Baba Tafara lives forty minutes from a mine. The road to his house is gravel. The nearest clinic has no ambulance. Trucks pass his gate every hour, and the dust settles on his roof and his maize.
He blames the Chinese. Most people in his village do. The owners are easy to see. They speak another language and work behind a fence. When the river runs brown, there is a place to point.
The accusation is not baseless. Mining companies of every nationality have left open pits, polluted water and underpaid workers. Chinese firms are part of that record. The state’s own account of the community trusts shows that the failure was not theirs alone.
Last year, Baba Tafara went to the ward meeting. He asked the councillor what the mine had given the community. The councillor said there was a trust. Baba Tafara asked where the trust had its office. The councillor did not know.
A mine pays royalties, licence fees and corporate tax. Baba Tafara also pays tax. He pays it in the price of bread and in every airtime purchase. All of it goes to the same treasury, and the treasury decides what reaches his district. His road is either a line in that budget or it is not.
Zimbabwe wrote the promise into law. Mining companies were to place a share of their business in trusts for host communities. The government has since said that 61 such trusts were set up and 58 registered. It has also said that many are dormant or have failed to deliver.
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A parliamentary committee visited eight of them and found that most had collapsed after the funding rules changed in 2018. The state changed those rules. Investors do not write the rules. They read them, and some find the gaps.
A company that mines in Zimbabwe does so under a licence issued by the state. Officials can order a pit closed. If a pit stays open, someone approved it or someone looked away. That person is not on the mine’s payroll.
Blaming the investor is comfortable. The investor does not stand for election. The investor does not sit in Parliament. The investor cannot be voted out.
Mining communities rarely get the information they need. The government has promised to audit the trusts and publicise their existence. Baba Tafara has seen neither.
The mine will close one day. The road will still be gravel.
Baba Tafara and the councillor are composite characters.
Simbarashe Namusi is a media expert writing in his personal capacity.
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