In an effort to promote responsible mining and ensure comprehensive regulatory compliance, the government has revealed a significant improvement in mining sector operations, with mine suspensions dropping from 30% to 23% between two major audit exercises conducted in 2023 and 2024, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
The disclosure was made by the Chief Government Mining Engineer (CGME), Michael Munodawafa, while speaking at the Mine Entra 2025 conference. He detailed the progress of the government’s Responsible Mining Initiative, which was launched by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in May 2023 and followed up with a second edition in August 2024.
Munodawafa explained that the initiative was necessitated by widespread non-compliance among miners, who often focused solely on extraction while neglecting environmental, labour, and fiscal obligations.
“Our miners were, like I said, told to be so relaxed that they forgot they were responsible to the environment, their employees, the communities in which they operate, and also to the fiscus,” Munodawafa stated, highlighting cases of operations running for years without being registered with ZIMRA.
However, he reported tangible progress, citing comparative statistics from the two audit exercises. “In 2023, we visited 424 mining and related operations. During that period, we suspended 128 operations for gross non-compliance, which was about 30% of the mines we visited,” he revealed.
“The following year, in 2024, we visited 728 mines and suspended 161, which was now 23% of the visited mines,” Munodawafa added, noting the significant seven-percentage-point drop in the suspension rate. “It was a drop, which meant that people were now getting it into their heads that they have to be responsible somehow.”
The CGME emphasised that the audits, conducted by multi-stakeholder teams including Immigration, ZRP, ZIMRA, and the Ministries of Labour and Environment, are not purely punitive. He outlined a dual approach of enforcement and education.
“It’s not just that we are enforcing, but we are also advising the miners and even the communities,” he said, guiding operators on how to “do mining the right way” and plan for the future, rather than engaging in haphazard, short-term extraction.
Looking ahead, Munodawafa issued a warning to non-compliant operators, announcing that the 2025 edition of the Responsible Mining Audit will be launched before year-end and will cover all provinces simultaneously.
“Be prepared. We will be visiting all miners as much as possible in the next month or so,” he concluded, signalling the government’s unwavering commitment to entrenching responsible mining practices across Zimbabwe.
