Kwekwe to the geographical centre of the country, Kwekwe is also strategically located within the Midlands metropolitan area. Kwekwe, together with Gweru, Munyati, Kadoma and Redcliff form a single customer base for local commercial enterprises. As elsewhere in Zimbabwe, a high proportion of the population depends on the informal sector, possibly more than half of the population. Many self-employed miners carry out illegal digging work just north of the city, panning for gold, one of the most lucrative sources of income. Other residents engage in less strenuous work as cobblers, carpenters, TV and radio repairmen, and vendors selling anything from onions
Second round of voting in the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election line is, they don't care". While campaigning on 12 June, Tsvangirai was detained twice; after being first detained in Kwekwe for about two hours, he was detained in Gweru, along with about 20 other MDC officials, for about four hours before being released. At a ZANU-PF rally on 12 June, Mugabe said that war veterans had asked him after the first round if they could "take up arms". According to Mugabe, he replied that he did not want war, but he also vowed that the MDC would never take power, saying that the MDC would forfeit the gains of the