The Lui Trovie Mine owners (Nyoni Family holdings) from Sjauke, ward 9, Bubi District in the company of Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) members on Wednesday stormed the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development offices at Mhlahlandlela Government Complex in Bulawayo seeking clarity on why they were failing to take action and evict an illegal miner on their claim.
Lui Trovie alleges that they assumed ownership of the mine in October 1986.
In an interview with CITE, Mfanele Moyo, one of Nyoni family holdings members said their claim was forfeited in 2017 owing to their failure to pay for it.
“We were paying duly for our claim until 2017 when we failed to pay for our claim and it automatically fell under the Exclusive Prospecting Orders (EPO) of the Bilboes,” said Moyo.
“During that time when we were clearing our dues, this man called Innocent Makope came to the mine claiming that he was now the owner of the mine. He sneaked into our area and illegally mined in our claim and took minor children with him to mine in the claim, he then disappeared for some time. We managed to get our claim back and Bilboes re-pegged the 10 hectares for us but Innocent Makope still claimed that he also had the papers for the claim.”
Moyo said they do not know how Makope got the license for the mine.
“Bilboes also wrote a letter to the provincial mining director alerting them that the Ministry gave Innocent Makope of registration number 17214 claims without their consent, but the Ministry of Mines is silent and not taking any action; we don’t know what is happening,” he said.
“Makope has however failed to produce to us this licence or the papers that he claims to have, even when we came here at Mhlahlandlela at some other time he failed to produce the papers but we saw him latter exchanging some documents with someone very familiar; I cannot expose him for now; they didn’t realise that we saw them as the masks hid our faces.”
He added that ward 9 villagers had also written several letters to the police asking them to evict Makope but the police have not acted.
“At one point, Makope came with the armed police who threatened us; we don’t know what is happening,” said Moyo.
