Chronicle Editor
MAWULANA Phiri takes a walk around the milling area of Athens Mine in Mvuma, Masvingo Province, some 194 kilometres from the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.
Years ago the mine manager running this Duration Gold Limited-owned mine would not have be chatting excitedly with the people that Phiri is talking to. In fact, there would have been running battles and the players would have been at each other’s throats fighting furiously. Then illegal artisanal miners were locked in running battles with Duration Gold as they bore through the land illegally, caused massive environmental havoc as well as untold security problems.
A plan hatched to have a deal that brings together the mine and illegal miners, creating legal syndicates where they operate on Athens Mine-owned claims as groups and share the proceeds where their ore is processed for them by Duration Gold meant a beautiful alliance would emerge. And emerge it did.
On this windy October afternoon, and with the clouds looking to be conjuring a mammoth storm ahead, Athens Mine Manager Mawulana Phiri is going round to the mills to speak to members of syndicates and catch up with the work being done.
“It is a winning partnership that has stood the test of time,” Mawulana says about the syndicate programme.
“It is so powerful and organised and gives back to the community because it is taken up by those who need to make a living the most and those who otherwise would not have jobs. As a result, this model is being perfected and may soon be rolled out, exported even, to our other operations elsewhere,” he says proudly.
Duration Gold runs their flagship mine in Gwanda, Vubachikwe Mine, Royal Family in Filabusi as well as Gaika Mine in Kwekwe.
“The members of the syndicates and us split the proceeds fifty-fifty and we provide the technical, security and other forms of assistance for them as we process the precious metal that is gold,” he revealed.
Tinashe Chaweta, an artisanal miner and part of a mining syndicate was jovial about the programme and ahead of the coming torrent expressed the success that it had brought although he had a wish list of what could be bettered.
“The programme is helpful and has helped us a lot. We however, hope that perhaps some of the costs for materials used in processing the gold are shared equally by the mine and also that we may get more stamp mills so that processing is faster for all our syndicates,” he said optimistically.
Phiri was attentive, promising that concerns raised are always discussed at higher fora in the management order so as to ensure that any reasonable suggestion is considered and to maintain a winning partnership that has stood the test of time, having been started over half-a- decade ago.
“We act in line with the aspirations of Government to make sure that the ordinary man and woman has a seat at the table of prosperity. After all these natural resources belong to the people and involving them is important. We have syndicates with war veterans, formerly unemployed youth, we even have some infirm people being part of and benefiting from the syndicate system and that inclusivity is what Goverment is preaching when they speak of leaving no one and no place behind,” said Phiri.
The programme has repeatedly won awards for how it has managed to include the community in local industry as a form of community social responsibility success story with other mines in neighbouring South Africa also having taken a leaf from it and implemented similar structured programmes as well.
As Tinashe Chaweta rushes for cover under the loud and busy stamp mills, a cloud of angry magenta covers the heavens. The rains are nigh. Phiri heads for the office. There shall be a thunderstorm of terrible proportions, and then there shall be a resumption to work. Previously the only metal that was being worked on here was the sharpening of swords for war between the mine and the illegal miners. Now, those swords have turned to ploughshares. Or rather forks. Because everyone has a place at the table. Everyone is eating!
Bongani Ndlovu