Kadoma

Kadoma (Gatooma until 1982) is the gold and cotton town 141 km from Harare on the Bulawayo road, with 116,300 people at the 2022 census, in [Mashonaland West](/zimbabwe/mashonaland-west/). Portuguese traders had a trading post on the Suri Suri north of town in the 1660s, the Cam and Motor at Eiffel Flats was the biggest gold producer the country has had, and in the 1940s the town held Italian internees and the last of Rhodesia's Polish refugees. Two Garratt locomotives and a mine village are the things to stop for.

1. 1660 to 1680

   The Mutapa state let Portuguese traders set up feiras (trading posts) on its land. One of them, Maramuca, stood on a kopje beside the Suri Suri River north-east of today's Chakari, on the eastern edge of the Lower Mupfure gold belt. The trader Gonçalo João got the right to open it from the Mutapa Kamharapasu Mukombwe and traded there from about 1660, until two Sena traders who held a trade monopoly in the area sent arms and men to the local chiefs, and his undefended post was attacked and looted around 1680. In November 1693 the Rozvi under Changamire Dombo destroyed the bigger feira at Dambarare in a surprise attack. source

2. 1890s to 1925

   Gatooma began in the 1890s as a mining camp. The name comes from the kraal (homestead) of Chief Katuma, whose mountain and badge of office are still on the town's coat of arms. A village management board took over in 1907, the year Specks Hotel opened and Jameson High School started classes in the house of Amelia Fitt. Gatooma became a municipality in 1917, got a public electricity supply in 1922, and in 1925 the Grand Hotel opened with a sprung dance floor, the first in the country. source

3. 1941 to 1943

   In 1941 and 1942 Southern Rhodesia built three new internment camps, No. 3 near Gatooma and the others at Mvuma (Umvuma) and Masvingo (Fort Victoria), for roughly 5,000 Italian civilians brought down from Somaliland and Abyssinia. The camps were staffed largely with elderly and infirm guards and with friendly aliens, and the result was indiscipline, poor living conditions and dozens of escapes. A government commission in 1943 found these second-wave camps far worse than the first ones. source

4. 1946

   Polish refugees who had escaped the Soviet Union during the war were housed in camps at Rusape and Marondera (Marandellas); there were 1,437 of them in December 1944. When the war ended they were all moved to Gatooma, where a repatriation office was set up. From here 1,319 were sent back to Europe, some 500 went on to Tanganyika and about 120 stayed in Rhodesia. source

5. 1968

   The Cam and Motor Gold Mining Company had mined three ore bodies, the Motor, Cam and Petrol lodes, and over the mine's life it produced more than 150 tonnes of gold, which made it the largest gold producer in the country. In 1968, with gold fixed at US$35 an ounce and the workings down at 1,800 m, it was no longer viable and closed. source

6. 18 April 1982

   On 18 April 1982 the government gazetted new names for 32 places, and Gatooma became Kadoma. The town twinned with Stevenage in England in 1989. The 1969 census had counted 20,940 people, 1,879 of them white, and a 1975 estimate put the town at 33,000. source

7. 2014 to 2022

   RioZim reopened Cam and Motor in 2014 after a US$10 million capital call. It then had no production for about two years while a US$17 million BIOX plant was built to improve the processing of the ore; foreign currency shortages and Covid delayed it, and commissioning finished on 14 April 2022. source

8. November 2025

   RioZim was in trouble again, with Cam and Motor wages in arrears. The mine's workers' committee wrote to the labour ministry on 10 November 2025 to oppose a union application to put the company into corporate rescue, saying most employees wanted the company to recover by working, and workers said they had started getting half of their salary arrears for January to June. The company chairman, Caleb Dengu, said full production was expected before the end of the year. source

Language

The Shona are the majority people of Zimbabwe and their language is spoken by over 70 percent of the country, with Ndebele second at around a fifth. Both are among the 16 official languages in the 2013 constitution. source

Gold, copper and cotton

The old Kadoma District, split in 2007 into Sanyati and Mhondoro-Ngezi, is gold, copper and nickel ground, and the mine names say it: Cam and Motor, Venice, Dalny, Brompton, Pickstone, Etna, Patchway, Magisa, Savannah and Gatawa. The other crop is cotton, grown in the district, and David Whitehead opened its textile mill here in 1952. source

Rio Tinto FC and the pipe bands

Rio Tinto Football Club was a strong side, and John Phiri played for it before playing in Europe; the club's coach Peter Phiri died on 23 March 2023. In the 1970s the town held Highland games, with pipe bands coming from Salisbury and Bulawayo. source

The Baptists

The Baptist Convention of Zimbabwe traces itself to a 1950 mission by the Southern Baptists, an American church. In 1951 the missionary Clyde Dotson told the Southern Baptist Convention there were only four Baptist churches in the colony and they mainly served whites, and church work then started in Rimuka and Ngezi townships. A school opened at Sanyati in 1952, Sanyati Baptist Hospital in 1953, and the convention was founded in 1963 under Rev Abel Nziramasanga. Its 2023 census counted 500 churches and 300,100 members. source