The quiet town of Chegutu, located 109 km South West of the capital Harare, is home to a plethora of small business activities – in stark contrast to other sullen towns and cities of Zimbabwe. After all, the country’s economy is in a wild tailspin, hard hit by chronic fuel and cash shortages, as well as rising inflation hovering in the region of 700% per annum. However, scarce United States dollars circulate among locals in this town with free abandon. The only problem is a shortage of lower dollar denominations for change in transactions.
Several small towns in the country are bearing witness to a new gold rush. Not only is the government aware of this but foreign corporates are readily buying Zimbabwean gold mines, as the rally on gold is proving a suitable hedge against COVID-19-induced global financial risk. This renewed wave of mining activity is driving the country towards an extractive industry dependency mode, as gold is now the single largest foreign currency earner, closely followed by tobacco. With Zimbabwe’s tumultuous economic and political trajectory playing out, issues of sustainability and resource governance remain imperatives that need policy consideration, in order for people on the bottom rung of the economy to fully benefit from this resource.
All that glitters…
Tales abound of gold miners across the country who have stumbled into fortuitous finds. Some have fallen upon ore-laden wagons, abandoned since the Second World War on small underground mining railway tracks. Although there is no documentary evidence backing the belief, most miners say that German explorers hurriedly left for Europe as the war intensified. Frustrated by this loss in gold finds, they either buried the shafts in various layers of mortar or used explosives to blow up the mines altogether, with African workers trapped inside. In the field of small-scale mining, it is not rare to find a human skeleton hundreds of meters underground.
