Mining with a ‘Vuvuzela’: reconfiguring artisanal mining in Southern Zimbabwe and its implications to rural livelihoods

Abstract

The rural landscape of Zimbabwe has dramatically changed in the last decade. Zimbabwe inherited a racially biased land ownership pattern at independence in 1980 and 20 years on efforts by the state to address the colonial land imbalances have been largely unsuccessful. In 2000 the Zimbabwe government embarked on a controversial rapid land redistribution exercise that saw vast tracts of land previously owned by white commercial farmers taken over and distributed to mostly black Zimbabweans. Some authors have argued that there is no single story of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement programme because of the myths and realities spread by the media. It is important to note that what happened in one province might not be similar to the other. Rural dwellers in the countryside had for years depended on agrarian livelihoods and the fact that more land had been availed by the state meant better livelihoods. However, this article argues that in spite of a widened horizon to pursue agrarian activities many people have actually drifted away from on-farm to off-farm livelihoods. This is true in the case of southern Zimbabwe where a large number of rural dwellers have chosen artisanal gold mining as a pathway in realising a livelihood. This article therefore focuses on the expansion of artisanal gold mining in southern Zimbabwe; particularly in southern Matabeleland. Using fieldwork as a method of data gathering, the article unravels the development of artisanal mining in this region and how it has been reconfigured after the hosting of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa 2010. In particular it shows how the metal detector technology (the Vuvuzela) availed by the hosting of the Soccer World Cup has found its way to the region and changed the gold panning process. Conclusions drawn from a detailed PhD study revealed that a significant number of southern Zimbabwe gold panners have adopted the metal detector technology as a way of expanding their trade.