Antelope Mine
The modern town is a commercial centre for the surrounding area and the Semukwa communal land. Together with the villages 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.
Antelope Mine is, like several 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 Malawi) to work as migrant labourers in the mineral extraction and agricultural industries.
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. On two instances, in 1996 and 1999, skeletal remains believed to be of executed ZAPU prisoners were discovered in the abandoned mineshaft.
References
- ^ "Maphisa-gets-town-board-status".
- ^ Encyclopedia Zimbabwe (2nd ed.). Worcester: Arlington Business Corporation. 1989. ISBN 0-9514505-0-6.
- ^ Historical Dictionary of Zimbabwe. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2001. ISBN 0-8108-3471-5.
- ^ Ndhlovu, Finex (2009). The Politics of Language and Nation Building in Zimbabwe. Peter Lang. pp. 67–8. ISBN 978-3-03911-942-4.
- ^ Simpson, John (7 May 2008). "Tracking down a massacre". BBC News. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
- ^ "Mass grave discovered in Matabeleland". Independent Online. 28 September 1999. Retrieved 3 November 2016.