Panning to live as Zimbabwe's mining industry falls apart

[seemslikeadream]

author/source:Business Day (SA)
published:Wed 31-Mar-2004
posted on this site:Wed 31-Mar-2004

Article Type : News

"The longer we go down the road we're going, the longer it's going to take to come right. Really, we're in free fall now and it's hard to know how to stop it"

The riverbeds around Gwanda in southwest Zimbabwe are disfigured by mounds of earth dug up by people panning for gold. On the hillsides, areas are pockmarked with the evidence of illicit mining: deep trenches newly excavated; abandoned pits reopened. Hundreds of people often women and children work a patch, day and night; using picks, shovels and paraffin lamps made from bottles. They clamber down disused shafts on improvised ladders of barbed wire. You would not call this a bonanza; rather a search driven by desperation. The gold-seekers, a phenomenon usually associated with African states poorer than Zimbabwe, represent the underside of the country's economic wreckage in the latest phase of Robert Mugabe's 24-year presidency. While the country's established gold industry struggles to keep going, up to 1-million Zimbabweans, according to mining industry experts, are now engaged in panning. Despite a recent crackdown on contraband gold exports and a government offer of premium prices for small producers, industry experts believe a large proportion is smuggled out of the country. There is unproved speculation about involvement by government figures. This is happening at a time when Zimbabwe depends more than ever on the mining industry principally platinum, gold and chromium to earn foreign exchange. Chaotic land reform has devastated the country's agricultural export economy. Production of tobacco, long the top export earner, has plummeted. Official gold output has also fallen, reduced by more than 50% since 1999 to slightly more than 12 tons last year. Ian Saunders, president of the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe, says it has been overtaken by illegal output, maybe another 18 tons, worth about 230m on the world market.

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=8972

[AP]

1. If this were any other African country, the mining company's Pinkertons

would probably shoot these people between the eyes for steeling the company's property.

At least this way, the people are getting to benefit from the wealth of their country.