{"id":6720,"date":"2019-11-21T10:16:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T07:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6720"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","slug":"homes-land-destroyed-as-desperate-zimbabweans-turn-to-illegal-gold-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/21\/homes-land-destroyed-as-desperate-zimbabweans-turn-to-illegal-gold-mining\/","title":{"rendered":"Homes, land destroyed as desperate Zimbabweans turn to illegal gold mining"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Lungelo Ndhlovu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under\nthe blazing sun, a group of men use picks and shovels to dig up a bushy patch\nof land outside Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, stopping every few seconds to\nscan the soil for signs of gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n13 men, led by one carrying a metal detector, left open gullies all over the\narea in Filabusi, about 80km (50 miles) south of Bulawayo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\ntold the Thomson Reuters Foundation they would dig wherever their metal\ndetectors sensed gold, clearing bush and burning grass if they had to – even on\nsomeone else’s property. None of the men had a mining permit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Whenever\nyou hear of a gold rush, you know serious money is involved. People literally\npick up gold nuggets,” said Thomas Ncube, one of the miners whose name has\nbeen changed to protect his identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nZimbabwe going through its worst economic crisis in a decade, desperate\ncitizens are turning to illegal gold mining to make a living, officials say,\nsparking fervent gold rushes that can lead to violence and drive people from\ntheir land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nproblem has gotten worse over the past year, warned Robert Msipa, a district\nofficer with the government’s Environmental Management Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In\nsome recent cases police have (had) to set up bases, as such gold rushes are\npunctuated with machete violence,” he said in a phone interview from Bubi,\nthe district he oversees in western Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nspokesman for the national police force in Harare declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare no official figures on illegal gold-mining activities in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nMsipa noted that since September 2018, eight gold rushes involving both\nlicensed and unlicensed miners have been recorded in Bubi district, one of the\nmost gold-rich areas of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locals\nin other parts of Zimbabwe reported similar spikes in illegal mining in their\nareas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe country’s western Insiza district, farmers described how in October illegal\nminers burned most of their grazing lands to clear the way for digging, and\nthen left behind vast open pits that injured cattle who fell into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small-scale\nand illegal miners sometimes also add mercury to the soil to separate minute\ngold particles from other minerals, farmers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They burn grass for their metal detectors to work and use mercury which is very dangerous to our livestock and humans,” lamented villager Soneni Ncube\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lungelo Ndhlovu Under the blazing sun, a group of men use picks and shovels to dig up a bushy patch of land outside Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, stopping every few seconds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}