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Features Correspondent
The bells sound signalling the arrival of a cage full of miners. The time is just after one o’clock in the afternoon.
In green and white overalls, black wellies and little torches on their helmets, miners slowly emerge from the deep depths of the earth after having put in an impressive shift.
This is a team of gold miners at Vubachikwe Mine in Gwanda, Matabeleland South province.
Many are squinting. How could they not after having spent hours away from the natural light that the sun provides.
Some have left the face of the earth before morning broke. Now they emerge as the afternoon sun casts curious rays over them. Even nature is pretty inquisitive as to where they have been.
One of the “men” walks with a particular gait. One that has sprinklings of confidence, self-assurance, swagger and yet with business-like seriousness.
Only when the miner draws closer do you see the unmistakable soft sweet nuances with which the creator defined women-folk.
This is Nontokozo Moyo a woman in mining.
“I hear you want to have a word with me?” She says with incredible confidence and professionalism with a voice bearing marked authority.
While she is a minority in a profession that is certainly male dominated whatever part of the face of the earth one may focus on, that she is breaking the barrier in the Third World, plagued with serious patriarchy is in itself an extra star on her epaulette.
On April 18, Zimbabwe celebrates 42 years of independence. Since attaining independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has scored huge strides in promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in all sectors of the economy, mining included through sound legislation and policies.
These policies have vastly benefited women like Nontokozo who is on her final lap as a part four student at the Gwanda State University.
Today, her work at Vubachikwe has taken her into the bosom of the earth although her chosen specialisation is one that ordinarily keeps her above ground rather than the business end of mining.
Studying metallurgy, Nontokozo, whose name means happiness, was well named, beaming when asked about her passion for life in the mining industry.
“I would have been a teacher,” she says cracking into a wide infectious smile; bewilderment written on her face in equal measure as if she were someone who dodged a bullet by ending up in overalls instead. My mother is a teacher and she raised my brother and I since our father is in South Africa. She would not entertain any word of me entering the world of teaching. Many teachers yearn for their students and children to be better than them and go for other professions. So in the end I had to abandon any ideas of being a teacher round about when I was in form 2,” she says.
It was when she was moved into the geography class for her “O” Levels that she fell in love with the world of mining.
Why mining?
She naughtily rubs her thumb to her index finger.
“That’s where the money is!” she says in mischief before composing herself a bit.
“I wanted to do something that spoke to processes. I wanted to know where the beginning of processes is right up until the point you wear the bling.
“I want to look at someone wearing a beautiful gold watch and know exactly what that product went through in order to emerge as a beautiful finished product.”
Her inquisitiveness has had her join Vubachikwe, which has trained her in her chosen bit of metallurgy; where her supervisor is also a woman, and she says the environment is that of an employer of choice in a dicey field.
“I was scared in the beginning. You hear several stories to put fear in you. Some people say you will be working many kilometres underground with just men and no phone signal should you need help. What happens in case of sexual assault? These are the fears I carried into the plant.
“What I witnessed was totally different. After induction by the Safety, Health, Environment and Quality officials and going round to meet the men I work with, I discovered that they were warm and welcoming and I was pushed to be a great professional.
“My mother was bewildered. It took her some time to come to terms with what I wanted and that I would be working in a place teeming with men. My father googled metallurgy and he was very excited for me. Obviously he was following the money,” she says.
Granted, it is not all roses. The boys tend to have what used to be celebrated as locker room language but in the Vubachikwe sense, she celebrates that it is not directed against women nor is misogynistic or objectification. Rather, it is colourful language that could get one excommunicated by the Pope in Rome.
“If I hadn’t gone down there I would not have learnt different languages nor made friends with men of different backgrounds. Sometimes they ask you where you come from or your totem and bonds are formed from that and you become close associates.”
Vubachikwe runs under the 2022 health and safety theme; “be your brother’s keeper” and it would seem this camaraderie has been used to make women in the workplace feel at home and comfortably so. Are there no patriarchs that make her feel uncomfortable? Well not according to this egalitarian.
“I am not intimidated by anyone. In fact perhaps there are people who are intimidated by me, but not that I know of. It is a fear I had in the beginning and it was erased on my first day when myth gave way to fact and reality.”
Perhaps her strength of spirit comes from the fact that she grew up alongside an elder brother who is just two years older. Sibling rivalry with the firmer sex ensured she could stand toe to toe and shoulder to shoulder with men whatever the situation demanded.
With her brother now at the University of Zimbabwe studying dentistry, she’s come out the stronger brawler in the world of careers.
“He’ll probably look for a gold tooth for one of his clients and I will tell him ‘I know a guy’,” she says and chuckles with her disobedient sharp humour.
Her work takes her everywhere on the plant because as she is learning the ropes, Vubachikwe ensures rigorous training for all.
“On the first day we were told to start work the next day at around 6.30 am and we arrived on time. We spent the whole day without doing anything and thought we had been forgotten! We only got further training in the afternoon. I will miss that day because after that, we would go home totally knackered knowing we really will have worked. Here at the mine, you work hard and you feel it!”
And yet it is worth it. While owing to operational and management issues and an economy often going through purgatory, payments of salaries had become inconsistent. Responding to the welfare issues, the parent company has stepped in to correct management pores that had seen revenue leaks being endemic.
With brave tweaks and relentless pro-worker changes being rolled out, the mine has now started paying salaries up in both United States dollars as well as satisfying the RTGS component, something that makes people like Nontokozo warm up.
And yet while she may have broken into what used to be exclusively a man’s world, Nontokozo is still a woman at heart.
“I know dating shall be quite a challenge. Having a man that accepts that you are going to do shifts at ungodly hours in a sea of men is quite the task. Even guys in my class say they worry about marrying or dating fellow miners. You know men tend to prefer heels to overalls when choosing someone to date. But that is a worry for the future she,” says as she tosses her hand in a gesture that is pregnant with nonchalance.
Also, Menstrual Hygiene Management is an issue for the minority women in the mine, but Nontokozo says she confronted the elephant in the room from the get go.
“Menstruation is a major thing. It is a reality so we asked what happened when you get a sudden period while in the tunnels.”
“They affirmed that it is an important issue and we need to tell whoever is leading our team and we will be excused and assisted. This in an important welfare issue and I was pleasantly surprised that the mine is proactive on such issues despite women being few in numbers,” she said.
Long back there used to be myths against women in mining with some even drawing from prejudices against women based on menstrual realities. There was even a myth that when women get to a mine the gold disappears and that the mine would be hit with a spate of bad luck when the women are menstruating.
And yet ever since Nontokozo joined production started edging up. Of course production has risen modestly not by any luck of her own but from reforms at the behest of the mine senior management. But clearly the gold is not disappearing and undoubtedly the opposite is happening instead.
And bad luck? Not a chance. The health and safety arm of the mine reports that they have cut accidents at the mine by fifty percent! So certainly womenfolk like Nontokozo bring no bad luck; in fact bright fortunes have followed the establishment!
True, women continue to be outnumbered by men in mining. But thanks to efforts like those of Vubachikwe to mentor women miners and champion gender parity, the tide could soon be changing.
“I would encourage women to come and join. You cannot find many women in mining if you yourself aren’t ready to come in and join! But I want to say you have to be committed, brave, have a strong resolve and love what you do.
True to James Brown’s words, the world of mining proves “this is a man’s world, but it would mean nothing, without a woman or a girl!” after all, if we ‘set a thief to catch a thief’ then why not set a beauty to catch the beauty of gold and other precious minerals?
Online Reporter