Antelope Mine

Antelope Mine is a village in the Kezi district of the province of Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. It is located about 114 km south of Bulawayo and 14 km south of Kezi.[1] The village was established in an area once rich in wildlife and was named after a gold mine which started operating in 1913 but closed in 1919.[2] The mine was established on the site of ancient African workings which were first discovered by Europeans in the 1890s and the first claims were pegged in 1894.[1]

Antelope Mine
Village
Antelope Mine
Coordinates: 20°03′S 28°26′E
CountryZimbabwe
ProvinceMatabeleland South
Founded1913
Elevation
970 m (3,180 ft)
Time zoneUTC+2 (CAT)
ClimateBSh

The modern village is a commercial centre for the surrounding area and the Semukwa communal land. Together with the village of Maphisa, it draws on the nearby Gulamela Dam to irrigate a large communal agricultural scheme. Many mission schools have been established in the area, and the Salvation Army operates both a mission school and a hospital in the village.[1]

Antelope Mine is, like a number of other mining areas in Zimbabwe, a centre of settlement for members of the Chewa people. They migrated to the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s from Northern Rhodesia (the present-day Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Zambia) to work as migrant labourers in the mineral extraction and agricultural industries.[3]

During the Zimbabwean government's Gukurahundi campaign against the Ndebele population of southern Zimbabwe in the 1980s, the disused mine workings at Antelope Mine were the site of a concentration camp run by the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwean Army. Many prisoners were reported to have been killed and their bodies thrown down the mineshaft.[4] On two instances in 1996 and 1999, skeletal remains believed to be of executed ZAPU prisoners were discovered in the abandoned mineshaft.[5]

References
  1. Encyclopedia Zimbabwe (2nd ed.). Worcester: Arlington Business Corporation. 1989. ISBN 0-9514505-0-6.
  2. Historical Dictionary of Zimbabwe. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2001. ISBN 0-8108-3471-5.
  3. Ndhlovu, Finex (2009). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. pp. 67–8. ISBN 978-3-03911-942-4.
  4. Simpson, John (7 May 2008). "Tracking down a massacre". BBC News. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
  5. "Mass grave discovered in Matabeleland". Independent Online. 28 September 1999. Retrieved 3 November 2016.
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