17 May 2019
The move by government to put about 95% of mining land in Matabeleland under exclusive prospective orders (EPOs) will cause conflict and corruption in the region, gold miners have said. An EPO gives mining companies exclusive rights to search for minerals and peg claims. The license also protects one from competition with other interested parties. The license means that small-scale players in Matabeleland are left with no room for expansion as big mining companies had acquired huge chunks of land which they continue to hold without working year- after-year. Small scale gold miners in Matabeleland South revealed that these regulations were forcing them to either bribe government officials to get gold claims or mine illegally within the EPOs.
“…we are forced to either mine gold illegally or bribe government officials to give us gold claims in the areas already under EPOs. This, in turn, has resulted in clashes over gold claims,” a miner, Mhlomuli Gwebu said.
In October last year, Ndodana Ncube died and five others were injured after artisanal miners clashed over gold claims at Vova Mine just outside Gwanda. Ncube was an alleged member of a gang involved in the violent clashes. Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF), the umbrella body representing small-scale miners, said EPOs were causing havoc in the communities.
“There are loopholes of conflict and corruption in that rights are vested on private individuals whom the Ministry of Mines cannot control. You also find that whilst we are trying to regularise the artisanal and small scale mining industry, there will be a lot also of those illegal mining activities within the EPOs,”
ZMF spokesperson DosmanMangisi, said. “So definitely, there will be also conflicts because in some areas you will find that villagers or communities will be forced to being relocate because of these discoveries’, he explained.
The Community Youth Development Trust (CYDT) recently convened an all stakeholders meeting in Gwanda to deliberate on the issues affecting the mining sector, and it discovered that CYDT, which seeks to develop the skills of young people so that they can effectively and actively engage and participate in the country’s political, economic and democratic processes, said the discovery that only 95% of the mining land in the region was under EPOs came as a surprise. The organisation also noted that the Mining Act was silent on the issue of mine claims, yet this has proven to be the major source of conflict and corruption. A number of families in Matabeleland South depend on mining as a source of living.
