Kwekwe

Kwekwe (Que Que until 1982) is the gold and steel town halfway along the A5 between Harare (Salisbury) and Bulawayo. It grew around the Globe and Phoenix mine, the second biggest gold producer in the country, and the mine's prefabricated 1894 Paper House is now the National Mining Museum. Most people only stop for fuel. Knowing that the town sits on top of a century of tunnels, that the steelworks at Redcliff had run down by 2008, and that the villages west of here lived through Gukurahundi, makes the place read very differently from the road.

1. Before 1894

   Miners were working the Globe and Phoenix reefs long before any European arrived. On the Phoenix reef their workings went down 38 m, and they are reckoned to have taken out more than 50,000 ounces (about 1.4 tonnes) of gold. source

2. 1894 to 1896

   A Shona guide, paid with two blankets, showed the old workings to two prospectors, Edward Thornton Pearson and Joseph Schukala, who each registered a claim in Bulawayo in May 1894: Pearson's Phoenix reefs and Schukala's Globe reefs. Lionel Phillips's syndicate bought both that September, which is how the mine got its double name, and the Globe and Phoenix company was incorporated on 18 October 1896 with a capital of 175,000 pounds. source

3. 1900 to 1905

   The forty-stamp mill crushed its first gold in August 1900, the railway from Salisbury (now Harare) reached the mine on 5 November 1901 and the line to Bulawayo opened to traffic on 1 December 1902. The settlement, first called Sebakwe after its river, was renamed Que Que on 20 August 1902. On 3 February 1905 the surface magazine, holding about seven tons of explosives, blew up and left a crater. source

4. 1942 to 1965

   In 1942 the colonial government set up the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Commission at Redcliff, the next town towards Gweru. The works ran at a loss, had 1.7 million pounds of debt written off in 1954, turned a profit after denationalisation in 1956 and became the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Company (Risco) in 1957. By 1965 it employed up to 2,900 people. source

5. 1982

   In 1982, on the second anniversary of independence, the new government began renaming the colonial towns. Que Que became Kwekwe, Gwelo became Gweru, Gatooma became Kadoma and Salisbury became Harare. source

6. 1983 to 1987

   Gukurahundi, a Shona word for the early rain that washes away the chaff, is the name given to the campaign the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade began in Matabeleland North on 3 January 1983 and carried into Matabeleland South and parts of the Midlands, the province Kwekwe belongs to. Estimates of civilians killed run from 8,000 to more than 20,000. It ended with the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987, which folded Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU into ZANU-PF. The report of the Chihambakwe Commission, set up in 1983 to look into the killings, has never been made public. source

7. 1990 to 2010

   Redcliff's works, renamed the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) in 1980, employed about 5,500 people in 1990 and kept perhaps 50,000 more in indirect work. By 2000 its blast furnaces no longer worked, and in early 2008 it made under 12,500 tonnes against a break-even of 25,000. In November 2010 the government invited bids for a 64 percent stake to deal with debts of 340 million US dollars, and Essar Africa now holds 54 percent. source

8. 2000 to 2017

   Emmerson Mnangagwa, born in Zvishavane (Shabani) and known in the Midlands as the Godfather, held Kwekwe East for ZANU-PF from 1985 and Kwekwe from 1990. In 2000 he lost the seat to Blessing Chebundo of the MDC by 64 to 35 percent, in a campaign in which Chebundo was doused in petrol and his house was set on fire, and he lost to Chebundo again in 2005. In 2002 he was given Pricabe farm near Sherwood, outside Kwekwe, under the land reform programme. After the army moved against Robert Mugabe in November 2017 and Mugabe resigned, he was sworn in as president on 24 November 2017. source

Languages

Kwekwe is a mining town, so it has always drawn people from all over. Shona, Ndebele, Chewa, Venda, Tonga and Nambya are all spoken in the city. The 2022 census counted 119,863 people within the city limits. source

Silobela and the west of the district

Silobela, 60 to 80 km west of town depending on which road you count, is Ndebele-speaking. Most families there were moved in the 1940s from Hogo, between Gweru and Bulawayo, to make room for white commercial farmers. The ground is so rich in gold that residents have found it exposed in their back yards, and Jena Mine there is the biggest gold producer in the Midlands, with thousands of illegal panners working around it. source

Chrome and steel

Kwekwe is a ferrochrome town. Zimasco, founded in 1926 to export chromite ore, began smelting in 1962, has Kwekwe as one of its operating centres alongside [Shurugwi](/zimbabwe/shurugwi/) and Mutorashanga, and can make 180,000 tonnes of high-carbon ferrochrome a year from chrome mined along the Great Dyke. It keeps about 750 people in direct work and another 3,000 indirectly, and its majority owner is China's state-owned Sinosteel. source

Sungura

Kwekwe's musical export is sungura. Tongai Moyo, known as Dhewa, was born here on 12 March 1968 and grew up here, led the Utakataka Express and had hits with Samanyemba and Muchina Muhombe. He died at St Anne's Hospital in Harare on 15 October 2011 and was buried at his rural home in Zhombe. source

Football

Lancashire Steel FC, nicknamed the Chimbi Chimbi Boys, was founded in 1992, played in the Premier Soccer League from 1994 to 2009 and beat CAPS United for the first Madison Trophy in 1999, after which more than 100,000 people were said to have joined the parade through town. It was relegated in 2008 and the franchise was sold to Mateta of Gokwe in 2009. source