Mining ZimbabweLatest Mining News, Policy and Industry Updates

A 16-year-old boy from Bulawayo died last week after a gold mine shaft collapsed while he was inside with two other men in Hope Fountain.

According to police, the teenager from Village 16 Ntobi Rest-Bubi was employed at the mine in Hope Fountain.

Bulawayo police provincial spokesperson, Inspector Abednico Ncube, said they were investigating a case of sudden death which occurred at a mine in Hope Fountain, Bulawayo on November 3.

“The deceased is a male juvenile aged 16 years of village 16 Ntobi Rest-Bubi and was employed at a mine in Hope Fountain. The now deceased was accompanied by his workmates to work. The three entered into a mine shaft leaving no one outside,” said Inspector Ncube.

He said while inside the shaft, they heard sounds of something coming down the shaft.

“The other two ran and hid on one side of the shaft while the now deceased ran to the opposite side. When the noise had subsided, they went to check where the now deceased was and found him lying down bleeding from the head after being hit by a stone. They went out of the mine shaft and advised the informant about the incident,” said

He said the juvenile was taken out of the mine shaft breathing, but unable to speak.

“He was rushed to United Bulawayo Hospital for treatment where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The informant made police report and police attended the scene and investigations are in progress,” he said.

Inspector Ncube urged members of the public to practice safety at their workplaces.

The Chronicle

A Manicaland-based environmental watchdog, Green Governance Zimbabwe Trust (GGZT) has called on mining companies to seek social licenses to foster inclusion and participation of local communities.

The call comes after Headmen Chiadzwa and 27 villagers were recently arrested for protesting against the Chinese-owned diamond mining company, Anjin Investments’ bid to initiate a ritual ceremony without their knowledge.

A social license is an ongoing approval and acceptance of a mine by its employees, community stakeholders, and the general public.

Social licenses are centred on the idea that institutions need regulatory permission. There is also increasing pressure for ‘social permission’ to conduct their business operations.

In a press statement, GGZT bemoaned the arrests of the Chiadzwa villagers, saying it was unfair as the residents were protesting against the violation of cultural rights, defilement of workers’ rights, and legacy debt.

“We are alarmed, like all forward-thinking organisations lobbying for natural resource governance to drive sustainable development, to learn of the arrest of Headman Robert Chiadzwa and 27 others on 2 November 2021,” reads part of the statement.

“As they were making a follow-up, exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights to seek redress, the company turned on the villagers. Such spurious charges not only expose Anjin for negotiating with the community in bad faith, reeks of state-sanctioned impunity (political protection) always claimed by foreign investors.”

The environmental watchdog expressed deep concern over the failure of formal diamond mining to contribute to the national Treasury when communities were facing developmental challenges.

The GGZT said traditional leaders must not be incarcerated for representing their communities in seeking economic justice from foreign investors.

“Civil society organisations have extensively called for a legal instrument that promotes responsible investments, provides benefit-sharing, formalise artisanal mining and a framework for devolved mining governance.

“We, therefore, call for transformative conflict resolution, fully cognisant of the need to maintain public order in compliance with criminal law dictates, as a sustainable solution to repair the fractious relations between mining investments and the community.”

The rights group is rallying in solidarity with Chiadzwa villagers for challenging business operations, which violate human rights, social and cultural values, and environmental laws.

NewZimbabwe

ARTISANAL miners have been blamed for causing the spread of HIV and tuberculosis in Matabeleland South province.

Matabeleland South TB/HIV officer Norbert Singine told Southern Eye that the province has huge mineral deposits, resulting in the influx of artisanal miners who engage in reckless sexual behaviour, causing the spread of HIV in the province.

“They are possible causes of high HIV infection in Matabeleland South. It is mostly spread by artisanal miners because they are mobile and engage in reckless sexual activities wherever they will be,” Singine said.

He said the high HIV rate was also a result of the province’s proximity to the border between Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa, leading to high transmission of the diseases.

“Our province is a gateway to South Africa and Botswana and this means the population in transit engages in sexual activities with our communities along the border,” he said. “These busy borders, especially Beitbridge and Plumtree, have truck drivers who sometimes do rest at the two borders and during this time, they do engage in sexual activities.”

Singine also said the influx of mopane worms harvesters added to the spread of HIV.

“People who harvest mopane worms camp in the forest. This means people are away from their families and might engage in sexual activities,” he said.

Singine said people also camped at illegal crossing points selling food to people illegally crossing into the neighbouring countries.

He said newly-identified HIV positive cases as from January to September 2021 stood at 4 535 while from September 2021 and to date, 458 cases were recorded.

According to the National Aids Council, Matabeleland South province tops the list of areas hard hit by HIV and Aids.

Diversified mining company Anglo American can uplift the livelihoods of many thousands of people living around its communities in South Africa and support many jobs through its sustainability projects, attendees of Anglo’s second 2021 sustainability update were told.

The London- and Johannesburg-listed company outlined how it is moving away from isolated one-off community-related sustainability projects towards much larger longer-term interventions that support broader economic diversification in the regions where it operates.

“Governments obviously do development planning but we think we can bring something with a business approach to complement and to build on that,” Anglo head of responsible business partnerships Jon Samuel said during the sustainability update covered by Mining Weekly.

The sustainability approach involves deep engagement with stakeholders to understand their aspirations, which the company backs up with regional data analysis.

Climate, soils, infrastructure, skills, tourism and environmental resources are included in the many factors taken into account to build an holistic grasp of regions.

“From that, we can identify the untapped opportunities such as the tourism resources that are not being exploited, and whether there’s a mining value chain that’s not developed as much as it could be, given the demand that exists for the region and further afield,” Samuel explained.

Once the untapped potential is identified, partnerships are built and projects taken forward under a multi-stakeholder governance framework.

“We think it’s really important that we, as Anglo American, aren’t seen as driving all of this,” he said.

Buy-in from many stakeholders is sought, including government, commercial enterprises, other mining companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

“Then this is all underpinned by a project management cycle,” Samuel outlined.

Principles are applied that support big, long-term, scalable interventions – to allow for more rigorous planning and improvement evaluation, and to attract the best partners.

Partnerships are seen as essential to bring expertise, credibility and new funding pools to support the interventions being promoted.

Anglo itself invariably tries to introduce a productivity lens to, for example, support the efficiencies of small businesses being supported or improving the quality of education and health care through allowing existing public service providers to be more effective and efficient.

“We always try to pull the levers that we have within the company and the biggest of those is our supply chain and our procurement, which is roughly about $11.5-billion a year, which is typically about 100 times our social investment budget.

“But we also look at things like the skills within the business and we’ve been rolling out a group-wide skills-based employee volunteering programme to tap into some of that expertise,” said Samuel.

BACKYARD AGRICULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES

Agriculture as just one example of how community development can work out. What has been identified in many host regions is that more valuable crops can be grown than existing crops.

However, higher-value crops invariably need in-region processing, which requires the correct volume and quality of feedstock and which isolated action generally cannot achieve.

“If we work with partners, we think we can bridge that gap and bring in the offtake partners to do the processing and then find a route to overseas markets,” Samuel said.

Good news is that this is under way in South Africa, involving the use of either Anglo’s land or that of commercial farmers.

Anglo will put in the correct infrastructure to support high-value agriculture and will draw on mine infrastructure for water, power and logistics.

“Around that, we’ll allow other participants to use that infrastructure as well,” said Samuel. Such participants might be other commercial farmers or other smallholder farmers.

“It can even be people growing small amounts of crops in their backyards. Some of the things we’re looking at can be literally grown in oil drums.

“By doing this, we believe that we can get better value for our land from the landholders, so there’s a commercial win for us potentially, but also there are lots of jobs we can support and we can uplift the livelihoods of many thousands of people around our communities in South Africa,” said Samuel.

ZIMBABWE, BRAZIL, CHILE AND PERU

In South America, Anglo has been working with Inter-American Development Bank and TechnoServe, a specialist NGO, on business solutions to poverty in Brazil, Chile and Peru. (See attached slide.)

The Beyond Extraction programme has created close to 5 500 jobs and met the programme targets, with businesses participating benefiting from an almost one-third increase in turnover.

A newer three-year programme in Zimbabwe called Takura is focussed on horticulture and poultry value chains. Working with TechnoServe, Anglo is planning to support about 600 farmers to generate nearly 2 000 jobs. The second year of the programme is slightly ahead of track despite COVID-19 and is already exporting fresh produce to the UK and the Netherlands. It does not rely on local economies and it brings in much-needed foreign income.