A MAN died after he was shredded by a sugar cane harvester at a plantation owned by Green Fuel in Chisumbanje, police confirmed.
Lovemore Mthombeni, 38, vanished suddenly while working the night shift at the plantation which supplies sugar cane for ethanol production to Green Fuels, a company owned by businessman Billy Rautenbach.
The incident, on July 13, is being investigated by Chipinge police who say they only recovered 80 grams of human tissue – suspected to be the remains of Mthombeni, of Chinyamukwakwa Village in Chipinge.
A Manicaland police spokesman said: “The now deceased was employed by Macdom Green Fuel company as a harvesting clerk whose duties were to record the number of loaded trucks and issuing receipts to drivers.
“It is suspected that he could have fallen asleep in the sugarcane fields and was crushed together with the sugarcane and loaded into the trucks before being conveyed to the mill where his remains were processed together with the sugarcane.”
Mthombeni, say police, had started his shift at 5PM on July 13 and was due to knock off at 5AM the next day. The alarm was raised by harvester driver Warren Musiwaro when he failed to locate Mthombeni at around 3AM.
Musiwaro, say police, had observed blood stains on the harvester conveyor belt which he suspected was from Mthombeni. A search of the sugarcane plantation yielded nothing before detectives sifted through the crushed sugarcane at the mill where they found bits of flesh which were taken to St Peters Hospital for further analysis.
Green Fuel produces ethanol which is blended with petrol and sold across the country after the government made blending mandatory to cut on a heavy import bill on fuel.
Police concede they may never know how Mthombeni died because of the limited physical evidence.
