A top government official reveals impending amendments to the Mines and Minerals Act will include sweeping reforms, with provisions for the protection of cultural rights of communities in resource-rich areas.
Brian Muteta, deputy director of Base Minerals in the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development told delegates at a recently held International Conference on Transitional Minerals that the new law will seek to protect the heritage and sacred sites of communities.
The International Conference on Transitional Minerals was organized by the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) to deliberate ways in which Africa can utilize its abundance of critical minerals reserves to harness their potential for industrialization and transition to green energy.
In his remarks, deputy director Muteta told delegates that the government is leaving no stone unturned to make comprehensive amendments to the law which has been referred to Parliament for the third time after failing to get Presidential approval.
Muteta said current amendments were to reverse the colonial legacy of the old Mines and Mineral Act that was drafted to champion settler interests without respecting indigenous communities.
“The culture of the people in mining communities is an important matter, how those people’s cultural rights in areas where there is mining are being violated.
“As most of you may be aware we are in the process of amending and the law was promulgated in 1961 when Zimbabwe was not yet independent, and the law did not cover those issues.
“Consultations that have been done on all levels of government an effort and a strategy to address some of those concerns that have been raised will be put in place in the new law,” said Muteta.
Community representatives had given oral submissions on how the extraction of minerals was perpetuating violations of their cultural rights, sentiments which were also echoed by CNRG director Farai Maguwu.
“Drive for profits should not trump dignity, environmental rights, socio-economic rights, and cultural rights to land- contestations on the exercise and enjoyment of these at the behest of the mining industry.
“Cultural rights violations due to the extraction of minerals are one key negative impact of the sector, trivialization of the sanctity of the dead without due consideration of cultural values. Exhumations of the deceased breed trauma and reliving of the tragic loss of loved ones without clear mechanisms for psycho-social supporters for the families,” he said.
The Mines and Mineral Amendment Bill is expected to correct several loopholes in the exploitation of the country’s minerals which disadvantage indigenous people, including exclusion of locals from the extraction of strategic minerals.
In a recent adverse report tabled in Parliament by the Parliamentary Legal Committee’s chairperson Jonathan Samukange, the government was warned of the exclusionary nature of the mining sector.
In 2018, President Emmerson Mnangagwa sent the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill back to Parliament saying it had sticking issues that needed to be addressed before he could sign it into law.
The legislation will replace the archaic 1961 Mines and Minerals Act which has been the principal law governing the country’s mining sector.
Clause 6(4)(a)(ii) provided that any person who wishes to mine strategic minerals should satisfy the minister that he or she could invest a sum equivalent to or at least US$100 million.
A local small-scale miner Hyde Chatyoka says the government’s tendency to set high licensing fees was discriminatory to local participation in the mining value chain.
He said such measures were neo-apartheid and essentially against the spirit of national sovereignty and independence as they give foreigners an unfair advantage in the exploitation of national wealth.
“Our Ministry is considering legal measures whose goal is to racialize mining in that most blacks will not afford the compliance fee structure he has come up with.
“This effectively trivializes our independence and perpetuates neo-apartheid against historically disadvantaged persons. The measures exclusively give foreigners like the Chinese and the resourced, free reign in complying with mining law at the expense of the poor and downtrodden,” said Chatyoka.