The crunching sound of bulldozers came as a death rattle for men working deep in a gold mine in eastern Zimbabwe. On 15 November, contractors’ bulldozers converged on the mine on the outskirts of Mutare. They planned to “reclaim” it from the local community, who had been mining there independently with low-tech tools and without the backing of a company (known as artisanal or small-scale mining). However, the tonnes of soil and rock poured down the mineshaft to block up its entrances created a living grave for the men still at work underground.
Reports of how many people died inside the mine range from two to twelve. Rescuers recovered the bodies of two men and then stopped searching. The Chinese company responsible says it thought the mine was empty and had given fair warning of the reclamation – a claim disputed by the miners. No criminal charges have been filed over the incident.
“Artisanal mining is giving people a livelihood but to a large extent it is modern-day slavery,” says Farai Maguwu, director of Zimbabwe’s Centre for Natural Resource Governance, who visited the mine in the aftermath of the deaths. “There is a big contradiction between what you see in the jewellery shops and the source where these minerals are extracted.”
