Dimensions of Violence in Zimbabwe: Unpacking the Triggers and Effects of Machete Violence in Zimbabwe.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue V, May 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Dimensions of Violence in Zimbabwe: Unpacking the Triggers and Effects of Machete Violence in Zimbabwe.

Jonah Marawako
Lecturer, Department of Governance and Public Management, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe

Abstract: This article illustrates that machete gangs in Zimbabwe are foot soldiers of the political elites with the Second Republic ventilating their dramatic proliferation. The paper interrogates the concept of state capture and the concept of natural resource curse in an endeavour to demystify the nature and scope of machete violence in Zimbabwe. The paper also noted that machete gangs are more active in mining communities like Kwekwe, Mazowe, Bubi, Mashava, Kadoma and Patchway. Machete gangs are largely connected to powerful politicians who are members of the gold cartels. Factors that trigger machete violence in Zimbabwe include but are not limited to the rapid increase in artisanal mining, climate change and escalating unemployment. The adverse effect of machete gangs is the pauperisation of the general population. The paper also examined the impact of the proliferation of machete gangs on women in the mining sector. Machete violence has aggravated an illicit economy, fuelled unjustified socio-economic deprivation and led to environmental degradation. The paper also unearthed that machete violence underpins and perpetuates the political culture of fear and repression in Zimbabwe. The study recommends a cocktail of reforms that need to be initiated to end machete violence, this includes the need to regularise and formalise the mining sector as well as comprehensive security sector reforms. The study is mainly ethnographic in scope as most of the data was collected through interaction with some members of the machete gangs and victims of machete violence. Documentary search was also used to augment ethnographies. The researcher interviewed machete gangs located in the aforementioned mining communities in Zimbabwe, in an endeavour to generalise how machete gangs are impacting the social, economic and political fabric.

Keywords: violence, machete gangs, state capture, resource curse, illicit economy, foot soldier.

I. INTRODUCTION

Zimbabwe has been rocked by the phenomenon of the sprouting of machete gangs in the mining communities and this has negative ramifications on the country’s goal to attain a US$12 billion mining economy by 2023. The problem of machete gangs can be traced between 2006 and 2008 at the zenith of the Marange Diamond rush, which resulted in artisanal miners thronging the Marange area in search of diamonds (Maguwu et al., 2020). In the period between 2009 and 2017, the activities of machete gangs were low apparently due to a promising economic environment ushered in by the formation of the Government of National Unity in 2009. The ushering in of the New Dispensation in 2017 was followed by the resurgence of machete violence and this can be attributed to democratic backsliding typified by the erosion of the rule of law and entrenchment of the politics of state capture. Mkodzongi (2020) argues that machete gang violence

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