POLICE say they are investigating a blaze which swept through Gideon Gono’s poultry farm early on Sunday, sending the Reserve Bank governor and his family scampering for safety.
The fire, coming just days after Vice President Joice Mujuru’s husband, Solomon, was killed in a mysterious inferno at the couple’s farm in Beatrice, will increase pressure on the police to provide urgent answers over the two incidents.
Police spokesman Senior Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena confirmed an investigation was underway. Detectives have so far found no links between the two fires to justify a joint investigation, he said.
But a police source said: “One fire is an accident. Two fires in as many weeks on farms of such prominent personalities looks slightly suspicious in the eyes of the public, and detectives are under tremendous pressure to provide answers in the shortest period of time.”
Police were called to the peri-urban farm next to the governor’s Borrowdale Brookes residence in Harare just after 9.30AM when flames shot up in the warehouse.
Gono and his family were getting up to their breakfast on their farmhouse a stone's throw away from the burning warehouse when they were helped to evacuate by frantic workers.
Edson Gono, the governor’s brother and farm manager, told reporters on Monday that the fire had incinerated everything in the warehouse and swept through the farm office. No-one was injured.
The Harare Fire Brigade – heavily criticised over its handling of the Mujuru inferno where they arrived with no water – responded 45 minutes after the call but arrived with “little water”, the governor’s brother said.
He added: “Fortunately, we have a small dam less than 100m away from the warehouse, so the firemen had to unroll their hoses and connect them to a hydrant which draws from the dam and we thought problem solved.
“However, there was a power cut and we had to start our standby generator to provide power for drawing water out of the dam. Only then were they able to start putting it out, but it was three hours later.”
He was keen to stress that the Reserve Bank chief was not blaming the Fire Brigade.
“Performance is a product of training, technical ability, motivation and crucially resources at one’s disposal. A very well-trained, well-motivated individual can never accomplish anything if they are poorly resourced. The obstacles in the way to service delivery by our city firemen are too numerous ... their best equipment was bought in 1973,” he said.
He said they lost equipment and other imported accessories worth US$100,000 in the blaze.
He refused to speculate on the cause of the blaze, saying police must be given space to pursue their investigation.
“Forget about the cause, the question to ponder is: if, as is the case with many Zimbabweans, we did not have a little dam nearby for water supply; we did not have standby generators; we did not have workers around and it was at night, what would have happened?”
The governor’s brother said if the fire had been allowed to spread to fuel tanks next to the warehouse, the blasts “would have spread to the main house and car park”.
“The rest I leave to imagination,” he added.
Poor equipment ... A 1970s truck used by Fire Brigade
Life savers ... Brave fire fighters tackle inferno at Gono's farm