Antelope Mine, now known as Maphisa, is a town in the Matobo district of the province of Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. On 14 June 2024, the government of Zimbabwe granted Maphisa the town status.[1] Maphisa is located about 114 km south of Bulawayo and 14 km south of Kezi.[2] The village was established in an area once rich in wildlife and was named after a goldmine which started operating in 1913 but closed in 1919.[3] The mine was established on the site of ancient African workings which were first discovered by Europeans in the 1890s and the first claims were pegged in 1894.[2]
The modern town is a commercial centre for the surrounding area and the Semukwa communal land. Together with the villages of Maphisa, it draws on the nearby Gulamela Dam to irrigate a large communal agricultural scheme. Many mission schools have been established in the area, and the Salvation Army operates both a mission school and a hospital in the village.[2]
Antelope Mine is, like several other mining areas in Zimbabwe, a centre of settlement for members of the Chewa people. They migrated to the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s from Northern Rhodesia (the present-day Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) to work as migrant labourers in the mineral extraction and agricultural industries.[4]
During the Zimbabwean government's Gukurahundi campaign against the Ndebele population of southern Zimbabwe in the 1980s, the disused mine workings at Antelope Mine were the site of a concentration camp run by the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwean Army. Many prisoners were reported to have been killed and their bodies thrown down the mineshaft.[5] On two instances, in 1996 and 1999, skeletal remains believed to be of executed ZAPU prisoners were discovered in the abandoned mineshaft.[6]
