I have always been a journalist who moves in the bushes. Sometimes I do it on weekends to refresh, to see beyond paper and pen, to learn, to know, to understand.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
This time, I went to Mtoko.
The dust hits you first. Then the sound, the relentless chatter of compressors, the crack of jackhammers against ancient rock. Mining is taking place here. Men and women, covered in earth, are digging, blasting, crushing, and panning. It is a scene repeated across Zimbabwe, where artisanal and small-scale miners now account for more than 70 percent of national gold output.
But as I watched, I began to notice something.
The gold they were pulling from the ground was not all going where you might expect. Some of it was making its way to Fidelity Gold Refinery, just enough, I would later learn, to keep the authorities satisfied. But the rest? That was going somewhere else.
The sponsors
I sat with them under the shade of a msasa tree, the dust settling on their overalls. They had been working since sunrise, and their hands still bore the stains of the red Mtoko earth.
A miner pointed to the equipment around us – compressors, jackhammers, explosives.
“This is not ours,” he said. “This belongs to the sponsors.”
I asked him who these sponsors were.
He shrugged. “They come. They see what we are doing. They do a bit of research, chikorokoza-type exploration, and then they start putting in capital.”
Not much, he explained. Sometimes not more than US$2,000. And things start to happen.
The economics of survival
They do not need much, he told me. Food. A compressor. A jackhammer. Maybe personal protective equipment. The sponsors provide all of this, and they wait. Sometimes it takes time for the gold to come. The sponsors are patient.
In return, they buy all the gold produced. At a price they set. And they share.
“They are not lenders,” he said, pointing a finger at me for emphasis. “They are partners in the project.”
As I listened, I began to piece together the economics of it all. The sponsors fund exploration, provide working capital, supply equipment. The miners provide the labour, the knowledge of the ground, and the sweat. When the gold comes, they split it, but the sponsors control the price, and they control where it goes.
The Fidelity balancing act
I asked about Fidelity Gold Refinery.
They looked at each other.
The police visits had changed things, they told me. The authorities wanted to see the books. They wanted to know where the gold was going. So now they do the thing, they take some grams to Fidelity. Just enough to balance the books. Just enough to show compliance.
I asked one of them quietly, away from the others: “The sponsors, do they take the gold to Fidelity?”
He lowered his voice. “Some days, maybe. But not all of it. It’s a ring.”
I took note. It was an observation I would investigate later.
The model that works
What struck me most was not the smuggling; it was the sophistication of the sponsor model. These sponsors were not simply buying gold. They were investing in exploration, funding operations, providing equipment, and managing logistics. They were, in effect, acting as junior mining companies, operating entirely in the shadows.
The miners I spoke with saw the logic of it.
“We are here because of the sponsors. We mine because of their money. Without them, the gold is not there.”
But they also saw the limitations. They were selling their gold at prices set by others. They had no access to formal financing and no formal title to the ground they were mining. They were producing national wealth, but they were not fully benefiting from it.
A better way
I brought up the Magaya Mining model, the partnership between Mutapa Gold Resources and the Chekutu-based company that has created a consolidated mining framework, a one-stop shop where everything is done under one roof. It was my observation that this model could be applied more widely.
They had heard of it.
“We have seen what Mutapa Gold is doing,” one of them said. “Can we take it more to the sponsors’ model?”
He was not asking for a handout. He was asking for a better business model.
“The banks, yes, they can be formal, but not too formal,” he said. “The sponsors’ model works. Do a bit of exploration. Fund the operation. Buy the gold. All the gold is yours to buy at a price you set. And you share.”
I asked him why the government couldn’t do what the sponsors were doing.
“They can,” he said. “Even better. More formally. More precisely.”
His eyes searched mine.
“If they don’t trust us, they can understudy what the sponsors are doing. They are not running out of business.”
The will to invest
What was missing, he told me, was the will. The sponsors saw the opportunity and seized it. They took risks. They invested. They built relationships.
“The government can do that too,” he said. “They have the resources. They have the expertise. They just need to want to do it.”
I asked him what he would change if he could.
“Everything,” he said. “We need a better business model. We think the government can bring that. We want to deal with government directly.”
A gold future
As I walked away from the msasa tree, I thought about what I had seen. Here were men and women, thousands of them across this country, producing more than 60 per cent of Zimbabwe’s gold. They were doing it with little more than compressors, jackhammers, and the support of shadowy sponsors who operate in the grey spaces of the economy.
They want to come into the light. They have seen the Magaya model. They know the government can replicate the sponsor model, but do it better, do it formally, and do it transparently.
A ray of hope
As I packed my notebook, one of the miners caught my eye.
“Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo,” he said with a knowing smile. “A country is built by its own people. Let us build it together.”
He was not asking for charity. He was asking for a partnership.
The gold might be going anywhere now. But these miners want it to go somewhere specific: into the formal economy, into the national fiscus, into a system that benefits everyone.
They just need the will.
And I left the dust of Mtoko behind, carrying their words with me, wondering if anyone in the corridors of power was listening.
