The Chronicle
BULAWAYO, Saturday, January 10, 1993 — A Shamva miner could soon be in trouble with the law as up to 500 illegal gold panners in the Matopo area of Matabeleland South on Thursday told the Minister of Mines, Dr Eddison Zvobgo, that they worked for him.
The panners told Dr Zvobgo that the miner, whom they named, had his claims to a gold mine near the Matopo National Park forfeited to the State for mismanagement.
They claimed he had employed them to pan on his claim, but they were now digging almost everywhere, expanding into land owned by the Matopo Research Station.
Officials of the Ministry of Mines told Dr Zvobgo that because the panners did not get much from the little gold they panned, they were resorted to setting up snares to catch game from the nearby Matopo National Game Park as well as brewing illicit beer to augment their meagre earnings.
The officials also said the panners were the same people who caused serious damage to most of the rivers in Matabeleland South, but because most of these rivers were in flood at present, the illegal miners had reverted to panning on the land.
Dr Zvobgo expressed anger at the land degradation that was being caused by the panners, who also endangered their own lives by going down deep, narrow and unprotected shafts which they quickly abandoned for new ones as they recovered barely more than a gram of gold every month from the pits.
“I have never seen such destruction to land. Really what do you get here, a gram for only $35 a month? Don’t you have homes? This is just disgusting,” Dr Zvobgo said.
He told the panners that the practice was illegal and instructed his officials to close the diggings and send the panners home.
“Finish whatever you have been doing now and make sure by the end of the day you will have left this place for your homes, wherever they are. This is not at all what you call earning a living. I don’t want to see this as from tomorrow, just go away and never come back to this place because by then you will be arrested,” Dr Zvobgo told the panners.