Residents castigate Obert Mpofu over closure of supermarket

Residents of Gwanda are up in arms against Transport and infrastructure Development Minister Dr Obert Mpofu for unceremonially buying a building housing the town's oldest supermarket Macinn and closing it down.

Minister Mpofu acquired the prime building in the town's Central Business District from Forbes and Thompson late last year and evicted all the occupants who were renting the premises supposedly for renovations. The building housed one of Gwanda's oldest and most faithful supermarkets Macinn, long standing T and G Butchery, a guest house and conference venue over and above several other smaller business operations.

Residents of the town have approached Bulawayo24 expressing their anger at the minister for closing down the supermarket and taking too long to carry out the renovations. The residents claim that Macinn Supermarket stood with them through the difficult economic times in 2007 to 2009 and its not fair for it to be unceremoniously closed down.

"Mpofu is not fair to us the people of Gwanda. Macinn Supermarket has been our most reliable supermarket through difficult times and for it to be just closed down like this is not right" said a resident Mr Dumisani Ndlovu

According to the residents of the town, Macinn Supermarket literally fed the people of Gwanda during the recession years when all other supermarkets closed down. Residents claim that the owner of the supermarket Mr Mgcini Nkolomi was always up and down to as far as Harare and Messina looking for maize meal and other basics to stock up the shop for the people while other supermarkets in the town cared less and so they feel the closing down of his supermarket by Mpofu is not being fair to the people of the town and Nkolomi himself.

"It will not be fair for us as residents of Gwanda to just sit back and watch when our own child Nkolomi is being unfairly treated by people from outside our town," said one Sibusisiwe Khumalo.

"Nkolomi literally kept us alive as Gwanda through those hard days. Where was Mpofu? Why didn't he buy the supermarket then and brought us food? Mgcini was all over the country getting us food while OK supermarket only had empty shelves, windowline, toilet paper and firewood," fumed Khumalo.

When Mpofu bought the building he also closed down Strides Guest House, Restaurant and Bar all belonging to Gwanda Central Member of Parliament Mr Edison Gumbo. Also closed down was T and G Butchery owned by Mayor Knowledge Ndlovu both ZANU PF senior members. Mpofu immediately engaged controversial councillor of the town Thulani Moyo to manage his investments in Gwanda and was tasked with the eviction of the occupants causing serious rift between the ZANU PF members who occupied the buildings. This has caused residents to attribute the closing down of the businesses in the building to ZANU PF internal squabbles.

"The people of Gwanda are just being made victims of political fights within ZANU PF. We know for a fact that Mpofu and Thulani Moyo are not in good books with the Mayor and MP and that is why they decided to close down their businesses incidentally bringing in an innocent and hard working business man like Nkolomi into the dirty ZANU PF wars," said one Zenzo Sibanda who trades in the area in front of the closed Supermarket.

Some of the smaller business people who were also evicted from the building also accused Mpofu of being selfish by buying the building and not putting it to use.

"This man is very selfish. He just goes around the towns buying buildings, evicting people and failing to renovate them making us small traders to suffer. We know what he has done in Hwange, Vic Falls and Bulawayo and now he wants to do the same in Gwanda," said a trader who was also evicted from the building.

One resident who only identified himself as Munyaradzi and sells airtime vouchers in front of the closed supermarket said that the people of Gwanda were being unreasonable by complaining as they are resisting development. According to Munyaradzi the building is old and together with many others must in fact be demolished and reconstructed.

"These people are just being unreasonable. They are chasing away investment by resisting powerful investors like Mpofu. This building is old as you can see and it must with all these others be demolished and new ones set up otherwise this town will always look like a ghost town as you can see," said Munyaradzi.

A friend of Munyaradzi who would not be named also appreciated Mpofu's investment in the town but hinted that instead of Mpofu closing down the entire complex he could have done the renovations in stages leaving some businesses operational as he is now taking too long to complete the renovations.

"Its good to have big man like Mpofu investing in these small towns but instead of closing the entire complex he could have done the renovations in phases leaving some businesses running especially the supermarket," he said.

Another evicted occupant accused Mpofu and Moyo of being a "dangerous tag team for Gwanda" which is out to fight against local investors.

"Thulani (Moyo) and Mpofu are a dangerous tag team for Gwanda. We are watching them. All they are doing is to fight against us the original people of Gwanda to bring in their own people in order to gain votes for themselves. We are not going anywhere no matter what they do," said the man who refused to be named.

"We know of Thulani's political dreams but he will never succeed as long as he behaves this way. They can't fight us the people of Gwanda and hope to bring outsiders to dominate us," he added without explaining.

Comments could not be obtained from both Minister Mpofu and Mr Nkolomi as their mobile numbers were not reachable.