‘Impunity’: Chinese giant tile maker
Agiant Chinese tile manufacturer is embroiled in a messy row involving theft of one of the major raw materials for its Norton factory in a scandal that is likely to expose how it allegedly manipulates law enforcement agencies in Zimbabwe to bully small businesses.
Sunny Yi Feng Tiles Zimbabwe, a Chinese-owned billion-dollar ceramics venture located some 30km from Harare on the highway to Bulawayo, has in the past come under the spotlight for alleged gross violations of labour rights amid allegations that it is being shielded from scrutiny by senior Zanu PF and government officials.
A January investigation by The Standard in partnership with the Information Development Trust (IDT), a non-profit helping journalists probe corruption as well as bad governance in South Africa, unearthed evidence that the
Chinese-owned firm has been a subject of discussions at high level government meetings in Mashonaland West over its alleged environmental crimes for years without any action being taken against it.
The Chinese firm is accused of a litany of transgressions that include violating Zimbabwe’s environmental laws such as discharging of effluent into Darwendale Dam, air pollution and stealing of pit sand as well as gravel.
Fresh evidence has since emerged that the company is involved in alleged theft of kaolinite ore or kaolin — a clay mineral that is used in the manufacture of ceramic tiles — from a locally owned mine in Murombedzi in Mashonaland West with police accused of being reluctant to stop the looting.
Documents obtained by this publication show that Astrabay Mine, which owns a mining claim in Zowa, Murombedzi some 90km from Chinhoyi, has been battling to fend off Sunny Yi Feng, which has been illegally extracting kaolin from its claim.
Astrabay Mine’s woes started when the company engaged Sunny Ti Feng co-director William Gau sometime in 2018 to discuss a possible deal for the supply of kaolin.
Gau is said to have insisted on visiting the mine to assess the distance to the Sunny Yi Feng factory in Norton and state of the road before determining prices for the natural resource.
After the visit, Sunny Yi Feng expressed interest to source kaolin from Astrabay Mine, but the deal collapsed as Gau’s company offered to buy the mineral at US$3 per tonne, a figure the mine owners deemed too low for the raw material.
A tonne of kaolin ore ranges from US$65 to US$70 depending on the mineral content within the alloy.
Sunny Yi Feng, however, secretly tried to take over the claim by registering it with the Mines and Mining Development ministry, but was stopped in its tracks by the alert mine owners.
“This was a way of trying to steal (the claim),” said Muyengwa Motsi, the Astrabay lawyer.
In April 2020, Sunny Yi Feng started to surreptitiously send trucks to Murombedzi to steal ore from the mine, documents show.
Astrabay filed a police report against the Chinese company in Zvimba under CR 29/07/2020.
The Mines ministry’s department of metallurgy valued the stolen ore at US$4 174 444, but efforts to get the company prosecuted fell flat as police allegedly refused to cooperate.
On February 4, 2021, Astrabay, through M.E Motsi and Associates Legal Practitioners, wrote to Chinhoyi police’s criminal investigations department (CID) complaining over lack of commitment
In one of the cases, a Sunny Yi Feng driver, Artwell Kaso on July 13, 2020 admitted stealing 120 tonnes of kaolin in a warned and cautioned statement to the police.