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Factmore Dzobo
DAY IN, day out, villagers from Fosika and Magaya in Bubi district, Matabeleland North Province, are engulfed in a thick cloud of dust from gold mining activities taking place in the area. Everything is caked with dust; residual mining pits are synonymous with the area. Cattle and goats forage on dust-caked tree leaves as there is no single tuft of grass standing.
Despite living in such an environment richly endowed with gold deposits, where several mining companies scramble for the yellow metal, the communities are languishing in poverty, watching helplessly as their God given mineral resources are plundered by what they called “foreigners” in their area. Companies extracting gold in the district have been at loggerheads with the surrounding communities over the importation of labour into the area at the expense of the unemployed locals.
For the two communities in Bubi district, gold mining activities in the area have not brought any benefit to the lives of the local people.
Villagers said mining activities in the district have brought misery and exposed many of them to health and environmental hazards, with no meaningful economic benefits.
For years, Fosika and Magaya villagers never benefited from the mining activities carried out in their area, despite the coming and going of different gold mining companies.
Reports of several gold mining companies in Matabeleland region failing to provide jobs for local people have become a major cause for concern for communities living in areas endowed with mineral resources.
Villagers who spoke to Chronicle felt neglected and shortchanged by several mining companies that come to exploit gold in Bubi district.
The villagers revealed that several companies come and go leaving them in abject poverty.
“After the closure of Motapa mine in the early 90s, several mining companies come in to mine gold with their own workers. Our children are unemployed here and some mining companies employ people from outside the community, plundering our mineral resources. This is not fair to us,” said Sheila Ndlovu, the Village Development Coordinator for Magaya ward 10, Bubi district.
Some villagers said the mining activities have destroyed the environment and their cattle are left with no grazing land.
“Everything in the area, huts, and trees are coated with dust and disused mining pits are now synonymous with the area. The dust exposes us to lung cancer and some residual pits have since become death traps for our livestock. We are just the recipients of all these hazardous activities and with no community benefits,” said Enisa Ndlovu of Magaya village ward 8.
Condemned to living in the rain shadow zone, where rain fed agriculture has become unreliable, the villagers said they were deprived of their land for irrigation farming by the gold mining companies.
“Our farming and cattle grazing land was taken by Isabella-Bilboes gold mining company. We are living a miserable life because of their mining activities. It’s better to take our land back to practise our irrigation farming that was then our only source of income and food. We can not continue suffering while some strangers benefit from our own resources,” said 80-year-old Solomon Mzizi of Fosika village.
Fosika village head, Grace Moyo, said they have tried to find a way to benefit from the mining activities but all proved fruitless as the owners of the companies never listen to the community’s concerns and plight.
“We have been living in this area for a long time, we tried to approach the managers of the Isabella-Bilboes mining companies together with the councillor of this area to address our displeasure with their operations several times but they have never listened to our concerns. At one time, we appealed to one of the mining company to build us a dam or drill a borehole for the community but nothing was done,” said Moyo.
Moyo said children at Balanda Primary School in the district were asked to bring water for drinking and for toilet use as the community faces serious water problems. She said they have approached Isabella-Bilboes mining company to drill a borehole for the primary school but no action was taken.
“These mining companies are operating against government’s policy which says every mining company should offer a certain percentage of their profits to develop the community, but no one is following the order,” she said.
Isabella-Bilboes’ Chief Executive Officer Victor Gapare said due to the prevailing economic situation mining companies cannot support communities or employ most of the unemployed locals.
“Due to some liquidity challenges we are grappling with, mining companies are not spared. We are not able to employ many people as we are still operating on a small scale. At the moment we cannot afford to support or employ all the local people because of the prevailing economic challengs,” said Gapare.
Environmental Management Agency’s (EMA) board chairman Professor Isheunesu Mupepereki said mining activities are indispensable to economic development of any country or to the communities endowed with mineral resources hence the communities should benefit as a matter of priority and as per government policy.
“Communities should be the first beneficiary of any mining activities in their area as per government’s indigenisation policy. In relation to this; government has come up with Community Share Ownership Trust Schemes (CSOTS) in which ten percent of the company’s shares should be set aside to benefit the local communities endowed with mineral resources. The economic benefits are made available to communities that are involved in the extraction of mineral resources and there is the creation of employment for the communities and revenue generation for the nation,” said Prof Mupepereki.
Research undertaken lately to look into the environmental and health effects of mining have found mining activities to be more hazardous to economic development than a blessing to the communities they operate.
Professor Mupepereki said mining companies should also implement measures to reduce the negative environmental and health effects of their activities on people as a matter of great concern.
A recent Parliament Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy public hearing was told that some mining companies in Gwanda district overlooked the plight of the local communities by importing labour from outside the district.
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derick.khumalo