The Sunday News
Feature
THE Midlands Province is endowed with a plethora of mineral resources, perhaps the highest number of minerals any province in the country can boast of, thus earning itself the tag of the country’s mining hub.
A baseline survey of the Great Dyke conducted by the Environmental Law Association of Zimbabwe (ZELA) showed that the Midlands Province is endowed with approximately eight minerals.
Platinum, gold, beryl, chromite, iron and diamond to mention just a few are some of the minerals found in the province.
Being the hub of the country’s mining industry as it may, the Midlands Province has inevitably witnessed heightened mining activity, ranging from regulated large, medium and small scale, to illegal gold panning.
The province’s mineral wealth has given birth to, and continues to anchor economies of cities such as Gweru and Kwekwe and towns like Zvishavane, Shurugwi and Mvuma.
Some of the big mining companies found in the Midlands Province include Zimasco, New Dawn, Rio Tinto, Unki, Mimosa and Todal and these companies remain vital cogs in the province’s socio-economics, providing employment for thousands of people.
The story of the Midlands Province’s mining sector is a glitzy tale with a lot of positives; particularly when one looks at how much the mining sector contributes to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
With the bulk of the country’s mining activities concentrated in the Midlands, the province’s contribution to the country’s economy cannot be understated.
However, the vast mineral resources that the Midlands Province has are slowly turning from blessing to a curse, especially when one looks at the extent to which the environment and infrastructure in the province have suffered at the hands of increased mining activities, regulated and unregulated.
The province, in the past two decades or so has witnessed a proliferation of mining activities and subsequent sustained and relentless onslaught on the environment by fortune seekers.
It is the unregulated mining activities, commonly referred to as chikorokoza, that have put the Midlands Province in this precarious position.
The name chikorokoza was coined to aptly describe the nature of searching for minerals, which are not easy to come by.
While chikorokoza has notably improved lives and sustained families of many a folk in the province, the damage the practice has caused to the environment and the continued threat it poses to infrastructure remains unprecedented and a huge cause for concern.
That alone shows the ugly side of the province’s mineral wealth, which like a dead relative’s spirit that has not been reincarnated, is returning to haunt it’s own.
According to media reports, fears are rife in Kwekwe that some parts of the Central Business District and residential areas may collapse into disused tunnels that run underneath the city.
The fears heightened in April this year when a two-square metre crater appeared at a house in Globe and Phoenix mining compound and swallowed a fully grown guava tree.
Midlands provincial administrator Ms Cecilia Chitiyo two years ago remarked that the situation in Kwekwe was being worsened by illegal gold panners who were exploring the tunnels in search of the precious mineral, increasing chances of the tunnels to collapse.
“These tunnels should have been closed after the mining companies who dug them stopped operating according to Environmental Management Agency regulations, but this was not done.
“Gold panners are now operating in the tunnels and this poses great danger to buildings in the city,” she said.
Following the opening up of a crater in Kwekwe, Midlands provincial mining engineer Mr Peter Paswavaiviri and his team toured the town on a fact-finding mission, which confirmed that the town was indeed under threat.
Talk about blessings turning into a curse.
Sometime last year the Environmental Management Agency ordered the closure of Globe and Phoenix Primary School in Kwekwe as illegal mining activities threatened buildings at the school, putting lives of children at risk.
The challenge of environmental degradation due to mining activities is not only peculiar to Kwekwe, but a common problem across the entire province.
Driving past the Boterekwa escapement in Shurugwi town, negotiating the sharp curves and bends of the mountainous landscape is a heart stopping, yet captivating experience.
One cannot afford to ignore the scenery of the landscape and the seemingly impenetrable but beautiful green forests that cover the Boterekwa Mountain.
This beautiful scenery is breathtaking and compels most first timers at Boterekwa to take a moment to marvel at this natural arrangement of flora and fauna.
Sadly beneath this plush green carpet of the dense forest lies an untold story of environmental degradation by illegal gold panners.
Men and a few women with heavily soiled clothes, wielding sharpened iron bars and shovels and all sorts of earth digging artillery, ready to unravel the precious minerals lying underneath the ground are a common feature at Boterekwa.
Unrehabilitated deep pits spreading all over have become a defining feature of the escapement as a result of illegal gold panning activities.
The extent of the damage caused by gold panning at Boterekwa has reached alarming levels as there are reports that the road that connects Shurugwi and Masvingo is under threat of collapsing into underlying tunnels dug by illegal gold panners.
EMA’s Midlands provincial environmental education and publicity officer Mr Timothy Nyoka said environmental degradation due to mining activities in the Midlands Province was a worrying development and called for a multi-sectoral approach to curb it.
He called on small-scale and artisanal miners to comply with the law by coming up with Environmental Impact Assessment plans, which will guide them on how to rehabilitate the land they would have degraded during mining activities.
Mr Nyoka also talked about some the strategies EMA was employing to engage communities on issues to do with environmental degradation.
“We are working with traditional leaders who under the Traditional Leaders Act are the custodians of the country’s natural resources.
“We have also engaged local authorities whom we have urged to form environmental management committees and we hope such strategies will in a way help us monitor activities of mining companies and artisanal miners to see if they are complying with our regulations regarding the environment,” he said.
The discourse of environmental degradation is seldom given a human face as much attention is given to the extensive damage caused to the environment, yet degradation of the environment can also put human life in danger.
Most communities in the Midlands Province have had to alter their lifestyles to adapt to new environmental set up caused by mining activities.
Worse still, some people have been injured and others have even lost their lives after falling into some of these unrehabilitated and disused pits dug by illegal gold panners.
The case of 29-year-old Mr Fortune Siziba from Zvishavane District under Chief Mapanzure, who fell into a 24-metre deep unrehabilitated pit in 2001, is a clear case of how environmental degradation can have physical, irreparable effects on human beings.
The mishap left Mr Siziba with speech, sight, walking and hearing challenges.
Open pits that were left by chrome mining companies in Zvishavane remain death traps for both human beings and livestock.
Much as it is the statutory mandate of EMA to safeguard the environment, it is everyone’s moral obligation to ensure that our activities do not cause irreversible effects on the environment for the benefit of future generations, as espoused in the sustainable development discourse.
