The country’s biggest gold miner, Freda Rebecca Gold Mine, a flagship asset of state-owned Mutapa Gold Resources, has achieved one million shifts without a single fatality, a milestone that underscores the operation’s deepening safety culture and operational discipline, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
The mine celebrated the achievement this week, with General Manager Professor Wilfred Chinyere crediting a sustained transformation in engineering standards, risk assessment, and worker empowerment.
“When I first came to Freda, we had challenges, difficult underground conditions, limited flexibility, and a short life of mine,” Chinyere said in his welcome remarks. “But we said we need to correct this. We want to work in a comfortable environment where we can assure the safety of our people.”
Mutapa Gold Resources has allocated more than $12 million for exploration across its portfolio in 2026, with Freda Rebecca as a primary beneficiary. The goal is to extend the life of mine to 10 years per operation, up from the current four years.
“The next agenda is to accelerate this exploration programme, add more life to Freda, create good mining flexibility, and assure safety,” Chinyere said.
Record gold prices, which have exceeded $5,000 an ounce, are funding the push. “Because of the good gold price, we want to make mining more efficient and safer by investing a certain amount of money,” he added.
Beyond engineering and exploration, Chinyere has championed a cultural shift centred on giving every employee the confidence to stop unsafe work.
“We want to transform the culture of the way we are thinking so that we empower the worker,” he said. “When a worker’s empowerment is good, the worker should say ‘no’; the worker should come up with an idea where they say ‘no’.”
That philosophy, combined with deep risk assessment programmes, has been central to Freda Rebecca’s journey to one million fatality-free shifts.
Freda Rebecca produces gold as part of Mutapa Gold Resources, which also operates Shamva and Jena mines. The group currently averages 300 kilograms of gold per month and targets 570 kilograms as it extends mine lives and scales up safety systems.
“The value of the safety culture will go up,” Chinyere said. “We are in for a period where we transform the era we had.”
The one million shifts milestone positions Freda Rebecca as a safety benchmark in Zimbabwe’s gold mining sector and a testament to what disciplined investment, exploration, and worker empowerment can achieve.
