Bindura is a city in the province of Mashonaland Central province,

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. It is located in the Mazowe Valley about 88 km north-east of

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

. According to the 1982 Population Census, the city had a population of 18,243. This rose to 21,167 in the 1992 census and in the 2012 census it had reached 46,275. It is the administrative capital of the province. Bindura Nickel, now called Trojan Nickel Mine, a subsidiary of Mwana Africa plc, mines

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. ...

in the area and operates a

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

refinery just south of the town.

Cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

and

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

are grown intensely in the region. The first basic school in Bindura opened in 1912. The perennial Mazowe River flows around Bindura and through its north-eastern perimeter. Bindura was originally named Kimberley Reefs after the

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

mine which was opened in 1901, and changed to Bindura in 1913 when the

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

arrived. Bindura is probably an Anglicised version of the Shona phrase, ''pindura mhuka'', meaning "turn the game".

Notable people

* Freeman HKD (b. 1988), singer-songwriter * Mai Chisamba (b. 1952), businesswoman and talk show host * George Kahari (1930-2021), diplomat and educator *

Mark McNulty Mark William McNulty (born 24 March 1953) is a Zimbabwean-Irish professional golfer. He was one of the leading players on the European Tour from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, and featured in the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking f ...

(b. 1953), professional golfer * Vernon van Oudtshoorn (b. 1976), professional cricketer

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bindura Populated places in Mashonaland Central Province Provincial capitals in Zimbabwe 1901 establishments in the British Empire