HARARE - The African Medallion Group (AMG) is expediting the establishment of its humanitarian department to help victims of Zimbabwe’s deadly fuel riots, which have left 12 people dead and hundreds of others injured.
This comes as the South African-based gold trader’s sister organisation Hamilton Foundation (Hamilton) – also owned by Frank Buyanga – has previously made similar interventions by offering transport for thousands of regional folks displaced by xenophobic attacks in 2015.
“AMG… is deeply saddened by the violence that took place in… Zimbabwe. We believe the entire community shares the same sentiment (for)… utmost peace to prevail in that beloved nation,” it said, adding “management has taken urgent steps to set up its humanitarian division to help with medical or even funeral assistance”.
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“(The company) is strongly against the violence that occurred (and) it is in the same spirit that we urge the people of Zimbabwe to strive for peace, and unity during these troubled times,” AMG said.
Following the announcement of steep fuel price hikes by President Emmerson Mnangagwa last weekend, the troubled southern African nation has been engulfed in deadly anti-government riots as its poverty-stricken urbanites feared worsening hardships and a further deterioration of living conditions or standards.
As it is, civic organisations such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights say about 844 rights violations were recorded and 172 people have been treated for serious injuries, with 68 of them sustaining gunshot wounds.
In the meantime, the Community Working Group on Health says scores of people have been barred from accessing medical services countrywide.
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Under his Rand 500 000 philanthropic act and gesture to thousands of foreign nationals affected by the barbaric attacks in South Africa (SA) four years ago, Buyanga’s Hamilton worked with Gift of the Givers in that mission.
Around the same time, the flamboyant businessman also rallied his compatriots and fellow Africans to “know their rights by acquainting themselves with international law, and so that they do not suffer the indignity of constant harassment and resentment, if not hate-linked ill-treatment”.
Recently, Buyanga also set tongues wagging with an audacious Rand 500 million facility to help Mnangagwa’s troubled administration to import basic commodities, including sugar, maize meal, medicines and fuel, but the Zimbabwean authorities have been dilly-dallying on the offer.
And as the Harare administration responded with disproportionate force to last week’s protests, which have seen 600 people being arrested, global bodies such as the United Nations have condemned the clampdown and Zimbabweans in SA have also called on the African National Congress to help break the impasse.
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