adminKudzanai Gerede
KATERERE area in Nyanga just like many other areas in the country have been hit by drought and its sight tells a sorry narrative that little if not nothing at all can be recovered from the already faltered maize fields despite some light showers currently witnessed across the country.
For this remote part of the country, two activities form the economic mainstay; agriculture and artisanal mining. With poor agricultural returns looming, there is certainly a ray of hope for this community and its surrounding areas in and around Katerere where men here have become accustomed to alluvial artisanal mining as the sole source of livelihood.
At short intervals along Kairezi River, artisanal activity takes place with small groups of threes and fours seen bent while toiling along the river beds in search of gold pieces lying abundantly beneath the surface. They use simple tools such as chisels, shovels, picks and iron bars.
They are however wary of the local authority operatives’ consistent raids which they say were slowing down their production levels since artisanal mining is forbidden in the country but for some like 41-year- old Kabirutu Kapararidza and Austin Spoon (36) of Mozambican and Malawian origins respectively, this does not deter them.
“We work in groups of four people and on a normal day that is if we are not forced to abandon our work as we will be fleeing from municipal authorities who come here to raid us we normally get about 3 grams of gold in a day’s work,” said Kapararidza.
“We have lot of people who come here to buy our gold coming from as far as South Africa and because we are into this for survival as you can see it’s a risky exercise that can put us behind bars we are forced to sell through illegal channels. The buyers pay $25 per gram of gold,” he added.
A snap survey by Business Post highlight that on average each group realized approximately 90 grams of gold per month which translates to not less than $9 000 per year.
For a small community as this one and working on simple hand tools, their production output is over 30kg annually and not less than $50 000 in revenue annually is generated through these illicit gold sales.
He admitted that their sale of gold through illegal channels was bleeding the country of huge sums of money and was not benefiting the local community which suffered the brunt of resource exploitation, but blamed it on Government’s criminalisation of artisanal mining.
Such was the case with most artisanal mining sites like Penhalonga along Mutare River where huge volumes of gold are smuggled out of the country.
Miners here say in order to grow their operations they needed mechanization and formalisation but expressed concerns which come along with formalisation such as taxation, royalties and other processes they deemed unattainable including being answerable to environmental degradation.
“We face many challenges here, we do not have machines that can help us draw water from some of the rich pits we have discovered, so our level of mining is limited,” added Kapararidza.
Zimbabwe is faced with a plethora of challenges to resuscitate its ailing economy and chief among them is the continued use of a hard currency in the form of the United States dollar. This phenomenon has rendered the country’s competitiveness in both the regional and global economy generally weaker.
This has seen a growing contempt of the American dollar particularly in the wake of liquidity and competitive challenges bedevilling the economy. Owing to a depression in the country’s productive sectors, contemplating a new local currency remain suicidal to many, but certain quarters have suggested the idea as noble, only if the currency was to be backed by gold, a resource the country has plenty of reserves.
The concept is not an invention but one of the conventional systems early currencies were gauged against.
The gold standard, is a system which a country’s currency is measured by the amount of bullion or gold bars its Central bank has in its reserves and if need be to introduce more notes in an economy then the gold deliveries will have to be propped. The American dollar was premised around this notion during its primitive years.
As the country is battling depressed commodity output owing to the headwinds of plunging international prices, economic pundits have urged the Reserve Bank to turn the current price slump debacle to its advantage by propping its bullion reserves to back a local currency.
“That is great idea to form a bullion backed currency which at one point was in practice in Zimbabwe. In principle it is ideal,” noted Mr Raymond Chipendo, an economic analyst.
“At first you have to ask yourself what problem are we trying to solve? Is it of a strong US dollar which i think is a superficial and short term issue and do not think that should inform our long term decisions or is it of weak productivity — which i think is the main issue. The latter issue is connected to a myriad of factors including infrastructure gaps, red tape and less efficient means of production
“If the issue is a strong currency then a Zimbabwean currency backed by gold may achieve the same; strong currency. That is on one end. On the other, we are yet to earn the trust required to manage our own currency. Gold backed may actually require a third party to provide assurances,” he added.
He, however, said a local currency would help the Central Bank in making Monetary Policy decisions which might cure the current ills of liquidity at the same time addressing weak productivity levels.
He also hinted on accelerating investment friendly environment into the extraction industry to boost output.
The gold sub-sector harbours most of the country’s artisanal miners and embracing unregistered miners and cajoling them into channelling their produce to Fidelity Printers, a subsidiary of the RBZ will boost mineral reserves.
Last year gold deliveries recorded significant gains thanks to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Gold Mobilization Program (GMP) which seeks to harness low hanging gold resources with particular interest on unregistered artisanal miners.
It is however prudent to note that due to limited human and financial resources the exercise has not reached out to all artisanal miners. Under the strategy, makorokozas are required to form syndicates of six miners and register with the mines ministry so that they acquire mining certificates as ways of formalizing and ensuring gold deliveries reach Fidelity Printers.
“We have over 500 000 artisanal miners in the country with a capacity to produce US$ 20 million worth of precious minerals per month,” says Zimbabwe Miners Federation chief executive officer, Mr Wellington Takavarasha.
“We have talked about the policy change to formalization and regularizing mining operations, so we are trying to have these people (artisanal miners) as part of the mainstream economy.
“If you look at the monetary policy statement by Dr Mangudya we have actually pushed towards the decriminalisation aspect so we are in support of that,”
“We are moving around setting up machinery and helping them in places which we really feel are resource rich. Their production has been insignificant because of government’s refusal to support them in past years and not offering a market for to sell their gold,” he added.
Last year, Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Cde Patrick Chinamasa cut royalties levied on small-scale gold producers to one percent from three percent in a move aimed at increasing deliveries and encouraging formalization of small scale miners.
According to Minerals Market Corporation of Zimbabwe, the country loses over $50 million worth of gold every month due to smuggling activities.
Online Reporter