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The long-awaited Mines and Minerals Bill has finally been gazetted. For many in the mining sector, especially those who have followed the Bill’s slow, tortured journey over the years, this was supposed to be a moment of hope. A chance to finally craft legislation that speaks to the needs, aspirations, and realities of Zimbabwe’s mining industry, from large-scale operators to the ever-vulnerable artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM).
By Rudairo Mapuranga
But if the consultations leading up to the Bill’s gazetting are anything to go by, it seems we are slowly drifting off course.
Having attended a number of stakeholder engagements convened by civil society organisations, mining associations, and other platforms and I couldn’t help but notice a trend. While some sessions genuinely attempted to dissect the Bill from a technical mining point of view, many were eventually hijacked by issues that, although important in broader national discourse, have little to do with mining legislation.
Instead of focusing on tenure security, the rights and responsibilities of title holders, mechanisms for dispute resolution, formalisation of ASM, taxation, environmental protection, and beneficiation, we found ourselves drowning in a sea of gender representation quotas, war veterans’ historical entitlement claims, disability considerations, and other socio-political grievances.
Let me be clear: women, people with disabilities (PWDs), and war veterans are an important part of our national fabric. Their rights matter. Their voices must be heard. But the Mines and Minerals Bill is not the place to do that heavy lifting.
We risk diluting a law that must be anchored on clear technical, legal, and economic principles by stuffing it with identity politics and populist sentiments that belong elsewhere. Zimbabwe already has specific frameworks from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Ministry of Veterans, to the Disability Board designed to cater to the needs of specific constituencies. Their laws, policies, and regulatory tools exist for a reason.
The Mines and Minerals Bill is and should remain, a document that governs mining. Full stop.
It should be about access to mineral rights about who owns what, who explores, who exploits, and how revenue is shared. It should address how small-scale miners are integrated into the formal economy, how land conflicts are resolved, and how communities benefit from the minerals under their feet. It should talk about the responsibilities of investors, not their gender; about compliance and environmental duty of care, not personal identities.
Yet what we are seeing now is a dangerous trend. There’s a race to turn the Mines and Minerals Bill into a repository of everyone’s grievances, a pressure point for every demographic category that wants legal recognition in the extractives. That may win political applause, but it loses the mining plot entirely.
Even the small-scale miners, who have always been underrepresented, are now fighting for space to raise core issues. Their submissions on land tenure, mining title security, exploration rights, and forex retention have often been buried under feel-good speeches about inclusivity and empowerment.
What we must ask ourselves is: when the final draft of this Bill becomes law, what kind of document do we want? One that speaks to the real governance of mineral resources in Zimbabwe? Or one that tries to solve all our social problems under the guise of mining law?
This is not to say the mining industry should be exclusionary or blind to injustice. On the contrary, mining should lead the way in promoting equity, employment for the marginalised, and community development. But that must be achieved through the implementation of policy not by cluttering the foundational legal instrument of the sector with sections and clauses that do not serve the core objectives of mineral governance.
Real change for women in mining, for PWDs in the mining value chain, and war veterans seeking opportunities comes not from token clauses in the Mines Bill, but from state-backed economic programmes, financing models, training, and procurement policies. It comes from enforcement, not legislation alone.
The danger with trying to fix everything in one Bill is that we end up fixing nothing.
At this rate, we risk producing a Mines and Minerals Act that doesn’t actually speak to miners — a law that is politically correct but practically ineffective. One that pleases everyone on paper, but works for no one in practice.
As the debate rages on, let us remember that a mining law must remain a mining law. Let us elevate the voices of geologists, engineers, surveyors, environmentalists, title holders, ASM associations, and mining professionals. Let us fight for a document that unlocks mineral value, not a document that looks good in a donor’s gender mainstreaming report.
We owe that to the sector. We owe that to the miners. We owe that to the nation.
