Zimbabwe’s government, under pressure to source foreign currency, is involved in a scheme to milk existing 500 000 small scale and artisanal miners according to a report by the Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW).
The report titled Artisanal Miners Robbed in Broad Daylight: Zimbabwe gold monopoly; reveals that the growing small scale miners are unofficial, unprotected and have few rights.
“If anything, the state deepened financial opacity and control by strategically canalising the hungry and desperate will of Zimbabwe’s artisanal miners who were the producers of such output,” the report says.
“These subsistence miners have few if any rights, and exist within a system which is layered with legal contradictions and corruption.”
Small-scale miners, unlike organised corporate actors, have no recourse to free and fair judiciary and this may lead to unfair dealings negatively affecting the artisanal gold extractors.
The report says, “Unlike registered mining companies, they can demand nothing of the state and have few options within the many-headed hydra of deprivation that encompasses their daily lives.”
“Exposed to violence, menace and coercion from other illegal actors, they are powerless to activate even the most basic fiscal-social contract between citizens and what is a politically repressive and authoritarian state.”
The report also says, “In 2013, before the gold monopoly, the country formally recorded 14 001 kilograms of gold production. Two years later (post-monopoly) this rose to 20 022 kilograms. By 2018, it reached pre-crisis levels of more than 35 042 kilograms. But this rapid turnaround in accumulated volume was not due to an increase in corporate production, efficiency by the state or fair dealing.”
The SARW also explains that artisanal miners have been neutralised and made into a source of supply rather than an external and uncontrollable threat.
“Gold exports earn hard currency for the state vehicles but Zimbabwe’s small producers and artisanal miners are paid, in part, through the local surrogate currency which has no value outside of Zimbabwe and which, given the state’s claims to shortages, must be traded on the black market for significantly lesser value. In this way, artisanal miners have been neutralised and made into a source of supply rather than an external and uncontrollable threat.” the report says.
“Despite this, the black market continues with an estimated 1500 kg of gold produced in the illicit parallel market each month – the equivalent of the amount supplied to the licit market. This amounts to a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars each year to artisanal and small producers.”
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