Women miners ravage environment

Source: ZimConservation

Date: 17 August 2007

Author: Thabang Matebula

BULAWAYO, 17 August 2007 – Hordes of indigenous women’s mining groups operating under a shadowy organization linked to President Robert Mugabe ruling ZANU PF party are reportedly ravaging mining environments in the gold producing districts of Gwanda, Insiza and Umzingwane in Matabeleland South.

The women’s groups are operating under the Zimbabwe Indigenous Business Women Organisation (ZIBWO), a formation sponsored under empowerment programmes run by the women affairs department of the ruling party.

The groups are funded, pathetically though, through a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) package aimed at financially and technically empowering emergent indigenous business women who wish to venture into mining. According to RBZ sources, the women are using the same stone-age mining methods which were used by gold panners who were displaced by the police during Operation Chikorokoza Chapera late last year.

“Their operations are doing more harm to the environment than all the years of ravage visited by the alluvial gold panners over the past fifteen years. They are using the same old methods, all of which involve pillaging and laying waste to swathes of territory without any post-operational environmental rehabilitation.

“They are far from compliant with the demands laid out in the Environmental Management Act. They are operating only because they are under a ruling party programme. Many others who operated like them before were closed down for non-compliance with mining regulations under Operation Isitsheketsha Sesiphelile last year, he said before adding that many of those who were closed down had failed to re-open.

Zimconservatin.com also learnt that the women are organized into groups of at least ten and sponsored, often with paltry amounts, to operate specified gold claims with the produce being milled and bought by the RBZ. A zimconservation.com source at the statutory Environmental Management Agency (EMA) said the watchdog was aware of the women’s operations but was powerless to act because it is a government sponsored programme.

“Issues that involve the ruling party are often sensitive, especially when there is a bias towards the much-touted indigenization drive. By taking appropriate action against such groups, which would be to close them down, the EMA can very easily be misconstrued to be sabotaging the government’s indigenization drive just as it faces an election next year. Maybe non-governmental organizations can raise the hell about it, but we are a statutory organization, that’s where our hands are tied,” she said.

RBZ officials in Harare were tight-lipped, with front office staff saying they the RBZ had so many departments that they could not remember the one that deals with indigenous business empowerment funding. The revelation came as environmentalists raise warnings of impending environmental ravage by so-called empowerment groups sponsored into alluvial gold panning as the ZANU PF starts embarking on mining related projects to garner support ahead of next year’s election.