 2012

   When the nickel price fell in 2008 Bindura Nickel Corporation went on care and maintenance, many workers lost their jobs and the retrenched were paid a 50 US dollar monthly stipend. In 2012 China International Mining Group put 21 million dollars into the company and underground work at Trojan was to restart, but the smelter restart stalled in 2017 and was suspended in 2018, 83 percent complete, for want of money. source

Languages and people

Bindura is Shona-speaking, like all of Mashonaland, the north-eastern part of the country that is home to nearly half of Zimbabwe's people (about 7.4 million across Mashonaland Central, East and West and Harare at the 2022 census). Zezuru and Korekore are the most common dialects. The Pioneer Column occupied Mashonaland in 1890; Matabeleland, the Ndebele country in the south-west, was occupied in 1893. source

A mining town

Two companies shape the town. Bindura Nickel Corporation, listed on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange, had a workforce of about 1,200 in 2024 and runs its operations from Bindura. Freda Rebecca, a low-grade, high-volume gold mine on the Shamva/Harare greenstone belt, has worked both open pit and underground for 20 years. Both now belong to Kuvimba Mining House, the state mining group. When nickel is down, so is Bindura. source

University town

Bindura University of Science Education started as a college to train science teachers, taking in its first 125 students on 26 March 1996, with five Cuban lecturers, after the Zimbabwe-Cuba science teacher training programme of the 1980s was wound up. The Act making it a university was gazetted in February 2000. It began in a Public Service Training Centre and has spread across the town (Astra, Town and FSE campuses), with a new 159 hectare main campus at FSE about 2 km out towards Mount Darwin. source

Zimdancehall

Freeman HKD, one of the biggest names in Zimdancehall (the Zimbabwean take on Jamaican dancehall), was born Emegy Slyvester Chizanga in Bindura on 22 June 1988 and grew up and went to school in the town. Joina City was his breakout hit; Ngaibake took song of the year at the 2019 Zimdancehall Awards and the 2019 Star FM Music Awards. source

The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army's ox-wagon party from Kimberley reached Fort Salisbury on 18 November 1891 and in March 1892 took land in the Mazowe valley, the Pearson Settlement. Captain Edward Cass was killed on 16 June 1896. Mazowe Boys High School began in 1922 under Captain Leonard Kirby with 35 boarders, and in 1923 the Army moved its Howard Institute to Nyachuru in the Chiweshe reserve, 35 miles from the government hospital in Bindura where its cadets sat their exams. source