Zimbabwe to reduce armed robberies and gun crime

In October, Zimbabwe police detectives were involved in a fierce exchange of gunfire with a gang of robbery suspects leading to the killing of one of the suspects outside the eastern border city of Mutare.

It turned out the dead suspect Elliot Kandiyero, aged 27, was a serving soldier in the Zimbabwean army who had joined forces with some of his military colleagues to commit a spate of robberies targeting homes and business premises.

Similarly, former detective and lawyer Joseph Nhemaisa made headlines in December when he bravely gunned a gang of armed robbers who had invaded his Harare home and held his family hostage.

The two incidents are just a few in a frightening trend that has seen gangs raid homes and business premises in Zimbabwe – a country generally considered peaceful gauging by world standards – lately, to snatch caches of US dollar notes stockpiled in bedrooms and offices.

Daily police reports are awash with cases of violent heists committed with hundreds of thousands of dollars seized in the process.

Zimbabwe uses the US dollar as its anchor currency after the local dollar continues to devalue under recurrent inflation.

For example, in 2016, Zimbabwe's dollar traded at par with a single unit of the US dollar. Today, a single US dollar is equal to 950 Zimbabwe dollars, signaling a rapid slide in the value of the local currency.

As a result, a lot of Zimbabweans now prefer storing value in US dollars often stocked away from formal banking institutions for fear of losing them.

Zimbabweans, a great majority of whom now eke out a living through running shops to sell trinkets, clothing, electrical ware, among other forms of businesses, are reluctant to store their money at bank due to mistrust on banking institutions. Some banks place punitive charges on withdrawals, and in the past the government imposed limits on the monies to be withdrawn after locals scrambled to take their savings from the financial institutions.

But this has come at a cost for many who have been targeted for a spate of robberies, often by armed gangs and those wielding machetes, a weapon first used in violent clashes among illegal panners of Zimbabwe's precious minerals in the country's mineral rich remote districts while fighting over mining claims.

Money heists have not just been limited to premises and homes but cash-in-transit vehicles and banking halls.

In July, 92,000 US dollars was seized with no resistance from armed guards who were delivering cash in a bank on the outskirts of central Harare, bringing sentiments the private security was either too weak to confront the gangs or were conniving with criminals to commit the heists.

Early December, a lone robber seized 12,000 US dollars from a banking hall in Zimbabwe's resort city of Victoria Falls again with no resistance from armed security.

When answering questions from China Daily about the latest statistics on armed robberies in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi says police are in the process of preparing the country's crime statistics for 2022 which he said will be ready by Jan 10.

According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, Zimbabwe recorded 1,120 armed robberies in 2021, compared with 931 in the previous year.

But as police compile the statistics for 2022, the tone on robberies by Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa lately tells a story of both panic and determination to rescue the country from receding into a state of anarchy.

In an address to mark Zimbabwe's Unity Day celebrations on Dec 22, Mnangagwa said his government now treats violent crime as a grave threat to personal and national security.

"Lately, we have witnessed an upsurge in gun-related crimes. There is a clear upsurge in abuse of firearms, including violent armed robberies," he said.

"The government now treats this as a grave threat to personal and national security. Decisive measures have now become necessary to put an end to this growing menace which threatens our otherwise peaceful, law-abiding nation and citizenry."

In a bid to reduce robberies and rampant gun crime in Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa recently extended a gun amnesty which allowed Zimbabweans illegally in possession of rifles to surrender the lethal weapons with no questions asked.