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#1K Tosvika I have faith

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MADRID 1-ASERNAL5

Iwas 19 when I lost my vir.ginity. I was no different than any other teenager who was curious about se.x, but it was who I did it with that made me different. I lost my vir.ginity to a se.x worker. I had three best friends in high school. Together, we were like the “core four,” except not as handsome, rich or athletic. We did everything together and talked about anything and everything. As with most teenagers, s.ex was often the topic of conversation. Heading into senior year, we were all still riding the se.xual pine. It was like we were forever waiting on the bench, chanting, “Put me in coach, I'm ready to play!” We were all vir.gins is what I'm saying. As graduation approached, the four of us knew we could not leave high school still rocking v-neck sweaters. So, just like the movies, we made a pact. Being competitive, that pact quickly turned into a contest to see who could lose their vir.ginity first. As you can probably guess, I came in last, but I was resigned to my fate. My teenage counterparts were in no way, shape or form Casanovas, but they were miles ahead of me when it came to engagements with the opposite s.ex. So there I was, two years later, 19 and still a virgin. I just had to lose it. I was months away from my 20th birthday, and I made a pledge to myself. I would not let my teendom end as a v.irgin. Teenagers are supposed to have s.ex. The phrase “ho.rny as a teenager” was coined with good reason. My mind was made up. Having been a sports fan my entire life, I often heard great athletes speak of a mix of fear and excitement that builds up before the big game. On that day, I finally understood how they felt.With the exception of medical emergencies and singing the solo at my fifth grade spring concert, I have never been more nervous in my life. The drive there was excruciating. The hotel was not too far from my house,but it seemed like it took a lifetime to get there and another lifetime to find parking spot. Like a kid before the first day at school, my curious mind would wonder, “What's it going to be like?” “How's it gonna feel?” I couldn't believe that in a few moments, I was going to see a na.ked woman. I was going to touch a n.aked woman; I was going to have se.x with a... n.aked woman. At red lights, I would catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror,and like the father in "A Christmas Story," wonder, “what has brought youto this lowly state?” By doing this, I was giving up. I was basically confirming that I was a loser, relegated to the reality of being the guy who can't hack it so he has to pay for it. Despite all that shame and guilt, I kept driving. In the battle of ethics vs.hor.niness, hor.niness usually wins. "Community " taught us that. I finally arrived at the hotel and felt like the entire hotel lobby was watching me. I should have turned back, but I didn't. I proceeded to the room and knocked on the door. On the other side of that door was a beautiful, curvaceous, smiling woman. She sweetly invited me in. On the outside, I was cool calm and collected. On the inside, I was giddy as a school boy. I handed her the money immediately. In my mind, the faster I gave her the money, the faster I could forget that I had to pay for this soon-to-be wonderful experience. She sat me down on the bed and we talked for a little bit. In her infinite wisdom, she surmised it was my first time. Now that I think of it, it probably wasn't too hard to tell. She started to take off her clothes, and just like that, there she was. It's one thing to say what you would do when you're in a room alone with a na.ked woman, but when that situation finally comes up on you, it's a different story. She took my hand and started at her chest and went down past her belly button. As Usher put it put it, "She put my hands in places I've never seen, you know I mean." This may seem strange, but I the place I always wanted to touch the most was the v.ulva, which I mistakenly called a va.gina till I was about 16 years old (cue eye roll). It seemed so mysterious. I don't know what I thought it was going to feel like, but I when I felt it, it felt just like skin with hair on it… which in reality, that's what it is. It wasn't until she pulled my hand further down did I see and feel the real deal. I was ecstatic! If she would have said, “That's enough we're good for the day,” I would have been totally cool with it. I was actually touching a na ked woman! Ain't nothing better than that.But I paid good money, so tradition dictated that I would get to do more. She sweetly implored me to take off my clothes. At first, I was nervous because I've always been self-conscious about my body, but she assured me that everything was fine, bless her heart. My self-consciousness faded away. I saw it as taking my clothes off at the doctors; they've seen it all. To get me in the mood -- which I really didn't need help with at that point -- she went down on me. And I felt... nothing… literally nothing. I actually had to look down to confirm that I was actually getting a blowj.ob. I have been told since then that that happens to numerous guys the first time someone other than themselves touches their genitals. It may not have felt great, but it sounded great and it looked great. It was like a movie and I was the star. After a few minutes, she climbed on top of me and applied the condo.m. In anticipation of this moment, I got a co.ndom a few days prior and put it on -- you know, just to get a feel. It felt weird. When she put it on, it felt... weird. Once all the equipment was on, it was finally time for her to make a man out of me.So how did it feel? Not good. I couldn't believe it! The thing that was supposed to be the end all be all of pleasure and bliss was neither pleasurable or blissful. Sensing the distressed look on my face, she asked if everything was OK. Not wanting to sound like a freak, I said "yes" so she kept going. I guess at one point, she could really sense I wasn't feeling it and she asked if I would like her to stop. I said yes. She offered to finish me off with a handy J, which I obliged. That was tried-and-true, so I knew there would be no problems there. A few minutes later, I finished. I've rarely had a bad org.asm and this one was no different. She sweetly cleaned me up and we both got dressed. If it was ****y to see a woman take off her clothes, it was weirdly se.xy to see her put them on. Maybe even a little bit se.xier, but I'm a strange cat. She told me that I was so good and so sweet, especially for a first timer. I felt like a kid who struck out in little league and was getting the obligatory “good job” line from the coach.She was so sweet, so I didn't even take it personally. She told me to come back anytime and gave me the biggest hug and sent me on my way, back to the sun-piercing streets. Yeah… that's right; it was daytime. I couldn't solicit a pros.titute at night like a normal person... but it is what it is. I got in my car and the reality and enormity of the situation sunk in.I just had s.ex -- crappy s.ex, but s.ex nonetheless. I was no longer rocking my v-neck sweater. I wasn't a vir.gin anymore and it felt great. I was in a room alone with a pretty, nak.ed girl and we were doing things. I felt like a boss! I felt like a man. That entire night, I would play those moments back in my head. But occasionally, the shame of how I lost my virginity would creep up. Myconscious would say things like, “There is no honor in that hollow victory.” Yeah my conscious tends to be dramatic. I would learn to push those thoughts to the back of my mind. Though I never went back to that particular se. x worker, I would frequent s.ex workers over the next few years. I would receive more than s.ex with those women; I would receive kindness and affection. All of the things I wished and dreamed I would get from a woman I was getting from women I paid.I was not proud, but I was hooked.

Arsenal 11 Raya Timber Saliba Kiwior Skelly Partey Ordegaard Rice Saka Martinelli Merino

Madrid 11 Courtois Lucas V Asensio Rudiger Alaba Velvede Tchouameni Bellingham Rodrygo Vini Jr Mbappe

madrid inguvai??

******************** THE “TREKKIES” In the 1820s and 1830s, many Afrikaners became disgruntled with life under the British in the Cape Colony, and turned their eyes northwards in a move which later became known as the Great Trek. At the time, however, it was referred to as the Emigration, and the trekkers as Emigrants. Two small groups under Louis Trigardt and Janse van Rensburg were the first to leave the Cape late in 1835. There were only nine fighting men in Trigardt’s party, and ten in that of Janse van Rensburg. Each party was accompanied by wives and about thirty children. They were followed early in 1836 by two larger groups under Andries Potgieter and Sarel Cilliers. The latter included Liebenbergs, Krugers, Steyns, Robbertses and Bothas. In Potgieter’s trek there were forty armed men including boys of sixteen or so who could handle the heavy muzzle-loading muskets. With Cilliers were about twenty- five armed men and boys. Families generally travelled together in groups referred to as trekkies, the same name being applied also to individuals. As the Potgieter and Cilliers treks moved slowly northward, they were joined by other trekkers, among them people of other nationalities. Some gradually amalgamated into larger groups, but the patriarch of the Liebenbergs, old Barend Godlieb Liebenberg, was 2 a difficult man who kept himself and his immediate family aloof from the others. With their children, servants, domestic animals and dogs – and a Scottish meester called Macdonald who taught the children – they formed a self contained separate trekkie with five wagons. This was eventually to cost them dearly. After crossing the Orange River at separate points, the trekkies amalgamated into one group with 65 armed men including youngsters of 16 or so who could handle a firearm, under the command of Andries Potgieter, with Cilliers as his deputy. They were at last free : free that is of British control. With prayers of gratitude and much rejoicing, they moved slowly on, sometimes stopping for days when their ewes or cows gave birth. Eventually in May 1836 they reached the Sand River, south of the Vaal. Here in June Potgieter left them with stern instructions not to cross the Vaal into Matabele territory while he, Cilliers and ten others rode off to try to find the earlier Trigardt and Janse van Rensburg trekkers, and survey the land for future settlement. They were successful in tracing Louis Trigaardt's trek, but they and the van Rensburgs had parted company some time before. They investigated, and soon established that the van Rensburgs had already been attacked by a hostile tribe, and killed. With heavy hearts, Potgieter, Cilliers and their men returned to the south. During the absence of Potgieter and Cilliers, their own trekkers had gradually moved north and spread out along the south bank of the Vaal River. In August 1836, ignoring Potgieter’s warning, several groups consisting of Liebenbergs, Steyns, Bothas, Bronkhorsts, Krugers and others, crossed the Vaal into Matabele territory, where a hunting party under a veld kornet from the Eastern Cape, Stephanus Erasmus, had already set up camp. Unaccountably, none formed their wagons into into laager………… They were now in Mzilikazi's territory, without his permission. His impis continually patrolled his domain on the alert for entry by Zulus, Griquas or others, and they soon sent warning to Mzilikazi that incursions were taking place. His response was to send his most trusted General, Mkalipi, with instructions to destroy the intruders. Towards the end of August 1836 they came across these groups of trekkers who had ignored Potgieter’s warning and crossed the Vaal into Matabele territory. They also found Stephanus Erasmus’ hunting party. CONFLICT Stephanus Erasmus was a Field Cornet from a remote part of the Eastern Cape who, with his three sons and others, had been hunting elephant north of the Vaal without seeking permission from Mzilikazi. They were not very successful, and eventually returned to their base on the Vaal. On 24th August 1836 they were hunting for the pot in three separate groups. That evening he and one son returned to find their camp overrun by about 600 Matabele. Several of the other two groups had already been killed, Erasmus' other two sons among them. 3 He and his remaining son rode off to warn Barend Liebenberg, who would not believe him, saying that he was merely trying to get the Liebenbergs to return to the Cape Colony. Erasmus could not waste time arguing with the old man, and after repeating the warning rode on to alert the other trekkies. At his warning, thirty five of the Botha and Steyn parties, together with their servants and some other trekkers, immediately formed themselves into laager at a place known as Koppieskraal.. They had increasing fears for the safety of the Liebenbergs, and Rudolf “Dolf” Bronkhorst, a courageous 17 year old, volunteered to ride off through the night to warn them again, but was captured and killed. His father was away with Potgieter at the time, looking for the Trigardt and van Rensburgs treks. The Matabele attacked the Botha and Steyn laager next morning, but were driven off with heavy losses after a fierce battle lasting about six hours. As the Matabele withdrew, they took with them cattle which the defenders had not been able to bring into the laager. Among the children in the laager was a little boy called Paul. He was later to become President Kruger of the Transvaal. During that night, Barend Liebenberg had second thoughts about Erasmus’ warning, and was beginning to form his wagons into laager when another group of Matabele attacked at daybreak. There was slaughter on both sides, but the Liebenbergs had no chance. Within a short time twelve trekkers including old Barend the patriarch, four children and the unfortunate Scottish meester Macdonald, as well as twelve coloured servants, were killed. Hidden under a sail in a wagon, the Matabele found three children. These were surviving Liebenberg children – little Sara, Anna Maria and Christiaan. Their lives were spared as the Matabele needed them to show how to inspan and drive oxen, and also as trophies for Mzilikazi. Together with Liebenberg wagons and cattle, the three children and three coloured survivors of the attack to assist with the cattle, the raiders departed. On being presented with the children, Mzilikazi insisted that his warriors did not take children captive, and ordered their return to the Boers. By this time, in the words of an early writer, “the veld was on fire”, and return was not possible. Just a few days after these incidents, Potgieter, Cilliers and their group arrived back at the Vaal River. As they neared the site of the Liebenbergs' camp, a wagon was seen standing in the river. A man was despatched to investigate, and soon came hurrying back with appalling news : the Liebenbergs had been overrun and most slaughtered. Potgieter immediately ordered the surviving trekkers to return across the Vaal, and set up a laager. He also sent word to those who had not crossed the Vaal to do likewise. About half formed a laager on the Vet River, and the remainder including the survivors of those who had crossed the Vaal, did so at a place which came to be known as Vegkop, or Battle Hill. Here, with Potgieter in command, fifty wagons were chained together, all the gaps 4 between and under them being firmly packed with thorn bushes. In the centre was a smaller circle of wagons, heavily covered with sails as a protection against the expected flights of assegais. This provided cover for the elderly, wounded, and those unable to fight. Piles of bullets were cast, and the women, girls and boys instructed yet again in rapidly reloading voorlaaiers for the men and bigger boys to use when the attack came, as they knew it would. On 16th October the Matabele attacked the laager, but were beaten off with fire so fierce that in little more than an hour, over four hundred lay dead. They retreated, but took with them all the horses, cattle and sheep which had not been accommodated within the laager. Pretorius' brother and brother-in-law had been killed, and there were many injuries among the defenders, men, women and children. Very early in the morning, before any hint of the attack, nine year old Barend Liebenberg had taken a flock of sheep out to graze. It was only once the battle had started that the defenders realized he was missing, but there was nothing they could do and they feared the worst. Late that afternoon after the two burials had taken place and their families and that of young Barend were being consoled, a lookout saw a little figure advancing across the battlefield, whistling and swinging a sjambok. As they watched, they recognized young Barend ! He explained that when the battle started, he hid himself and emerged only later in the afternoon when he was sure it was all over. The Trekkers had won the battle, but were now without livestock for food and milk. They were also unable to move their wagons without trek oxen. Potgieter sent another brother south to Thaba Nchu to obtain help from the missionaries, and there they found Gerrit Maritz and a large new group of trekkers. Maritz immediately sent oxen under a strong guard, backed up by more cattle from the missionaries and a friendly chief, and the defenders of Vegkop were brought to safety at Thaba Nchu. Meanwhile, eight days after the battle of Vegkop, Captain Cornwallis Harris, a British officer on leave from his regiment in India, had arrived at Mzilikazi's main base at eGabeni. He was on an extended hunting trip, brought suitable gifts for Mzilikazi, and was well received. While staying at the royal kraal, he was served by an unhappy young Griqua girl, Truey David, who with her cousin Willem had been captured by Mzilikazi in a raid in 1834. She was now one of his many concubines, about 17 years old, and told Cornwallis Harris that the day he arrived at the kraal, Mzilikazi had sent Willem to a distant village with two young Dutch girls who had recently been captured, as he did not want Cornwallis Harris to know of them. She did not mention the boy, but clearly they were the Liebenberg children. This seems to be the only direct reference to the early fate of these children, though over the years other travellers reported the presence of white youths among the Matabele. 5 Years later the Revd. Robert Moffat succeeded in persuading his friend Mzilikazi to let him take Truey back to her family. After the battle of Vegkop, there were harsh options facing both the Matabele and the trekkers. For the Matabele, this was the destruction of the trekkers. For the trekkers – the destruction of Mzilikazi and Matabele power. It was clear that neither side could survive while the other existed. For the remainder of 1836, the Matabele spent their time licking their wounds and refurbishing their assegais and shields. The trekkers were concurrently engaged in organizing a mixed army of 107 Boers with 40 mounted and armed Griquas and Korannas, and 60 Barolongs to drive the anticipated captured cattle. Early in January 1837 this little force set out, and two weeks later at dawn attacked the Matabele town of Mosega. The unsuspecting Matabele were still asleep and were taken by surprise. A fierce battle ensued, and by midday the Matabele fled, leaving more than 400 dead. With over 6000 captured cattle, and wagons which had belonged to the Liebenbergs and Erasmus, the victorious Boer force departed, accompanied by three American missionaries who had established themselves at Mosega. The only casualties among the Boer force were, sadly, four Barolongs killed. New bands of trekkers were continually arriving at Thaba Nchu, and for much of the rest of 1837 they indulged in their favourite pastime : squabbling among themselves on matters of politics and religion. This caused postponement of action against the Matabele, but by November a mixed force of 360, mainly Boer, had been established. They were opposed by about 12 000 Matabele, and in a fierce nine day running battle in the Marico area, the Matabele were finally defeated with the loss of over 3000 warriors. Not one of the Boer forces was killed. The trekkers watched the defeated Matabele hordes fleeing from the surrounds of Marico. While this was cause for great celebration among the Boers, it spelt total disaster for the peaceful tribes who lived in the path of the Matabele and were killed or enslaved as they advanced. The options which had faced the trekkers and the Matabele after the battle at Vegkop had now been resolved – in favour of the trekkers. THE MARCH TO THE NORTH. Mzilikazi's initial reaction on being presented with the Liebenberg children in1836 was to insist on their immediate return. He obviously realized that their presence would be a magnet for Trekker attacks, but in the developing circumstances, return was clearly not possible and they remained with their captors. They were never to see their family again 6 Tribal custom decreed that Mzilikazi, as king, adopt orphans where there was no family to protect and care for them, and in due course this took place. He gave the children his mother's isibongo Ndiweni, and as their own names were difficult for the Matabele to pronounce, they became known by Ndebele names. Christiaan became Velapi : “Where do you come from ?”. The second child, Anna Maria, became known as Mswanyana : “Why are you always crying ?”. She had been inconsolable since her capture. And little Sara was called Toloyi. The explanation of this name is not clear, but there was a Tolani River in the vicinity. Perhaps there was some connection. As the Matabele departed from the scene of their major defeat, Sara gradually adopted the role of little mother, mai munini, to one of the royal children. He was a little boy called Jungu, about four years old, and a few years younger than Sara. He was eventually to become known as Lobengula – and the last King of the Matabele. Sara's tasks as the Matabele marched on were to look after his welfare and carry him when he became tired. This was the start of a long association, and it has been said that this formed the basis for Lobengula's understanding and tolerance of the whites who were later to enter his domain. Days after their departure from the Marico, when Mzilikazi judged they were at a safe distance from any threat of further attack, he called a halt in order to discuss their future. The large numbers of humans and stock slowed their onward movement, as did the presence of many children, the elderly and infirm - including wounded heroes of recent battles with the Boers. Water and grazing for the stock would become an increasing problem, as would the threat of attack by the tribes whose country lay ahead. Safety of the King's heir, young Kulumane, his brothers and sisters and their mothers had to be ensured. Mzilikazi's decision was that the Matabele would divide into two groups. The first under his personal command and with some of the cattle, would reconnoitre to the north west in search of a future home – perhaps even across the Zambezi. This group – which became known as Igapa – comprised the younger and more active regiments. The second and larger group was under command of Mzilikazi's uncle, Gundwane Ndiweni, and protected by his regiment the Amakanda Mnyama, the Black Brows, by which name it became known. It comprised the royal wives, Mzilikazi's heir Nkulumane, all the non-combatants, and also the bulk of the nation's cattle and other livestock. With them also went the Liebenberg children. They headed to the north east, to a flat-topped hill, which was said to have been described to Mzilikazi by Robert Moffat. The two groups undertook to keep in touch with each other, and a future rendezvous at the hill two seasons later was arranged. As the Matabele marched on, they gradually lost contact with each other. 7 Mzilikazi's Igapa struggled with malaria, tsetse, hostile tribes, and the loss of almost an entire regiment which he had sent ahead to cross the Zambezi to see what lay to the North. Its commanders had engaged Batonka tribesmen to ferry them across the river in two batches, the first being landed on a large island in midstream to which the remainder were to be taken next morning. All would then be conveyed to the north bank. However when day dawned there was no sign of the Batonka or their canoes, and they finally realised that they had been abandoned. Those who tried to swim to the shore either drowned or were taken by crocodiles, and the remainder gradually starved. Those on the South bank eventually reported back to Mzilikazi, and their Indunas were promptly executed for cowardice. THE PROMISED LAND Gundwane's Amakanda had a comparatively easy journey, and in 1838 crossed the Limpopo River, east of the present Beit Bridge. Here they settled for a while, and planted crops. After the harvest they recommenced their march, and on the way little Mswanyana, who does not seem to have been very robust, died of dysentery. They finally found the flat-topped hill they had been told to seek, surrounded by plains of good soil, sweet grass, and flowing streams where they settled after dispersing the existing tribes. They planted crops, and waited for the arrival of their King on whom so much, including the Inxwala (first fruits) ceremony, depended. Here, two seasons after their parting with Mzilikazi and his band, word was received from wandering tribesmen that the king had been defeated and killed in a great battle. This resulted in great tensions and dissensions among the Matabele, and two factions formed. One declared that no people could live without a leader, and put pressure on Gundwane to appoint Nkulumane king. The other insisted that Mzilikazi must be still alive, and sent out parties to search for him. Mzilikazi and his depleted army were found only ten days march away. On being informed that plans were afoot to declare Nkulumane king, he was furious and hastened to confront Gundwane. He and other Indunas were found guilty of treason, and executed on the flat-topped hill later to be known as Ntabazinduna. Mzilikazi then ordered that his three sons in direct succession also be killed. These were Nkulumane, Ubuhlelo and Jungu. There are conflicting reports of the fate of Nkulumane. Some insist that he was killed, others that he was spirited away to Zululand. Little is known of Ubuhlelo, but it seems that he was killed. This left young Jungu, now about six years old, who could not be found. His mai munini Sara Liebenberg, having been forewarned of what would be his fate, had hurried him and 8 his sister Nini away to the Matopos where they were concealed by survivors of the Makalanga. Mzilikazi's return resulted in enormous tribal upheavals, but eventually life returned to what passed for normal. During this period, secret contact was maintained between some of the tribal elders and Sara, and when it was judged safe to do so, Jungu was brought home and reunited with his father. Mzilikazi was overjoyed to discover that the youngster was still alive, and he was welcomed back as part of the Royal family. The close bond which had formed between Jungu and Sara continued, and in due course she was married to an Induna. She had no children, and eventually died of snakebite. And what of Christiaan, or Velapi as he was known ? He grew up as a Matabele youth, and became known as a good soldier. He was also known to be difficult and continually fighting with his fellows. His martial ability was noticed by Mzilikazi, and he was later made Induna of a regiment. Individual regiments carried shields made of cattle hide in distinctive colour and pattern, and Mzilikazi instructed Velapi as to the colour his shields were to be. After the next Inxwala he was called to present his regiment to the King. As they arrived, Mzilikazi turned to Velapi and said coldly : “Those shields are not of the colour I instructed”. Velapi insisted they were exactly as Mzilikazi ordered. Mzilikazi repeated his words and Velapi again said they were exactly as ordered. At a signal from the King, executioners sprang forward and Velapi was clubbed to death. He had committed the unpardonable crime of disagreeing with his king. It is impossible that Mzilikazi would not have been informed by his advisers if the shields were not being made exactly as he ordered. Did he stage the incident in order to get rid of Velapi who was getting too ambitious ? As with much else, we will never know......... But his sister Sara Liebenberg was the first white woman recorded to live in what was to become Rhodesia.

few years ago, a mining company was considering reopening an old mine shaft in Welkom, a city in South Africa’s interior. Welkom was once the center of the world’s richest goldfields. There were close to fifty shafts in an area roughly the size of Brooklyn, but most of these mines had been shut down in the past three decades. Large deposits of gold remained, though the ore was of poor grade and situated at great depths, making it prohibitively expensive to mine on an industrial scale. The shafts in Welkom were among the deepest that had ever been sunk, plunging vertically for a mile or more and opening, at different levels, onto cavernous horizontal passages that narrowed toward the gold reefs: a labyrinthine network of tunnels far beneath the city. Most of the surface infrastructure for this particular mine had been dismantled several years prior, but there was still a hole in the ground—a concrete cylinder roughly seven thousand feet deep. To assess the mine’s condition, a team of spe****ts lowered a camera down the shaft with a winding machine designed for rescue missions. The footage shows a darkened tunnel, some thirty feet in diameter, with an internal frame of large steel girders. The camera descends at five feet per second. At around eight hundred feet, moving figures appear in the distance, travelling downward at almost the same speed. It is two men sliding down the girders. They have neither helmets nor ropes, and their forearms are protected by sawed-off gum boots. The camera continues its descent, leaving the men in darkness. Twisted around the horizontal beams below them—at sixteen hundred feet, at twenty-six hundred feet—are corpses: the remains of men who have fallen, or perhaps been thrown, to their deaths. The bottom third of the shaft is badly damaged, preventing the camera from going farther. If there are other bodies, they may never be found. s Welkom’s mining industry collapsed, in the nineteen- nineties, a dystopian criminal economy emerged in its place, with thousands of men entering the abandoned tunnels and using rudimentary tools to dig for the leftover ore. With few overhead costs or safety standards, these outlaw miners, in some cases, could strike it rich. Many others remained in poverty, or died underground. The miners became known as zama-zamas , a Zulu term that loosely translates to “take a chance.” Most were immigrants from neighboring countries—Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho— that once sent millions of mine workers to South Africa, and whose economies were heavily dependent on mining wages. “You started seeing these new men in the townships,” Pitso Tsibolane, a man who grew up in Welkom, explained to me. “They’re not dressed like locals, don’t talk like locals—they’re just there. And then they vanish, and you know they’re back underground.” Owing to the difficulty of entering the mines, zama-zamas often stayed underground for months, their existence illuminated by headlamps. Down below, temperatures can exceed a hundred degrees, with suffocating humidity. Rockfalls are common, and rescuers have encountered bodies crushed by boulders the size of cars. “I think they all go through hell,” a doctor in Welkom, who has treated dozens of zama-zamas , told me. The men he saw had turned gray for lack of sunlight, their bodies were emaciated, and most of them had tuberculosis from inhaling dust in the unventilated tunnels. They were blinded for hours upon returning to the surface. I recently met a zama-zama named Simon who once lived underground for two years. Born in a rural area of Zimbabwe, he arrived in Welkom in 2010. He started digging for gold at the surface, which was dusted with ore from the industry’s heyday. There was gold beside the railway tracks that had once transported rock from the mines, gold among the foundations of torn-down processing plants, gold in the beds of ephemeral streams. But Simon was earning only around thirty-five dollars a day. He aspired to build a house and open a business. To get more gold, he would need to go underground. In no other country in the world does illegal mining take place inside such colossal industrial shafts. In the past twenty years, zama-zamas have spread across South Africa’s gold- mining areas, becoming a national crisis. Analysts have estimated that illegal mining accounts for around a tenth of South Africa’s annual gold production, though mining companies, wary of alarming investors, tend to downplay the extent of the criminal trade. The operations underground are controlled by powerful syndicates, which then launder the gold into legal supply chains. The properties that have made gold useful as a store of value—notably the ease with which it can be melted down into new forms—also make it difficult to trace. A wedding band, a cell-phone circuit board, and an investment coin may all contain gold that was mined by zama-zamas . Welkom, once an economic engine of the apartheid state, emerged as an early—and especially dire—hot spot for illegal mining. Since 2007, officials in the Free State province, where Welkom is situated, have recovered the bodies of more than seven hundred zama-zamas —but not all deaths are reported to the authorities, and many bodies remain belowground. “We call it the zama graveyard,” a forensic officer said in a 2017 news interview, following an underground explosion that killed more than forty people. In decommissioned mines, the ventilation systems no longer function, and harmful gases accumulate. At certain concentrations of methane, a mine becomes a bomb that can be detonated by the merest spark; even rocks knocking against each other can set off a blast. In Johannesburg, about a hundred and fifty miles northeast of Welkom, there are fears that illegal miners may cause gas pipelines to explode, including those beneath Africa’s largest soccer stadium. But perhaps the biggest dangers stem from the syndicates that have seized control of the illicit gold economy. Organized crime is rampant in South Africa—“an existential threat,” according to a recent analysis from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime—and gold-mining gangs are especially notorious. Armed militias war over turf, both at the surface and underground, carrying out raids and executions. Officials have discovered groups of corpses that have been bludgeoned with hammers or had their throats slit. In Welkom, getting underground became impossible without paying protection fees to the criminal groups in charge. By 2015, just nine shafts were still operating, in spots where there was ore of sufficient grade to justify the expense of hauling it out. Some syndicates took advantage of these shafts, bribing employees to let the zama-zamas ride “the cage”—the transport elevator—and then walk to areas where mining had ceased. There were also dozens of abandoned shafts, including separate ventilation channels and ducts for subsurface cables. “Companies have difficulty plugging all the holes,” a 2009 report on illegal mining noted. Each of these provided openings for zama-zamas . The miners climbed down ladders made of sticks and conveyor-belt rubber, which deteriorated over time and sometimes snapped. Or they were lowered into the darkness by teams of men, or behind vehicles that reversed slowly for a mile or farther, the ropes feeding over makeshift pulleys above the shaft. Sometimes the ropes would break, or a patrol would arrive, causing the men at the surface to let go. There were stories of syndicates deceiving miners, promising them a ride in the cage, only to force them to climb down the girders. Men who refused were thrown over the edge, with some victims taking around twenty seconds to hit the bottom. In 2015, Simon entered the mines by paying a thousand dollars to a local syndicate boss, known as David One Eye, who allowed him to walk into the tunnels via an inclined shaft just south of Welkom. One Eye, a former zama-zama himself, had risen from obscurity to become one of the most fearsome figures in the region. He was powerfully built from lifting weights, and he had lost his left eye in a shooting. The syndicate would charge Simon more than twice as much to exit the mines. He remained underground for almost a year, subsisting on food provided by One Eye’s runners. He came away with too little money, so he went into the mines again, paying the same syndicate to lower him with a rope. He became accustomed to life underground: the heat, the dust, the darkness. He planned to remain there until he was no longer poor, but in the end he came out because he was starving. ama-zamas are a nightmarish late chapter in an industry that, more than any other, has shaped South Africa’s history. Surface-level gold deposits were discovered in the area that became Johannesburg, sparking a gold rush in 1886. Twelve years later, the new South African mines were providing a quarter of the world’s gold. (To date, the country has produced more than forty per cent of all the gold ever mined.) The reefs that outcropped in Johannesburg extend deep underground, making up part of the Witwatersrand basin, a geological formation that stretches in an arc two hundred and fifty miles long. Extracting this gold required tremendous inputs of labor and capital. The Chamber of Mines once likened the basin to “a fat 1,200-page dictionary lying at an angle. The gold bearing reef would be thinner than a single page, and the amount of gold contained therein would hardly cover a couple of commas.” Complicating matters further, this page had been “twisted and torn” by geological forces, leaving fragments “thrust between other leaves of the book.” In the nineteen-thirties, mining companies began prospecting in a different province—a sp****ly populated area that would later be called the Free State. After the Second World War, one borehole produced a sample “so astonishing that financial editors refused to believe the press release,” the historian Jade Davenport wrote, in “Digging Deep: A History of Mining in South Africa.” The yield was more than five hundred times richer than a usual profitable return, propelling the international gold-shares market “into complete dementia.” Land values in the nearest village increased more than two-hundredfold within a week. But these new goldfields needed to be developed from scratch. There was no electricity or potable water. Vast maize fields spread across the grasslands. In 1947, a mining house called the Anglo American Corporation received permission to establish a new town, to be called Welkom—“welcome” in Afrikaans. The company’s founder, Ernest Oppenheimer, who was the richest man in South Africa, tasked a British planner named William Backhouse with designing the settlement. Inspired by housing developments in England, Backhouse envisaged a garden city with satellite towns and ample greenbelts. There would be wide boulevards and circles to direct the flow of traffic. At the outset, Oppenheimer’s son wrote, the region was “depressing in the extreme”: flat and featureless, choked by frequent dust storms, with a single acacia tree, which was later designated a local monument. Eventually, the city was planted with more than a million trees. Across South Africa, white mine workers were perpetually in demand, owing to laws that limited Black people to menial and labor-intensive jobs. To attract white workers and skilled technicians away from the Witwatersrand, the Anglo American Corporation built subsidized houses in Welkom, along with lavish recreational facilities such as cricket fields and a horse-riding club. By 1950, Welkom was growing at an average rate of two families per day. “Welkom is going to be the showplace of South Africa!” the national finance minister declared on an official visit. The economic logic of the mines also demanded an inexhaustible supply of cheap Black labor. Restricted from unionizing until the late nineteen-seventies, Black mine workers performed gruelling and dangerous tasks, such as wielding heavy drills in cramped spaces and shovelling rock; tens of thousands died in accidents, and many more contracted lung diseases. To prevent competition among companies, which would have driven up wages, the Chamber of Mines operated as a central recruiting agency for Black workers from across Southern Africa; between 1910 and 1960, according to one estimate, five million mine workers travelled between South Africa and Mozambique alone. Expanding the labor pool helped the mining industry depress Black wages, which remained almost static for more than five decades. By 1969, the pay gap between white and Black workers had reached twenty to one. In Welkom, a separate township was built for Black residents, set apart from the city by an industrial area and two mine dumps. One of the city planners’ main goals, according to a history of Welkom from the nineteen-sixties, was to “prevent the outskirts of the town being marred by Bantu squatters.” Named Thabong, or “Place of Joy,” the township lay in the path of the dust from the mines. Segregated mining towns, which dated back to the nineteenth century, laid a foundation for South Africa’s apartheid system, which was formally introduced the year after Welkom was founded. Every evening, a siren sounded at seven o’clock, announcing a curfew for Black people, who faced arrest if they stayed too late in the white part of town. ppenheimer had imagined Welkom as “a town of permanence and beauty.” The cornerstone of the civic center, an imposing set of buildings laid out in the shape of a horseshoe, was a twenty-four-inch slab of gold-bearing reef. The council chambers were furnished in walnut, with crystal chandeliers imported from Vienna. There was a banquet hall and one of South Africa’s finest theatres. In 1971, just three years after the complex was unveiled, a guidebook to South African architecture described the design as “perhaps too ambitious for a town which will, in all probability, have a limited life.” The crash came in 1989. The price of gold had fallen by nearly two-thirds from its peak, inflation was rising, and investors were wary of instability during South Africa’s transition to democracy. (Nelson Mandela was freed the following year.) The rise of powerful unions, in the final years of apartheid, meant that it was no longer possible for the industry to pay Black workers “slave wages,” as the former chairman of one large mining company told me. The Free State goldfields eventually laid off more than a hundred and fifty thousand mine workers, or eighty per cent of the workforce. The region was almost wholly reliant on mining, and Welkom’s economy was especially undiversified. The town’s sprawling urban design was also expensive to maintain, leading to a “death spiral,” Lochner Marais, a professor of developmental studies at the University of the Free State, told me. I first visited Welkom in late 2021. As I drove into the city, Google Maps announced that I had arrived, but around me it was dark. Then my headlights picked out a suburban home, followed by another. The entire neighborhood was without electricity. South Africa is in the midst of an energy crisis and experiences frequent scheduled power outages, but that was not the cause of this blackout. Rather, it was symptomatic of chronic local dysfunction, in a municipality ranked South Africa’s second worst in a 2021 report on financial sustainability. Welkom is surrounded by enormous flat-topped mine dumps that rise from the plains like mesas. The roads have been devoured by potholes. Several years ago, zama-zamas began breaking open wastewater pipes to process gold ore, which requires large volumes of water. They also attacked sewage plants, extracting gold from the sludge itself. Now untreated sewage flows in the streets. In addition, zama-zamas stripped copper cables from around town and within the mines. Cable theft became so rampant that Welkom experienced power failures several times per week. As the gold-mining companies scaled back in South Africa, they left behind wasted landscapes and extensive subterranean workings, including railway lines and locomotives, intact winders and cages, and thousands of miles of copper cable. Many companies had devised protocols for withdrawing from depleted mines, but these were seldom followed; likewise, government regulations around mine closures were weakly enforced. “It’s as if they just locked the door—‘Now we’re done,’ ” a mine security officer said of the companies. Shafts were often sold many times over, the constant changing of hands allowing companies to evade responsibility for rehabilitation. By the early two-thousands, according to authorities, South Africa had a large number of “derelict and ownerless” gold mines across the country, creating opportunities for illegal mining. Mining researchers in South Africa sometimes joke that the story of gold mining runs from AA to ZZ—from multinationals like Anglo American to zama-zamas . Authorities first became aware of the burgeoning illegal- mining industry in the nineties. A fire broke out in one of Welkom’s operational shafts, and a rescue team was called to extinguish it. The team discovered several dead bodies—the suspected victims of carbon-monoxide inhalation. The managers of the mine were not missing any workers, and the dead men were carrying no identification. They had been mining illegally in a disused area. “We weren’t aware something like this could happen,” a member of the rescue team recalled. A few years later, in 1999, police arrested twenty-eight zama-zamas in a nearby section of the tunnels. The men, laid-off mine workers, knew their way around like spelunkers in a cave network. An investigator involved in the arrest described them to me as “the forefathers of underground illegal mining in South Africa.” ven before there were zama-zamas , South Africa had a thriving black market for gold. In 1996, a security manager at one of the country’s biggest mining houses prepared a report about gold theft, which he described as “the least reported and talked about criminal activity in South Africa.” Back then, workers often pilfered gold from processing plants. One cleaner smuggled out gold-bearing material in a bucket of water; painters on the roof of a facility removed gold through the air vents. An employee was caught with gold inside his tobacco pipe; he didn’t smoke, but had been using this method to steal for twenty years. Others used slingshots to shoot gold over security fences or flushed gold, wrapped in ****s, down the toilet, which they retrieved from nearby sewage plants. One official was observed, several times, leaving a facility with potted plants from his office; a security officer sampled the soil, which was rich in gold concentrate. In Welkom, the main destination for stolen gold was in Thabong, at a dormitory known as G Hostel. During apartheid, hostels housed migrant workers as a way of preventing them from settling permanently in cities; these hostels have since become notorious for crime and violence. G Hostel had multiple entrances and was difficult to surveil. It functioned as an illicit smelting house, where teams of men would crush and wash the gold, then process it into ingots. Following the rise of zama-zamas , G Hostel developed into one of the largest gold-smuggling centers in the country. Eventually, around twenty-five hundred people were crammed into the compound, many of them undocumented immigrants. Police frequently conducted raids; in 1998, officers recovered more than ten metric tons of gold-bearing material. One dealer had been selling an average of a hundred ounces of gold per day. During a raid in the early two-thousands, police arrested a zama-zama from Mozambique who gave his name as David Khombi. He was wearing a white vest, tattered cutoff jeans, and flip-flops. Khombi lived at the compound, where he supplemented his income by cutting hair, mending shoes, andKhombi lived at the compound, where he supplemented his income by cutting hair, mending shoes, and tailoring Mozambican garments. Not long after the arrest, he was released and went underground, where he earned a small fortune, a former member of his inner circle told me. According to an expert on the illegal gold trade in the Free State, by 2008 Khombi had “started building his empire.” In South Africa, gold smuggling is loosely organized into a pyramid structure. At the bottom are the miners, who sell to local buyers, who sell to regional buyers, who sell to national buyers; at the top are international gold dealers. The margins at each level are typically low—unlike many other illicit products, the market price of gold is public—and turning a profit requires substantial investments of capital, Marcena Hunter, an analyst who studies illicit gold flows, told me. To move upward, Khombi focussed his attention on a different commodity: food. Sustaining thousands of zama-zamas underground is a complex and lucrative exercise in logistics. At first, many illegal miners in the Free State purchased food from legal mine workers, who sold their rations at inflated prices. But as the mines laid people off, and the number of zama-zamas grew, the syndicates began providing food directly. A new economy developed—one that could be even more profitable than gold. Men underground had little bargaining power, and markups on food usually ranged from five hundred to a thousand per cent. A loaf of bread that cost less than ten rand at the surface sold for a hundred rand down below. Fixed prices were set for peanuts, tinned fish, powdered milk, Morvite (a high-energy sorghum porridge originally developed for feeding mine workers), and biltong, a South African jerky. Zama-zamas could also purchase such items as cigarettes, marijuana, washing powder, toothpaste, batteries, and headlamps. They paid with the cash they made from selling gold; when they were flush, some miners celebrated with buckets of KFC, which were available underground for upward of a thousand rand. Around a decade ago, one KFC in Welkom was supplying so much food to gold syndicates that customers started avoiding it: orders took forever, items on the menu ran out, and meals were often undercooked. Police contacted the owner, who agreed to notify them whenever large orders came in. On one occasion, officers observed a truck picking up eighty buckets of chicken. Khombi began paying men to shop at wholesalers, package the goods in layers of cardboard and bubble wrap, and then drop the fortified parcels down the shafts. (They often used ventilation channels, the powerful updrafts slowing the rate at which the supplies fell.) As his earnings increased, Khombi began buying gold from zama-zamas , profiting doubly from their labor. He built a large house in Thabong, where he developed a reputation for sharing his wealth—“like a philanthropist,” one community activist told me. During his rise to prominence, he also made enemies. He was later shot in the face, but survived, and became known as David One Eye. ne afternoon, I met a former zama-zama whom I’ll refer to as Jonathan. He spent a year in the tunnels around 2013. “We were thousands underground,” he recalled. The men worked bare-chested because of the heat, and they slept on makeshift bunks. Khombi controlled the supply of food, and there were deliveries of beer and meat —“everything,” Jonathan said. For nearly three months, Jonathan was dependent on a group of more experienced miners, who guided him through the tunnels and shared their supplies. Finding and extracting gold required considerable expertise, and some zama-zamas were able to read the rock like mineralogists. But there were also other jobs underground, and Jonathan found work as a welder, producing small mills, known as pendukas , for crushing ore. The other miners paid him in gold. Access to the tunnels was controlled, increasingly, by armed gangs from Lesotho, to whom Khombi paid protection fees. Known as the Marashea, or “Russians,” these gangs traced their origins to mining compounds on the Witwatersrand, where Basotho laborers banded together in the nineteen- forties. (Their name was inspired by the Russian Army, whose members were “understood to have been fierce and successful fighters,” the historian Gary Kynoch wrote, in “We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999.”) The Marashea dressed in gum boots, balaclavas, and traditional woollen blankets, worn clasped beneath the chin. Following the rise of illegal mining, they muscled in on the shafts. They carried weapons—assault rifles, Uzis, shotguns—and fought viciously over abandoned mines. Accordion players affiliated with the gangs wrote songs taunting their enemies, like drill rappers with nineteenth-century instruments. Working with factions of the Marashea, Khombi seized control of large areas of the Free State goldfields. He structured his illicit business almost like a mine, with separate divisions for food, gold, and security. As his wealth grew, he and his wife acquired extravagant tastes. They built a second home in Thabong, so ornate that it drew comparisons to a compound built by Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s notoriously corrupt former President. On Instagram, Khombi posted photographs of himself wearing Italian suits and flexing his biceps in tight-fitting tees. (One caption: “Everyone talks about mother’s love but no one talks about a father’s sacrifice.”) He bought a fleet of cars, including a customized Range Rover worth an estimated quarter-million dollars, and opened a pair of night clubs in Thabong, rising above a sea of metal shacks. His wife, who was from an extremely poor family, began dressing in Gucci and Balenciaga, and often flew to Johannesburg for shopping trips. In the nineteen-fifties, according to Welkom records, there were white women who “made a point of flying regularly to Johannesburg for a day’s shopping.” Their husbands, who worked in the mines, were “absolutely fearless, accepting hazard and risk, with a terrific driving force to earn the maximum possible amount of money.” The structure of the company town guaranteed that, for its white residents, there was plenty of money in circulation. Khombi rose to the top of a new hierarchy, one that enriched a different set of bosses but was similarly based on Black labor. Today, a row of grand banks stands mostly shuttered, a putt- putt course has been taken over by drug dealers, and the public gardens are strewn with trash and stripped cables. This past November, a clock tower outside the civic center, considered one of Welkom’s landmarks, displayed a different incorrect time on each of its three faces, with a faded banner for an event in 2018. The commercial district has retreated into the Goldfields Mall, which was built in the nineteen- eighties; it has a giant statue of a rhinoceros out front. (In December, they gave the statue a Christmas hat.) I met a former police reservist there one morning. He asked to be identified as Charles. For around nine years, he was on Khombi’s payroll, selling him gold confiscated from rival dealers, protecting him, and escorting zama-zamas to the mines. Charles used the money to buy a new car and pay lobola, a bride-price customary in many Southern African cultures. Corruption is a corrosive force in South Africa. In Welkom, which has not received a clean financial audit since 2000, tens of millions of dollars in government funds have gone missing. Even in this context, Khombi’s influence was legendary. Charles estimated that seventy per cent of the local police force had been in the kingpin’s pocket; I took this to be an exaggeration, until a senior detective who works on illegal- mining cases corroborated the figure, laughing bitterly. But Khombi, like any capable mafia don, was also propping up core services of the city. He repaired dirt roads in Thabong and donated supplies to local schools. In 2015, the national electricity utility threatened to cut off power to Welkom and its surrounding towns unless the municipality began paying off an outstanding bill of around thirty million dollars. Rumors circulated that Khombi had made a cash payment to avert the power cuts. Corruption was just as pervasive in the operational mines. Smuggling in zama-zamas could cost as much as forty-five hundred dollars per person, according to the illegal-gold- mining expert. The process could require bribing up to seven employees at once, from security guards to cage operators; this meant that mine employees could earn many times their regular salaries through bribery. Some were caught with bread loaves strapped to their bellies and batteries hidden inside their lunchboxes, which they planned to sell to zama- zamas. They also served as couriers, ferrying gold and cash. Mine workers who couldn’t be paid off were targeted by the syndicates. In 2017, a Welkom mine manager known for his tough stance against zama-zamas was murdered. Two months later, a mine security officer was shot thirteen times on his way to work. The following year, an administrator was stabbed ten times at home while his wife and children were in another room, and the wife of a plant manager was kidnapped for a ransom of one bar of gold. Today, after a series of acquisitions and mergers, a single company, Harmony, owns the mines around Welkom. Harmony specializes in exploiting marginal deposits at so- called mature mines, which has allowed it to prosper during the twilight years of South Africa’s gold industry. According to a company presentation that I obtained, Harmony has spent roughly a hundred million dollars on security measures between 2012 and 2019, including outfitting its mines with biometric authentication systems. They have also demolished several dozen disused shafts. Company records show that more than sixteen thousand zama-zamas have been arrested since 2007; in addition, more than two thousand employees and contractors have been arrested under suspicion of taking bribes or facilitating illegal mining. But these arrests were mostly at the bottom of the illegal-mining hierarchy, and had little lasting impact. One day, I met a team of security officers who patrolled some of the mines beneath Welkom; several of them had worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, and told me that the mines were more dangerous. The officers recounted coming across explosives the size of soccer balls, stuffed with bolts and other shrapnel. In shoot-outs, bullets ricocheted off the mine walls. “It’s tunnel warfare,” a member of the team said. But in town, especially among poorer residents, there was a sense that this violence was peripheral to a trade that sustained a large number of people. Money from zama-zamas spilled over into the general economy, from food wholesalers to car dealerships. “The economy of Welkom is through zama- zamas,” Charles, the former police reservist, told me. “Now Welkom is poor because of one man.” A few years ago, Khombi began ordering brazen hits on his rivals, becoming the focal point of a wider clampdown on illegal mining. “He took it too far,” Charles said. “He ruined it for everyone.” he first known murder linked to Khombi was that of Eric Vilakazi, another syndicate leader who had been delivering food underground. In 2016, Vilakazi was shot dead in front of his home while holding his young child in his arms. (The child survived.) Afterward, Khombi visited Vilakazi’s family to share his condolences and to offer financial support for the funeral. “If he killed you, he’ll go see the wife the next day,” the former member of Khombi’s inner circle, who accompanied him on the visit, told me. An aspiring kingpin named Nico Rasethuntsha attempted to take over the area where Vilakazi had been operating, but a few months later he, too, was assassinated. In December, 2017, Thapelo Talla, an associate of Khombi’s who had tried to break away, was gunned down outside a party for Khombi’s wedding anniversary. The following month, a syndicate boss known as Majozi disappeared, along with a policeman who had worked with him; Majozi’s wife was found dead at their home, and his burned-out BMW was found near an abandoned hostel. (Informants said afterward that Majozi and the policeman were tossed down a shaft by Khombi’s henchmen.) Later, a gold smuggler named Charles Sithole was murdered after receiving death threats from Khombi, and a pastor in Thabong who had sold a house to Khombi, and was requesting the full payment, was shot and killed. The incident that led to Khombi’s undoing took place in 2017, at a cemetery outside Welkom. Like the towns around it, the cemetery was running to ruin—a metal sign over the entrance, along with some headstones, had been stolen. The graves had been racially segregated during apartheid, and headstones of white people remained clustered at one end. Khombi suspected one of his lieutenants of stealing money and gave orders for him to be shot in the cemetery. The body was discovered the next morning, lying beside an abandoned vehicle. One of Khombi’s men, who was at the cemetery that night, was also working as an informant for the police, and Khombi was eventually charged with murder. (The first investigating officer assigned to the case was found guilty of lying under oath to protect him.) Khombi was held at a local jail, where wardens delivered KFC to his cell. “They were treating him like a king,” the expert on the illegal gold trade told me. A man who was charged alongside Khombi was thought to have been poisoned—an effort, officials believe, to prevent him from testifying—and had to be brought to court in a wheelchair. The trial began in late 2019. Khombi, who had been released on bail, showed up in designer suits every day. He presented himself as a businessman with philanthropic interests, alleging that he was a victim of a conspiracy. The judge was unpersuaded. “The entire murder has the hallmark of a hit,” he declared, sentencing Khombi to life in prison. Khombi’s legal team is petitioning the courts to overturn this decision, but he also faces other charges: for the 2017 murder of Talla, and for identity fraud. (Police discovered two South African I.D.s in his home, with different names, both featuring his photograph.) I returned to Welkom to attend the trials for both cases. Last September, driving from Johannesburg along the arc of the Witwatersrand basin, I passed through a series of blighted mining towns, now home to armies of zama-zamas . It was the windy season, and clouds of dust blew from the mine dumps. The waste from South African gold mines is rich in uranium, and in the nineteen-forties the U.S. and British governments initiated a top-secret program to reprocess the material for the development of nuclear weapons. But a large number of dumps remain, with dangerously high levels of radioactivity. In Welkom, the dust blows into houses and schools. Some residential areas have radioactivity readings comparable to those of Chernobyl. The magistrate’s court is in the city center—a modernist building with arresting red metal finishes where thousands of zama-zamas have been prosecuted. In the halls, there are posters that read “STOP ILLEGAL MINING, ” with images of gold in its different forms, from ore concentrate to refined bars. Outside the courtroom, on the first day of Khombi’s trial for identity fraud, a garrulous man wearing a kufi hat with a red feather introduced himself to me as Khombi’s half brother, although I later found out that he was a more distant relative. Without my asking, he said of Khombi, “He worked with gold, I won’t deny it. But he wasn’t a killer.” The problem, he told me, was the gangs from Lesotho: “He had to work with them.” Khombi had become rich from the gold trade, and also arrogant, he added. “But the cops were in his circle. Who’s the real mafia here?” Inside, Khombi was in shackles, laughing with the wardens. He wore a black sweatshirt pulled tight over his muscles, and his voice boomed across the courtroom. He had already begun serving his murder sentence, and in prison he was organizing prayer meetings for the inmates. (Khombi is a member of an Apostolic church.) Before the trial could begin, his defense lawyer secured a postponement, and Khombi was escorted back to the cells. I was able to speak to Khombi two months later, at the trial for Talla’s murder. Our conversations took place as he was led in and out of the courtroom, with his wardens repeatedly shooing me away. When I introduced myself, Khombi greeted me like a politician and gave me a warm handshake, as if he had been expecting me. He denied being a gold dealer, but said that he knew many people involved in the trade. “From what I have observed,” he said, “it involves a lot of people— police, judges, magistrates, security. It’s too dangerous to talk about.” He also told me, smiling, that he had paid close to a million dollars for the municipal electricity bill, and made separate payments for water. “I’m not what all these people say about me,” he said. “I don’t sit and plot to kill people.” One day in Welkom, I got lunch with Khombi’s legal adviser, a smooth-talking former attorney named Fusi Macheka, who was disbarred in 2011. Macheka is a lay pastor, and he blessed our food when it arrived. He told me that he had known Khombi since around 2007, claiming to have successfully defended him in an illegal-gold-dealing case at the time. “Ultimately he became my man,” Macheka said. “He calls me brother.” While we were talking, a man with heavily scarred forearms arrived and sat down without greeting me. Macheka introduced him as Khombi’s lieutenant. “He’s a shock absorber for him,” Macheka explained. The lieutenant, who gave his name as Sekonyela, was wearing a yellow golf shirt that identified him as the chairman of the Stingy Men Association of Free State, which he was reluctant to elaborate on. He had known Khombi for close to three decades, working his way up from being Khombi’s gardener to being his right-hand man. Through the years, he said, Khombi had paid for his wedding, including lobola and a honeymoon to Cape Town, and had given him multiple cars and motorbikes. A few days later, Sekonyela arrived on one of those bikes, a Yamaha with a top speed of around a hundred and thirty miles per hour, to accompany Macheka and me on a tour of Khombi’s properties. We began at Khombi’s newest home, purchased from the pastor who was murdered. It featured the only residential swimming pool in Thabong, Sekonyela said. A former chief interpreter of the Welkom magistrate’s court happened to be passing by, and he informed me, misleadingly, that Khombi was “never ever in court for one murder.” He added that Khombi had donated soccer balls and kits for two youth teams he managed. “He was for the people,” the interpreter said. Many people in the township shared stories of Khombi’s generosity and lamented his absence. “He wanted people’s stomachs to be full,” one community leader said. I heard about Khombi paying for children to go to school and providing cattle to slaughter at funerals. Multiple officials I spoke with believe that Khombi remains active in the illicit gold trade, organizing deals from inside prison, but I got the sense that his power had waned. Weeds flourished outside his properties, and his night clubs were often closed. Khombi’s incarceration had left room for other syndicates to grow, but nobody had inherited his mantle as Thabong’s benefactor. Macheka wanted me to appreciate his client’s importance in the community, but he was evasive when I asked if Khombi had been involved in gold smuggling. “I can’t say that with certainty,” Macheka replied. “According to my instructions, he was a hard worker.” Macheka also mentioned that Khombi had given him two cars. “He knew about this secret of giving,” Macheka had said, a few days earlier. “In terms of my Biblical unde“He knew about this secret of giving,” Macheka had said, a few days earlier. “In terms of my Biblical understanding, you give one cent, you get a hundredfold. Maybe that was his secret.” hombi’s murder conviction coincided with a joint operation, by various police agencies and a private- security firm contracted by Harmony, to bring illegal mining in the Free State under control. The project is called Knock Out, and its logo is a clenched fist. To circumvent the corruption in Welkom, fifty police officers were brought in from the city of Bloemfontein, a hundred miles away. The operation has recorded more than five thousand arrests; among those taken into custody were seventy-seven mine employees, forty-eight security officers, and four members of the military. Investigators opened cases against more than a dozen police officers. Some cops, in the face of increased scrutiny, preëmptively quit the force. Central to the operation was cutting off food supplies for zama-zamas underground. Investigators raided locations where food was being packed. In parallel, some of the operational mines instituted food bans for employees, and Harmony closed off more entrances to the tunnels. At first, contractors capped old shafts with slabs of concrete, but zama-zamas dug underneath and broke these open, so the contractors began filling the shafts with rubble, sealing them completely. The company spent two years on one shaft, pumping in seemingly endless volumes of concrete; investigators later discovered that, inside the tunnels, zama- zamas had been removing the slurry before it could set. On another occasion, a syndicate sent three excavators to reopen a shaft. Security officers who intervened were shot at and almost run over by one of the machines. (The driver was later convicted of attempted murder.) To regain control of the site, officials sent in helicopters and erected a perimeter of sandbags—“like an army camp,” one member of the operation told me. Sealing vertical shafts restricts access from the surface, but it does not close the entire tunnel network, and thousands of zama-zamas remained below Welkom, their food supplies dwindling. Many still owed money to the syndicates that had put them underground. They didn’t want to exit. How else were they going to pay? Jonathan, the former zama-zama , estimated that hundreds had died of starvation, including several of his friends. “The saddest part of it, the most painful, is that you can’t bury them,” he said. Burials are of supreme importance in many Southern African cultures. In the past, when zama-zamas died underground, their bodies would typically be carried, shrouded in plastic, to the nearest functioning shaft and left for mine employees to discover. Affixed to the corpses were labels with a contact number and a name. The bodies were repatriated to neighboring countries or buried in the Free State. But now so many men were dying that it was impossible to collect them all. Simon, the zama-zama from Zimbabwe, told me that during 2017 and 2018 more than a hundred men died on just two levels of the mine he was living in. Using blankets as stretchers, he and some other zama-zamas had carried out at least eight bodies, one at a time; each journey had lasted around twelve hours. “The first time I see a dead body, I’m scared,” he recalled. As conditions worsened underground— at one point, Simon went fourteen days without food—he stopped caring, and would sit on the bodies to rest. peration Knock Out forced zama-zamas to go elsewhere in search of gold. Many left for Orkney, a mining town eighty miles north. One weekend in 2021, according to the South African Police Service, more than five hundred zama-zamas exited the tunnels in Orkney after their food and water supplies were cut off; days later, hundreds of men attempted to force their way back inside, culminating in a shoot-out with officials that left six dead. When I visited, a security officer took me to an abandoned shaft nearby that had been capped with concrete but blown open by zama- zamas. Ropes were strung over the mouth of the hole, which was more than a mile deep. The shaft was no longer ventilated, and gusts of hot vapor blew up from the tunnels. Marashean snipers were observing us from a mine dump; that night, more zama-zamas would lower themselves over the shaft’s edge. In Welkom, the drop in illegal mining dealt yet another blow to an already ravaged economy. “Most of our illegal miners are our businesspeople,” Rose Nkhasi, the president of the Free State Goldfields Chamber of Business at the time, told me. I met her in a boardroom with framed portraits of her predecessors, almost all of whom were white men. Nkhasi, who is Black, acknowledged the violence and corruption associated with gold smuggling, but she was frank about its role in sustaining Welkom. She singled out Khombi—“He’s huge in the township, like the biggest mafia”—for his economic impact. “He employs a lot of people,” she said. “You can feel his money.” Nkhasi owns a property with a car wash, a mechanical workshop, and a restaurant. In earlier years, she told me, zama-zamas would bring their cars in for repairs and order food, paying with two-hundred-rand bills—the largest denomination in South Africa—and declining change. Police vehicles cruised by to collect payments from Khombi’s henchmen. Nkhasi also has an independent town-planning practice, where syndicate leaders often brought her rezoning applications to build rental units. “They are the ones developing this town,” Nkhasi told me. Investigators believe that there are still around two hundred illegal miners underground, roaming the passages beneath Welkom; they are adamant that, eventually, many more will return. The problems are deeply embedded. South Africa, once the world’s largest gold producer by far, now ranks a distant tenth. The country is still home to some of the richest gold deposits in the world, and there are many companies that would be interested in digging for them. But there is an increasingly strained relationship between the state and the mining sector, with ever-shifting policies—including a requirement that a large number of shares go to historically disadvantaged South Africans—and the spectre of corruption acting as deterrents to investment. Margins on gold mines are thin, and increasing security costs, combined with gold losses to zama-zamas , can “eliminate most of the profits,” the former mining chairman told me. “Nobody wants to go into the casino.” The gold-mining industry has come to symbolize the dispossession and exploitation that have shaped South Africa, today the country with the highest income inequality in the world. One evening, before sunset, I drove out to an old shaft on the southern edge of Welkom. Sunk in the early nineteen-fifties, it once led to one of South Africa’s richest mines, producing thousands of tons of ore per day. The shaft was filled a few years ago, and all that remains is a low mound in the middle of a grassy field. Nearby, at a venue called Diggers Inn, where Khombi held his wedding, an end-of-year celebration was kicking off for the graduates of Welkom High School. A crowd had gathered to cheer for the teen-agers, many of whom had hired chauffeured cars. Not two thousand feet away, at the opposite end of the shaft, some men were at work with picks and shovels, scraping gold from the earth. “After the Gold Rush.”

If only those who are enjoying Independence from the whites regime were to go for celebrations at Nembudziya only one bus will be required. Because of poverty folks just want a free ride on buses and free food. That is the far they can be tourists in their country

Chii chinonzi rusununguko? lmhuka rudzii? Kungava kukwanisa kufamba muCBD here uchipinda maMeikles? Rusununguko rungava kunwa Doro raimborambidzwa neVachena here? Kuti kungava kusamanikidzwa kufamba nechitupa zvaiitwa kare here? Rusununguko rungava kutongwa nevadzvanyirirí veChitema here pane vadzvinyiriri veChichena?Kuti kuva nehurumende yemakororo inobira ruzhinji zvinosiririsa here? Tingaona rusununguko sekufira muzvipatara zvisina kana bandage chairo here? Kana kuwanda kwetsaona mumigwagwa avamakoronga chete? Rusununguko rungava kupa macivil servants $250 pamwedzi here? Kana kuti kuita State House muzinda mukuru wemakororo?Kana kudzungaira nenhamo, ngwavairä chaiyo? Rusununguko rungava kubira nyika zvinosiririsa nekuviga mabillions kunze?Rungava kugara nekutya kukuru, kutya hurumende yemakororo? Handitozivi neniwo kuti rusununguko chii, zvichida rusununguko runogona kuvapo irwo rwusipo.

Chasara ku suporter ZANU PF beacause pindula yavharwa no news

Pindu Pindu

Pindula zvaendwa

Ik soon

road to 1k comments ASAP

akatambasei mateam zuro

_for all your suspension parts_ -ball joints -tie rod ends -steering knuckles -stabilizer links -d bushes -shuckle bushes -control arm bushes -shock pads -shock absorbers -engine mountings -gearbox mountings -cvs -wheel cylinders -wheel drums -brake pads -brake shoes -brake master cylinders -clutch master cylinders -clutch plates -pressure plates -wheel bearings -brake calipers _0774857233_ _To all those who are out of Chitungwiza we supply via buses_

🛑 _*VOLKSWAGEN Chikwanha shopping center*_ _Spares for sale engine blocks. Cylinder head. Crankshafts. Camshafts. Throttle body. Coilpacks .radiators Injectors. Starter. Alternator. Oil pumps. front bumpers and many more *Visit Us @ SECOMOTORS* CHITUNGWIZA_

BREAKING NEWS – Mzansi Minute | 05:00 AM HEADLINE: SAPS Ghost Worker? Zimbabwean Man Busted Rocking the Blue Without Papers! SUMMARY: South Africans are gasping into their morning tea after it came out that Issa — a Zimbabwean national with zero documentation — has been working as a fully-fledged SAPS officer! The Department of Home Affairs confirmed the shocker, exposing some serious holes in SAPS hiring processes. Issa was out there cuffing suspects while dodging immigration laws like a seasoned FIFA player. Now both SAPS and Home Affairs are under heavy fire, with Mzansi asking: “Who’s next? Casper on crime watch?” PUBLIC REACTION: “Imagine getting arrested by someone who’s supposed to be deported. This country is playing 4D chess with our emotions!” – Thabiso, Diepkloof CLOSING LINE: Only in SA can a man with no ID tell you to produce yours. Stay tuned to Mzansi Minute — the only news that’s more unbelievable than your uncle’s lotto predictions.

zanu pf ndoicha tipedzaa

this is no longer a comment section because there's nothing to comment

*Isu tichikura kwakanga kusina zve bottle feeding izvi waingobatwa mhino wosarudza kumedza porridge or kufa*😂

*👨: rarai zvenyu Gogo isu tichambonwa maheu* *👵: ndakamirira bucket iroro rinemaheu, ndimo mandinoitira weti😞* Muroyi😭😭😭🙌🙌🙌

*Dzimbori nyaya dzeyi dzamunotaura 3 hours dzese nema Ex's dzamaitadza kutaura muchiri mese🤌🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🤣😂* *Ndiko kutsvaka episode 2 yeheartbréàk uku... Bika sadza udye.. Inzara iyoyo🫵🏻💔🙌🏻😹* ```Thank me later💁🏻‍♂️```

I just want to make 1k comments by friday

*Pane mumwe murume akabatwa aine mukadzi wemnhu akabva aendwa naye kubhora remaboozers. Akanzi ndiwe keeper saka bhora rikagohwa chete uri kubva wapinda pama1. Haaa imi kune vanhu vanobata bhora mhani kunze uko*

*Waka****hwa nembanje...zvekuti unobudisa $20.00 parufu woti.."nemukono wangu we$20.00US iyi mufi ngasimuke ambotamba..😂😂😂*

*Ndirimunhu anotora zvinhu zvake kana arambwa* *Izvozvi ndiri busy kudununura amai vake mahwani hwani avakarukwa nemari yangu*☹️😂😂

*Ukaona uchidanana nemukomana, wekuti ukamutsanangurira ma problems ako obva ati saka uchaita sei. Ziva kuti ukudanana ne imwe problem* 😅😅

*I think my neighbour has opened a church in his room with his girlfriend 😌 Since 2:30am 💁 I'm only hearing: "Oh my God, oh my God." 😦* 😁😂📜

*Nhas ndadya 16 slices dzechingwa zvikanzi nesstr yanku wadii kungopedzesa hako 2slices dzasara ndikati ndopedza loaf t ndopenga hr 😂😂😁 vanhu vese vabva vaseka saa chii chinosekesa ipapo*

*Wobata mukadzi wako nechikomba moendasana kwavashe wonopiwa mombe nechikomba , mombe idzodzo ndedzako wega hre ooh ndedzenyu mese , wangu mukadzi arikuti ndedzake nokuti kwanzi ndini ndakashanda 😁😁😁😁* Ndedzake❤️ Ndedzako😂 Ndedzenyu mese🙏🏽 *Share😅😅*

*Chimbovhundutsirawo vanhu wocheresa foundation ye 25 rooms kumusha....😎😎* *Wobva wadzokera hako Joni usina even kubhadhara vakachera vacho🏃🏾‍♂️* *Pakadini apa🏃🏼🏃🏼🤣🤣🤣🤣* *But make shuwa une link naNdunge🥲🙏🏼*

🙎‍♀️"Brenda ndiani?" 🛌🏾"Brenda upi?" 🙎‍♀️"Nxaa usade kunyepera kudzungaira iwe imbwa iwe" 🛌"Eeeee" 🙎‍♀️"Uriudze **** rako kuti handiritye, ndoripwanya pwanya" 🛌🏾"Iya imbori nyaya yei" 🙎‍♀️"It's over between me and you,haumbofa wakandiona futi kumba kwako" 🛌🏾"Okay" 🙎‍♀️"Okay hausisina basa neni ka,wakuda Brenda wako wekutsvuka neDhipirizona,Usanditaudze futi zvigare zvakadaro" 🛌🏾"Iribhoo ngazvigare zvakadaro" 🙎‍♀️"Uroorane naBrenda wako iyeye" 🛌🏾"Ok iribhoo" 🙎‍♀️"Usade kundijairira, ndouya ikoko izvozvi so,Ndikamuwana ariko ndosiya ndamubhura bhura Brenda wako iyeye" 🛌🏾"Huya" 🙎‍♀️"Nxaaa over my dead body,kuuya kupiko,Unoona kunge ndiri sascum,Pawakandiona pakakwana iwe imbwa" 🛌🏾"Okay" 🙎‍♀️"Kurara tese kwatakaita last week ndiko kanga karikekupedzisira" 🛌🏾"Ok it's bhoo ndakurara now" 🙎‍♀️"Nxaaa urikufunga kuti ndokusiya uchirara naBrenda wako iyeye, ndirikuuya ikoko ndizvipedze" 🛌🏾" Ita fast iwe Rue" 🙎‍♀️" Zibenzi unoda ndiuye unoda kuvata nani" 🛌🏾" Newe" 🙎‍♀️"Forget and smile kwaLate uku" 🛌🏾"Okay" 🙎‍♀️"But uchirikundida here iwe?" 🛌🏾" Yes babe ndinokuda ini" 🙎‍♀️"Hehede huri, kuzoti babe urikufunga kuti ndouya" 🛌🏾"Okay" 🙎‍♀️"Chivhura door apa ndasvika" 🏃" Pinda sweetheart" 👩‍🦰" Riripi **** rako ndirikinditse kinditse izvozvi so" 🛌🏾" Iwe siya kuita maDrama huya urare apa" 👩‍🦰"Nxaaa uri kufunga kuti ndicharara newe,ndingatorara hangu paSturu apa" 🛌🏾" Okay 👩‍🦰" Chiita sorry apa" 🛌🏾"Sorry" 👩‍🦰"Urikuti sorry bcoz ndini ndati ita sorry ka" 🛌🏾"iyaaaaa" 👩‍🦰"Chiswedera uko ndirare panzvimbo pangu nxaaa" Chinhu chinonzi mukadzi🙌! 😏 😏

hanzi, "Mnangagwa has replaced Mohadi with his son Sean Mnangagwa as Vice President"

_Africans love Alcohol so much...If Something Good happens, they Drink to Celebrate it.If Something bad Happens, they drink to forget it and drown their sorrows.If Nothing Happens, they drink to make things happen.We Need to do something about this problem My fellow people, Please can we meet for a drink and discuss this?_🥂🥃🍻

> Gweru news bulletin 📰 Polytechnic Student Arrested for Creating WhatsApp Group to Sell "Leaked" ZIMSEC Exam Papers A 23-year-old student from a local polytechnic college has appeared in court facing charges of fraud after he allegedly created a WhatsApp group with over 900 members to facilitate the leaking of Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) Ordinary and Advanced Level June examination papers. Tadiwanashe Frank Chiminya, of Mbizo, Kwekwe, created a WhatsApp group claiming to have access to leaked ZIMSEC examination papers and invited students preparing for Ordinary and Advanced Level exams to join the group. Prosecutor Nomsa Kangara, representing the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), told the court that Chiminya solicited payments from group members in exchange for access to the purported leaked exam papers. The scam came to light after ZIMSEC received a tip-off and joined the WhatsApp group via an invite link. Upon investigation, officials discovered Chiminya’s involvement and reported the matter to the police.

😭😭😭😭shame😭😭😭😭 Tatenda Pinjisi afa!??? May his soul rest in peace. kutonga kwamwari hako asi as Zimbabweans tine vanhu vekuti chero vakafa tinoti zvirinane. tarasikirwa ndarwadziwa hangu

im fadeup giving free News 📰

*In the Press 15 April 2025* A National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) goods train ferrying coal from Hwange to Zambia caught fire earlier today at the Pandamatenga siding site, triggering an emergency response from local authorities. NRZ spokesperson Mr. Andrew Kunambura confirmed the incident briefly, saying the fire broke out while the train was in transit. However, preliminary reports suggest the customer's cargo remains safe. _*— Chronicle*_ APPROXIMATELY 900 candidates for the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) Ordinary and Advanced Level examination set for June this year have been linked to a suspected paper leak, leading to the arrest of a 23-year-old Kwekwe man. Tadiwanashe Frank Chiminya, a polytechnic student, was yesterday arraigned before the Harare Magistrates’ Courts, facing a fraud charge. _*— NewsDay*_ GOVERNMENT has launched a crackdown on individuals illegally occupying State land, particularly in rural areas, ordering them to vacate the land immediately or face prosecution. Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development minister Anxious Masuka said in a statement that occupying rural State land without authority was a crime, punishable under the Lands Act. _*— NewsDay*_ POLICE in the Midlands have beefed up security ahead of the 45th Independence Day Celebrations, which will be held in Gokwe for the first time since 1980. Midlands police spokesperson, Inspector Emmanuel Mahoko confirmed their readiness. _*— NewsDay*_ Warriors striker Tymon Machope ‘faked an injury’ and missed Scottland’s 1-1 draw with Highlanders ‘so that he could spend some time with his girlfriend.’ Tests carried out on the big striker later revealed that he had no injury at all and for reasons believed to be indiscipline related, he has not featured for Mabviravira since that fiasco. _*— Soccer24*_ Cattle farmers have pleaded with the government to urgently review the myriad taxes that they pay to boost the sector and beef exports. The president of the Zimbabwe Beef Producers Society (ZBPS) George Chiunda warned that not doing this would continue to undermine the delicate operations of farmers. _*— Daily News*_ Despite public scrutiny, senior Harare City Council Officials are still earning hefty salaries, which negatively impacts service delivery in the capital. Senior officials at the HCC are taking a large chunk of the revenue received by the municipality through salaries. Earlier this year, a Commission of Inquiry that was probing the operations of the council heard that half a million is spent on the salaries of the senior officials at the Town House. _*— NewZimbabwe*_ The National Employment Council for the Commercial Sectors (NECCS) has warned members of the public to be wary of bogus officials on the prowl seeking to dupe victims by peddling lies that the organisation is no longer functional. In a statement, NECCS alleged that there are people who have been causing chaos in the sector by spreading misinformation. _*— NewZimbabwe*_ Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector is facing mounting pressure, with capacity utilisation falling to 52.3% in 2024 from 53.2% in 2023, according to the latest Manufacturing Sector Survey by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI). The drop marks the second consecutive year of decline, underscoring the continued strain on the country’s industrial base. _*— Business Times*_ Police in Bulawayo are investigating another stabbing incident involving learners, two years after the fatal stabbing of a Founders High School student shocked the city. In the latest incident, police confirmed that a 17-year-old boy from Pumula was stabbed in the buttocks by another 17-year-old following an altercation, police confirmed. Both are learners at Pumula High School. Bulawayo acting police spokesperson, Assistant Inspector Nomalanga Msebele, said the assault occurred on 9 April 2025 around 2 pm. _*— Cite*_ *kukurigo*

*Chimbetu, Ngwazi to headline Independence musical show* 15 April 2025 Dendera king, Sulumani Chimbetu and Sungura ace, Mark Ngwazi will headline this year’s Independence Musical show to be held in the Midlands Province. The show, which will be held on Friday night after the Uhuru celebrations slated for Gokwe Nembudziya, has a line-up of seasoned artists from across the country. Sungura music lovers will be spoilt for choice following confirmation that Sulumani Chimbetu, Mark Ngwazi, Simon Mutambi, Peter Moyo Junior and DT Bio Mudimba are part of the cast. For gospel music lovers – Agatha Murudzwa and Mai Patai will be there to quench their thirst. Jah Signal will be among several ZimDancehall artists at the show, while Mzoe7 will represent hip-hop. Seasoned artist, Sandra Ndebele and the Mbare Chimurenga will once again entertain Zimbabweans as they mark 45 years of independence under the theme: Zim@45, devolve and develop together towards vision 2030. ZBC

*Heartbreaking* 15 April 2025 This heartbreaking moment is just before 34-year-old Zimbabwean musician Tatenda Pinjisi died after an accident on his way to a show in Kadoma. He died in Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital, Sally Mugabe Hospital, formerly known as Harare Hospital (paGomo). I have spoken to a doctor who works there. There were no lights, and the nurses had to use a cellphone torch, as you can see in the video. There were no painkillers, as you can hear him begging for Pain-Eeze, a local painkiller only meant for moderate pain. This is a man who had broken bones, he died in excruciating pain. He suffered! The doctor told me that what he needed was a strong painkiller, but as I often report here, there was nothing available to give him. The doctor said no patient should die like this from a road accident if they have managed to reach a central hospital alive. But in Zimbabwe, you die because there is nothing in the public hospitals, absolutely nothing. Tatenda should not have died, but he died because of Mnangagwa’s corrupt rule, which loots public funds meant for hospitals. I heard that one of Zimbabwe’s biggest musicians, Aleck Macheso broke down and cried on stage and abandoned his show when he heard the news. But I have a question for my brother Macheso. What goes through your mind as musicians when you go to sing and praise for this regime? Tatenda is not the first musician to die like this. Garry Mapanzure died the same way. Why do you promote a political system that is killing your own people? And to the fans of musicians who sing and twerk for ZANUPF, why do you go to shows of musicians that glorify the system that is killing you daily? You must reflect if you have common sense. The doctor who called me today asked me to tell ALL Zimbabweans that if you are in Zimbabwe, your turn will come, it is a matter of time, unless you use private hospitals. She said there is a total breakdown of emergency medicine in Zimbabwe. She also said I must tell even the rich that if you are involved in a car accident while coming from your village, you will be taken to the nearest available public hospital, where you will die like Tatenda before the cushy ambulance arrives from Harare to take you to a private hospital. To anyone who considers themselves an opposition politician, keeping quiet about this is equal to supporting the regime, it is tacit endorsement of the status-quo! As a Zimbabwean citizen, I am willing to buy a container of pain medicine for our people with my own money, provided there is an opposition leader willing to handle the paperwork for a duty-free certificate. May Tatenda’s soul rest in peace🙏🏿🙏🏿 Hopewell Chin'ono @(X)

but how come kuti munhu akaita history and without even a nurse aid certificate appointed as a minister of health and child care? handirevi hangu Zimbabwe but nyika yacho munoiziva. zvinoitawo here?

Pindula kana pasisina taurai

Pindula what is going on

pindula why

Makatukura tipeiwo zvimwe pamwe tingavarairwa zvedu ko tingadii mare yacho isubatika

SAFE TO SAY PINDULA NEWS IS DEAD

pane mkomana eechidiki anorwara nrpfungwa akarohwa nemapurisa epaNyamaropa ZRP camp kuNyanga,hey,mwana iyeye so haasi kufona kuita weti zvakanaka uku musoro vakazvimba,zvakaoma chose munyika ino

isu zvedu takarwa Hondo timadhigoz echimurenga

pindula is now failing to deliver. last update is a story from last week.... whats wrong how can we assist, talk to us.

Wamuka bho here Jenfan Muswere,Mr Original Degrees,wamuka sei Bridget Nyandoro ,Miss Mujolo ?Marian Chombo na Nyazema madii apo pa****land?Tichimutsawo Mr Guchu Kembo Campbell Dugish,irisei miviri ?nezita raJesu munopora!Mr Trababablas howzit,sei sei mafindifuva ekufunga kubviswa?don't worry 2030 munenge muchipo!General kwakadii?Let's hope hamus kudemba chamakabvisira Bob anyway tarisiro dzagara hadzis dzese dzinobuda even ku Love chaiko zvaikuremerai ,hamuparadzane nemadzimai zvakanaka but zviriko!

Mukai Tirare!

Yoo corruption is rearing to an ugly head now and has gone beyond it's limits,

701

Thanks for the update @Makatukura

Black people are obsessed with PhDs yoo vanhu vanoda ****mu ivavo apa zvima PhD zvefake

Gold, Cash and Phones Stolen in Armed Robbery At Chinese-Owned Mine In Shamva Around 30 armed robbers, some dressed in camouflage, pounced on a Chinese-owned gold mine, Ming Chang Sino Africa Mine, in the Tafuna area of Shamva, Mashonaland Central, on April 13. The robbers stole a small amount of gold, about $7,000 in cash, 50 mobile phones, and two shotguns. The robbery started around 11:20 PM when 13 masked men, armed with pistols and batons, approached the mine’s main entrance. Ten of them were wearing military-style clothing. They overpowered two security guards. At the same time, 17 other robbers climbed over the fence and rounded up more than 50 mine workers. The workers were forced to lie down, beaten, and ordered to hand over their valuables. The mine’s general manager, Yuehui Du (45), was forced to lead the robbers to his office, where they took five phones and $1,200 in cash. In another office, the store manager, Jie Bao (38), was robbed of $3,200, 20 grammes of gold, and two phones. The workers were also searched and lost a total of $2,564 in cash. In total, the robbers stole 50 mobile phones from the managers and workers. Two Mossberg shotguns were taken from the security guards.

*EMERSON MNANGAGWA 'S MINISTER IS FAILING TO ANSWER ABOUT HIS FAKE QUALIFICATIONS* Mr J MuswereJnr all this nonsense does not answer my simple question. Why do you lie that you have two PhDs when you have none? You claim your first PhD is from a South African university—what is the name of that university? There is no single South African university with a record of your name. Your boss, President Mnangagwa, was upset when he realised he had capped you for a bogus PhD at NUST. You get people to do coursework for you. These are the real questions you should be answering. Even NUST is too embarrassed to say you graduated from there. People like you have helped delegitimise Zimbabwe’s education system, affecting ordinary people because of these fake PhDs. You are not Dr Muswere. You are Mr Muswere. Stop lying that you have two PhDs, you have none! The fact that Zimbabwe’s secret service (CIO) failed to do proper due diligence on your fake qualifications is tragic! @Hopewell Chin:ono

*What do we know so far about Zimbabwe’s Information Minister, Mr Jenfran Muswere’s @HonJMuswereJnr, fake qualifications?* 14 April 2025 He claims that he has a PhD in ICT, Performance, Corporate Governance, and Public Management and another one in Strategic Mining PPP Investments. He also claims to have an MBA in International Trade but refuses to name the university that bestowed the degree. He first lied that he had a PhD from Chinhoyi University (Zimbabwe), then changed the story, claiming it was from a nameless South African university. All South African universities have no record of his name, and there is no trace of a doctoral dissertation linked to this supposed PhD. He also claims to have a second PhD from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST Zimbabwe). He got a Zimbabwean academic to do the work in exchange for appointing her to the NetOne board during his time as ICT Minister. NUST is so embarrassed by this academic fraud that they will not release his PhD thesis. Even President Mnangagwa was reportedly upset when he realised how the bogus qualification had been produced after he had already capped him. There is no record of a PhD defence panel, nor is there any evidence of the work he supposedly produced for this so-called second PhD. Insiders at the university (NUST) are saying the university is worried about the scandal and how it will delegitimise its genuine former students and their qualifications! Journalists have hit a brick wall with the spokesperson of NUST, Tabani Mpofu, who used to work for Mr Jenfran Muswere—he refuses to answer questions. Mr Jenfran Muswere’s Wikipedia page was re-edited last night when demands for him to release documentary evidence of his qualifications went public! Google scholar has no record of any of these bogus PhDs. It says; “A search on Google Scholar for “Jenfran Muswere” did not yield any results, indicating that there are no academic publications or citations associated with this name on the platform. This absence suggests a lack of publicly available scholarly work attributed to him.” There is no trace of his work or thesis in the institutional repository of NUST. *Hopewell Chin'ono (X)

*Allan Wilson head in court for abusing student* 14 April 2025 The headmaster of Allan Wilson Boys’ High School, Tafara Zhou, is facing aggravated indecent assault charges after allegedly ****ually abusing a student over a two-year period. Zhou appeared in court over the weekend but was not asked to plead. The court heard that the now 19-year-old complainant first met Zhou in 2022 while searching for a scholarship. Zhou allegedly offered to cover the boy’s school expenses before making inappropriate demands. “In June 2022, Zhou called me to his car and said he wanted a ****ual relationship since he was paying for everything,” the victim told the court. “He threatened to expel me if I refused.” Feeling trapped, the boy complied. The abuse allegedly continued in January 2023 when Zhou took him to the school laundry room. In February, the headmaster reportedly took the boy to his home and assaulted him again. The Herald reports that most shocking allegations involve a school trip to Victoria Falls in 2023. While other students travelled by bus, Zhou allegedly took the boy in his car. “He booked a room and abused me for three days,” the victim testified. “It happened again on the way back to Harare.” Zhou then allegedly confiscated the boy’s phone, deleting all evidence. “He told me he was well-connected and no one would believe me,” the victim said. The abuse only came to light after Zhou expelled the boy for seeking help from teachers to register for exams. With his teacher’s support, the victim reported the case this year, leading to Zhou’s arrest. Second school scandal rocks Zimbabwe This case follows another shocking scandal at Masase High School in Mberengwa, where deputy head Anymore Gumbo is accused of abusing up to 35 boys. Gumbo has since gone into hiding. Police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi confirmed the investigation. “We are identifying victims. So far, one complaint has been recorded,” Nyathi said. School headmaster Albion Masukume wrote to parents: “I write with sorrow to inform you that allegations of child abuse by one of our staff members were reported. Investigations are underway.” The scandal was exposed after an anonymous tip to education officials. Source I Harare

*Allan Wilson head in court for abusing student* 14 April 2025 The headmaster of Allan Wilson Boys’ High School, Tafara Zhou, is facing aggravated indecent assault charges after allegedly ****ually abusing a student over a two-year period. Zhou appeared in court over the weekend but was not asked to plead. The court heard that the now 19-year-old complainant first met Zhou in 2022 while searching for a scholarship. Zhou allegedly offered to cover the boy’s school expenses before making inappropriate demands. “In June 2022, Zhou called me to his car and said he wanted a ****ual relationship since he was paying for everything,” the victim told the court. “He threatened to expel me if I refused.” Feeling trapped, the boy complied. The abuse allegedly continued in January 2023 when Zhou took him to the school laundry room. In February, the headmaster reportedly took the boy to his home and assaulted him again. The Herald reports that most shocking allegations involve a school trip to Victoria Falls in 2023. While other students travelled by bus, Zhou allegedly took the boy in his car. “He booked a room and abused me for three days,” the victim testified. “It happened again on the way back to Harare.” Zhou then allegedly confiscated the boy’s phone, deleting all evidence. “He told me he was well-connected and no one would believe me,” the victim said. The abuse only came to light after Zhou expelled the boy for seeking help from teachers to register for exams. With his teacher’s support, the victim reported the case this year, leading to Zhou’s arrest. Second school scandal rocks Zimbabwe This case follows another shocking scandal at Masase High School in Mberengwa, where deputy head Anymore Gumbo is accused of abusing up to 35 boys. Gumbo has since gone into hiding. Police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi confirmed the investigation. “We are identifying victims. So far, one complaint has been recorded,” Nyathi said. School headmaster Albion Masukume wrote to parents: “I write with sorrow to inform you that allegations of child abuse by one of our staff members were reported. Investigations are underway.” The scandal was exposed after an anonymous tip to education officials. Source I Harare

*Chiredzi Police Officer Sets Himself on Fire in Suspected Suicide* 14 April 2025 A chilling tragedy has left the Chiredzi community in shock after a Zimbabwe Republic Police officer allegedly ended his life by setting his house on fire. The officer, identified only as Constable Nota, is believed to have locked all doors before torching the house on Saturday, 13 April. The blaze consumed everything, and his remains were found in the aftermath. Motive Remains Unclear The reason behind Constable Nota’s drastic actions is still unknown. His death came just hours after another disturbing discovery: a body of an airtime vendor found hanging from a tree near the Chiredzi River on the same day. The Zimbabwe Republic Police have not yet issued an official statement on either of the incidents. In March, a police officer in Gweru, 38-year-old Claude Jele, also took his own life after reportedly losing US$3,000 in a risky betting game called Kandege. Before ending his life, Jele left behind an emotional note that gave a glimpse into his anguish. His sudden death stunned family, friends, and colleagues, raising concerns over the mental well-being of law enforcement officers under pressure. I harare

*Mliswa blows the lid on corruption involving Chombo and others* 14 April 2025 Temba Mliswa HARARE – Former Norton legislator Temba Mliswa has lifted the lid on what he describes as a “deeply entrenched” corruption syndicate involving senior government and police officials in Mashonaland West Province. The outspoken former MP has accused Mashonaland West Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Marian Chombo, and Provincial Commanding Officer Commissioner T. Nyazema of orchestrating a network of illegal land reallocations, mining operations, and environmental exploitation — all allegedly carried out under the guise of presidential authority. Speaking publicly in a scathing statement, Mliswa claimed the group was exploiting President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s name to carry out activities with impunity. “They boast that they were sent by the President and claim that nothing can be done to them,” Mliswa charged, urging the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) and other investigative arms to urgently probe the allegations. Among the most explosive claims is the alleged manipulation of land allocation processes in Mashonaland West. Mliswa said Chombo had reversed previously approved land allocations and replaced legitimate beneficiaries with individuals who had allegedly paid bribes for access. “A case in point is a land programme in Mash West that was reversed under questionable circumstances. Honourable Chombo allegedly removed approved names and replaced them with those who paid her. I have documentary evidence to support these claims,” he said. Mliswa issued a stern warning to Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Anxious Masuka, cautioning that inaction on the matter could damage his reputation as corrupt individuals continue to drop his name to advance illicit interests. Beyond the land scandal, Mliswa also pointed to what he described as a mining syndicate operating within protected conservancy areas, with the alleged involvement of top law enforcement officials including Superintendent Kezias Karuru and Commissioner Nyazema. “They are destroying the conservancy environment with heavy machinery, disturbing wildlife and wrecking an established project,” Mliswa said, drawing parallels to environmental concerns that previously prompted the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) to block Afrochine’s mining activities in Mavuradona Game Park and oppose similar ventures in Hwange National Park. He also alleged that the group approached Hurungwe Rural District Council Chief Executive Officer Luke Kalavina, claiming to have full backing from the President’s Office—an assertion Mliswa dismissed as false. “Knowing the President, I do not believe he would ever endorse such reckless actions. This must be investigated to uncover the truth and protect our public institutions and environmental assets,” he said. The allegations have reignited calls for transparency, accountability in public office, and renewed scrutiny of land and resource governance in Zimbabwe. If substantiated, the claims could have significant implications for both political integrity and environmental conservation in the country. As of the time of publication, neither Minister Chombo nor the police officials mentioned had issued a formal response to the allegations. Source The Zimbabwean mail.com

The thieves have become so bold that they do not care whether its known that they steal from taxpayers or not.

You and I need to have the thieves agree @Mudhibhisi. Otherwise they will continue plundering our resources daily. Only time will tell.

Yaa another sensible perspective to the myriad of problems facing us as a nation.The issue are the thieves who are daily plundering our resources. Will they agree??

ummm saka zvakaoma paZimbabwe

We must find each other and put Zimbabwe first Standard People By Ibbo Mandaza | 11h ago Ibbo Mandaza For over four decades since our hard-won independence, Zimbabwe has been trapped in cycles of political contestation, economic decline, and social fragmentation. As someone who has lived through our nation's highest peaks and deepest valleys, I can state unequivocally that we stand at our most critical crossroads since 1980. The evidence surrounds us. Our currency has collapsed repeatedly. Our youth flee abroad by the thousands, preferring menial jobs in hostile environments to destitution at home. Drug abuse and hopelessness ravage communities while our infrastructure crumbles. Political discourse has devolved into toxic polarization, with each election deepening rather than healing national wounds. We must confront an uncomfortable truth: the current political arrangement has failed Zimbabwe. Neither the ruling establishment nor the fractured opposition has demonstrated capacity to lead us out of this quagmire. The former has shown itself incapable of inclusive governance, while the latter has succumbed to debilitating divisions that mirror the very problems they seek to address. Keep Reading Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals Bulls to charge into Zimbabwe gold stocks Ndiraya concerned as goals dry up Letters: How solar power is transforming African farms Advertisements Let me be clear: Zimbabwe's crisis will not be solved by another election. What we face is not merely a political problem but a comprehensive national emergency requiring a fundamental reset. Through a series of SAPES Trust Policy Dialogues and consultations with diverse stakeholders, we have crystallised a proposal that has gained remarkable momentum across political and social divides: The convening of an All-Stakeholders Conference to seek a durable solution to Zimbabwe’s decades old crisis. Central to this proposal is the establishment of a National Transitional Authority (NTA) to prepare the ground for a durable peace and national prosperity. This is not a coup by other means, nor is it an attempt to subvert democracy. Rather, it is a recognition that democracy itself requires institutional foundations that have been systematically eroded in Zimbabwe. We propose a time-limited intervention to rebuild these foundations before returning to electoral politics. The NTA would replace both executive and legislature for three to five years with a singular mandate: undertaking the comprehensive reforms necessary to restore Zimbabwe to stability and set the stage for genuine democracy. Its composition would be strictly non-partisan — respected Zimbabweans from home and abroad with demonstrated integrity and competence, who would be barred from seeking political office for five years following their service. Critics will ask: Why not simply push for free and fair elections? The answer is painfully evident. Our electoral system has been so compromised that even technically "free" elections cannot yield legitimate outcomes. The judiciary has been politicised, security services weaponized, media captured, and electoral bodies compromised. Elections under these conditions merely recycle our problems rather than addressing them. We propose that the NTA's mandate focus on four critical areas: First, restoring constitutional governance and rebuilding respect for our constitution across all institutions. Second, reforming key institutions — particularly the judiciary, security sector, and electoral commission — to guarantee their independence and professionalism. Third, transforming our electoral framework to ensure future elections are not just free but legitimate and uncontested. Finally, stabilising our economy through comprehensive reforms addressing debt, monetary policy, land rights, and productive capacity. This is not a partisan agenda. It is an agenda that puts Zimbabwe first. The proposed reforms would benefit citizens across political divides by creating a functional state that delivers for all rather than enriching a few. Some will question whether such a transition is possible without the consent of the current power-holders. This is a legitimate concern, but not an insurmountable obstacle. International experience shows that when citizen pressure combines with regional and international support, even entrenched regimes can accede to transitional arrangements — particularly when their own long-term interests are better served by orderly transition than chaotic collapse. Our proposal begins with a convening of an All-Stakeholders National Conference bringing together citizens committed to national renewal, followed by a structured national dialogue to define the transition framework, culminating in a political settlement that scaffolds the NTA. The church and Zimbabwe's diaspora will play a crucial role. Our scattered children carry not just remittances but skills, connections, and perspectives vital to national regeneration. The NTA would create channels for their meaningful participation in rebuilding the country many were forced to leave. Let me address potential skeptics directly: Is this proposal idealistic? Perhaps. But "realistic" approaches have delivered us to our current catastrophe. Is it ambitious? Certainly. But Zimbabwe's challenges demand nothing less than ambitious solutions. The alternative to bold action is not stability but continued decline. Our economy cannot sustain further deterioration. Our youth cannot endure more years of joblessness and hopelessness. Our institutions cannot withstand further erosion of legitimacy and capacity. Zimbabwe's potential remains extraordinary — abundant resources, strategic location, and most importantly, talented and resilient people. What we lack is not capacity but leadership, national vision and a governance framework that harnesses rather than squanders this potential. The moment for half-measures has passed. Zimbabwe requires fundamental transformation. The All-Stakeholders Conference we propose and the resultant National Transitional Authority offers a pathway — not to utopia, but to a functional state where citizens' basic needs are met, rights respected, and future secured. The choice before us is stark: bold renewal or continued decline. For the sake of generations past who sacrificed for this nation, and generations yet unborn who deserve to inherit its promise, let us choose renewal. Will this be easy? Off course, not because of entrenched interests in the ruling party, business and the opposition. If it was easy, it would have been done long ago. *Ibbo Mandaza is the convenor of the National Steering Committee for a New Zimbabwe and director of the Southern African Political Economy Series Trust. Related Topics Zimbabwe NTA SAPES Trust Policy Dialogues SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON SOCIAL Similar Articles Editorial Comment: Draconian law will soil Mnangagwa’s legacy Editorial Comment: Draconian law will soil Mnangagwa’s legacy Zanu PF, the sponsors of the new law, have never hidden the fact that they want it to be used against their opponents in order to gain an advantage on the political playing field. Standard People By The Standard 11h ago We must find each other and put Zimbabwe first We must find each other and put Zimbabwe first Central to this proposal is the establishment of a National Transitional Authority (NTA) to prepare the ground for a durable peace and national prosperity. 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SUBSCRIBE CONNECT WITH US SUPPORT INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM OTHER SITES NewsDay The Zimbabwe Independent The Standard The Southern Eye HSTV ©2025. The Standard. All rights reserved.

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a lot of thanks to those who share news with us on this platform. rambai makadaro

1k

1000 comments soon

I just want to make 1k comments today maybe Pindula will be back in system

Sengezo Tshabangu, a Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) senator, has denied ever being a member of the faction led by Welshman Ncube. Tshabangu said this following his dismissal from the party last week after a misconduct charge during a disciplinary hearing held by Ncube’s CCC faction. He was expelled for making unilateral changes to the party’s leadership in Parliament. Although Tshabangu attended the disciplinary hearing, he claims he did so under protest and insists that he has never been part of Ncube’s faction. He also said he does not align with either of the two factions within CCC: CCC Blue, which supports former party leader Nelson Chamisa, and CCC Green, aligned with Ncube. Tshabangu further argued that his position as a Senator is not connected to Ncube’s faction. He said according to the CCC’s constitution, the terms for the party’s leadership expired on May 27, 2024, leaving the party without a sitting president. In a statement, Tshabangu’s spokesperson, Nqobizitha Mlilo, claimed that Tshabangu has never been a member of CCC Green or affiliated with its structures. Mlilo also argued that Tshabangu was neither nominated nor deployed as a Senator by Ncube’s faction and has never attended any of its meetings. Mlilo accused Ncube of trying to gain control of CCC’s financial resources under the Political Parties (Finance) Act. According to The Standard, despite Tshabangu’s claims of being promised millions of dollars for taking control of the CCC, he has yet to receive any funds.  The government has indicated that the disbursement of party funds will be delayed until the factions resolve their leadership dispute.

this is only news got more comments here

Pindula guys went to demostrate on 31 march there are now in custody , varitorohwa izvezvi

let Pindula say the truth you cant just disappear

manje hatichataure zvisina basa mapedza kuupdater kuti timamiswe kaa tikukuzivai

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