KADOMA A recent gold rush here has seen thousands of unemployed and hungry Zimbabweans, including some resettled farmers, taking to illegal prospecting for gold and other minerals along the country's rivers. (Pictured: Impoverished farmers have turned to gold diggi
Some of the miners have come from the Chiadzwa diamond fields to Kadoma. Those interviewed by The Zimbabwean**** this week said the farms on the rivers were rich in gold. The farms that belong to the new farmers are rich in gold. So the famers themselves have abandoned the farming activities and are now concentrating on the illegal mining, said George Chitehwe an illegal miner.
There have been some violent run-ins between the farm owners and the illegal miners. Many people have begun spreading to the farms near the rivers where they fight with the land owners. But the majority of the new farmers who have been finding it difficult in the farming activities have since formed syndicates with the illegal miners, said Chitehwe.
Other illegal miners interviewed said the new farmers allowed them onto the farms at night to use wheelbarrows and sacks to cart away the rocks to millers who crush the ore and extract the gold. A resettled farmer and a war veteran in the area who declined to be named said he had formed syndicates with the illegal miners to dig for gold on the 20 hectares plot near the Musengezi River allocated to him during the fast-track land reform programme.
There is no proper farming talking place. We do not have adequate inputs and most of us do not have any technical expertise in farming. This means that we are struggling to earn a living from the new farms, he said. He added that there was virtually nothing coming from the fields. “We have failed completely as farmers. We have all switched to gold panning for a living because that is one benefit we have from the land that we took from the whites,” said Gabriel Soza a war veteran and resettled farmer.
Post published in: News