Online Reporter
Theseus Mauruki Shambare
EXPERTS continue to warn that rising temperatures are increasing the frequency and severity of droughts across Southern Africa, tightening pressure on already fragile rural economies.
In Mudzi district, Mashonaland East province, mountains rise abruptly from dry plains, their rocky faces glowing under the harsh afternoon sun.
For generations, they stood as silent guardians over communities that lived beneath them.
Children herded cattle along their slopes and women gathered firewood from the surrounding bush.
Farmers looked towards them each rainy season, hoping dark clouds would gather around their peaks and bring the rains needed for another harvest.
Today, the mountains tell a different story.
The road that winds through Ward 5 is lined with signs of a changing landscape.
Dust hangs in the air as deep scars cut across once-undisturbed hillsides.
Heavy machinery growls in the distance.
Beneath the earth lies mineral wealth capable of attracting investors from across the world.
Yet, in the villages surrounding the mining zones, life remains defined by a more immediate struggle: finding water, growing food and surviving weather conditions that seem increasingly hostile.
The contrast is impossible to ignore.
Under the ground lies wealth and above it resilience.
As all this plays out, Mudzi folks are redefining their stories.
At a small fishpond tucked between dry fields, Ms Taurai Chimukoko scatters feed into the water as hundreds of fish break the surface in frenzied movement.
For years, she depended almost entirely on rain-fed agriculture.
Like many women in Mudzi, she planted maize each season hoping the rains would come.
Yet, increasingly, they did not.
“The seasons are no longer the same,” she said in an interview during a media tour of climate resilience programmes in the district.
“There are years when you plant and nothing comes out. We realised we could no longer depend on traditional farming alone.”
Around her, the land confirms her words.
Fields that once produced grain now struggle under prolonged dry spells and rising temperatures.
For people in Mudzi, climate change is no longer a projection.
It is a lived experience where wells run lower, rivers retreat earlier and harvests grow uncertain.
Adaptation
The fish in Ms Chimukoko’s pond are not just food but a shift in thinking: from dependence to diversification.
Nearby, Mr John Kapfunde watches workers tending a community aquaculture project.
“We used to survive through farming alone,” he said.
“Now we combine different activities. Fish farming is helping us adapt.”
The irony is striking.
Director of Livestock and Fisheries Production in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development Mr Milton Makumbe (second from right), symbolically hands over 2 000 tilapia fingerlings to fish farmer Mr Emmanuel Charehwa in Mudzi district, where aquaculture is emerging as a viable climate-resilient livelihood option.
In a district increasingly defined by water scarcity, ponds have become lifelines.
Across the district, climate resilience programmes are supporting households with aquaculture, nutrition gardens and alternative livelihoods; small systems of survival emerging within a harsher climate reality.
But Mudzi’s story cannot be understood through climate alone.
Mining has become an equally powerful force reshaping its future.
A small roadside sign points towards a licensed mining zone about 40 kilometres north of Mutoko.
Geologists describe the area as part of a vast pegmatite belt, with more than 40 mineral-bearing formations running through the rock.
The deposits include lithium, tantalum, beryl and simpsonite — minerals increasingly sought after in global energy and technology supply chains.
Zimbabwe’s mining sector has become one of the largest foreign currency earners, contributing more than 12 percent to gross domestic product and accounting for over 60 percent of export receipts in recent years, according to official economic reports.
Employment in the sector is estimated at over 200 000 direct jobs, with many more dependent on artisanal and small-scale mining value chains.
There is currently a wider national push to formalise and regulate mineral extraction, as the Government seeks to bring previously informal mining activity into the official economy.
The mountains that once existed as natural landmarks are now viewed through competing lenses.
Geologists see deposits while investors see opportunity and the Government sees growth.
Communities see both promise and uncertainty.
That tension is not new.
It recalls earlier mining centres such as Shabanie Mine in Zvishavane, once among the country’s industrial giants.
At its peak, Shabanie Mine directly employed between 3 000 and 5 000 workers, while supporting several thousand more through indirect employment in transport, retail, engineering services and housing economies in Zvishavane.
The mine also anchored one of the most visible mining-community social ecosystems in the country, including the widely known Shabanie Mine Football Club, which competed in the local top-flight league for decades and drew strong local identity around industrial labour.
Beyond production, it was an ecosystem; a place where employment, housing, sport and community identity were tightly interwoven.
Former workers still describe it as a time when mining meant more than extraction.
It meant belonging.
Zimbabwe’s mining sector today continues to expand, driven by global demand for energy transition minerals such as lithium and rare earths.
Environmental strain
But expansion has also brought environmental strain into sharper focus.
The Government has declared a State of Disaster over 17 river systems under Statutory Instrument (SI) 91 of 2026 — the Civil Protection (Declaration of State of Disaster: Emergency Riverine Ecosystems Rehabilitation) Notice.
The affected rivers include major water systems such as Mazowe, Save, Sanyati, Munyati, Mupfure, Umzingwane, Insiza, Mutare, Haroni and Nyamukwarara.
The authorities say the rivers have been affected by siltation, bank collapse and illegal mining activity in some catchments.
The declaration enables emergency rehabilitation works, mobilisation of contractors and coordinated restoration of damaged ecosystems.
The Government has also moved to restrict the export of unprocessed lithium and other strategic minerals through SIs governing the mining sector.
Two residents walk across the scarred landscape of Mudzi, where the topography has been significantly altered by ongoing extractive mining operations.
The regulations require that key minerals undergo local beneficiation before export, aligning mining activity with industrialisation and domestic value-addition goals.
Officials say the policy is intended to shift the sector from raw extraction to processing-led growth, increasing national benefit from mineral wealth.
Yet, for communities living alongside mining operations, the question remains deeply local: Is development visible in daily life?
“We don’t refuse mining,” said 84-year-old Gogo Winnet Sirewu, gesturing towards disturbed grazing land.
“But we fear what remains after it.”
Nearby, another voice reflects a concern.
“Mining is happening around us,” said Mr Kapfunde. “But communities also need projects that remain with us.”
For many households, climate change has intensified these questions.
Women, in particular, carry the burden of adaptation.
They walk further for water, stretch food supplies further and absorb the shocks of failed seasons more directly.
In Mudzi, those realities are not statistics but lived routines.
“When water becomes scarce, everything else becomes harder,” said Ms Jane Kazanhi, tending a small vegetable garden near a drying stream.
Around her, survival has become increasingly inventive.
Fishponds stand beside maize fields that no longer respond reliably to rainfall.
Backyard gardens are carefully irrigated with rationed water.
Small livestock and aquaculture now complement shrinking harvests.
“People are not waiting anymore,” said Shinga Ward 4 agricultural business advisory officer Mr Mark Tsabora.
“They are adjusting in real time. They are now using underground water through borehole drilling to support their fishponds and crops feed from fishpond water, which is nutritious as well.”
But adaptation unfolds alongside new concerns.
Residents in mining-affected areas speak about dust on crops, open pits and pressure on local water sources.
“Development must not come at the expense of the same communities it is meant to uplift,” said ActionAid Zimbabwe country director Dr Selina Pasirayi.
“We are seeing extraction move faster than protection. Without stronger safeguards, water systems and ecosystems remain at risk.”
Child protection officials also warn that economic pressure in mining areas can expose children to unsafe conditions or disrupt schooling.
“In some cases, children become part of survival strategies,” said a Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare official, Mr Timothy Mudakureva.
“Their protection must remain central.”
Teachers in the district say attendance patterns often fluctuate during periods of household stress, reflecting the pressures faced by rural families.
Despite this, adaptation continues.
Fishponds glint in the afternoon light.
Gardens are reshaped around scarce water points and families build mixed livelihoods from farming, livestock and aquaculture.
What is unfolding in Mudzi is not a single story of loss or resilience; it is a negotiation between both.
The question is no longer whether change is happening. It is who it is working for, and at what cost.
Above the mineral-rich hills, extraction continues to redefine the landscape.
Below them, communities continue to reshape how they live with what remains.
Between those two realities lies a fragile balance.
One that will determine whether development in Mudzi is measured only in what is taken from the ground.
Or also in what is left standing.
As the sun drops behind the scarred hills, the ponds hold their quiet movement.
In their stillness, they reflect both promise and pressure.
Mudzi is not choosing between mining and survival; it is living inside both.
And the measure of progress will not be found in what the earth yields alone, but in whether life above it can endure.
Tinaye Agere