By Munashe Masiyiwa
Zimbabwe revives its Community Share Ownership Trusts, but Marange remembers.
The Zimbabwean government is once again turning to an old idea to solve a familiar problem. The Cabinet recently approved the Operationalisation of Community Share Ownership Trusts and Reserved Sectors Policy, marking the formal reintroduction of a programme first conceived more than a decade ago to ensure that communities benefit directly from the extraction of natural resources in their localities.
The initiative, first rolled out in 2013 under the populist banner of indigenisation, was marred by political interference, a lack of disbursement of funds, and many other challenges. According to the Cabinet, the new phase will include a comprehensive review of past failures, corporate rescue for struggling trusts, strengthened regulation, and audits of past fund usage. It will also entail a communication blitz to raise awareness about the trust’s existence. The ambition is bold: use natural wealth to underwrite local development, reduce inequality, and prevent extractive industries from leaving communities desolate.
Yet in Marange and Zimunya, the heart of Zimbabwe’s diamond fields, the mood is one of scepticism rather than celebration. The scars of a squandered first attempt are still fresh, and the signs of déjà vu are multiplying.
The Ministry of Industry and Commerce, now appointed as the Founding Trustee, has issued a call for new board members for the rebranded Chiadzwa Community Share Ownership Trust (CSOT). The selection process promises a broad, inclusive mix: women, youth, war veterans, persons with disabilities, business, legal, and accounting professionals. Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), the state-owned miner, will also take up a seat.
The rebranding has done little to calm concerns. The previous version of the trust the Marange-Zimunya CSOT, launched in 2011 by Robert Mugabe—was marred by deceit, elite capture, and corporate non-compliance. Although Mugabe was handed a $1.5 million ceremonial cheque from Chinese diamond firm Anjin at its inception, and diamond firms pledged $50 million in total contributions, only a fraction, less than $500,000, ever reached community coffers.
Mining companies ignored their pledges, emboldened by connections to ZANU-PF power brokers. Community leaders, including Chiefs Zimunya and Marange, later testified before Parliament that senior figures such as Didymus Mutasa and Saviour Kasukuwere were implicated in the disappearance of the funds. The trust was quietly disbanded after the repeal of the Indigenisation Act in 2015.
The Ghosts of Governance
Today, communities are still battling the fallout. Promised roads, clinics, and schools never materialised. Rivers like Tsingwizi and Chenyu were polluted by mining effluent, affecting water sources for both people and livestock. Many families, forcibly relocated to make way for mining operations, now live in food-insecure, infrastructurally barren zones like Arda Transau. If the purpose of CSOTs was to empower, the outcome has been precisely the opposite.
Already, suspicion now surrounds ZCDC’s disbursement of a US$1.2 million community dividend to a newly created CSOT structure that local leaders say was formed without proper consultation. A group led by Hardwork Mukwada and Newman Chiadzwa, along with some traditional authorities, is accused of sidestepping legitimate community structures in favour of a political arrangement. Community groups claim the funds were hijacked and used for personal gain.
The Marange Development Trust, supported by civil society, has written to ZCDC demanding an explanation. Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, calls the disbursement fraudulent: “ZCDC failed the transparency test. They handed over money to individuals with no public mandate, no audit trail, and no consultation. This is not empowerment, it’s predation.”
Local MP Nyasha Marange has also been fingered in the affair, with allegations that he is seeking to personally manage the fund through an unaccountable proxy committee.
Can Trust Be Rebuilt?
Cabinet’s renewed commitment to economic empowerment via CSOTs is admirable in theory. But the credibility of the policy will depend less on how many board seats are filled than on how much oversight and accountability is embedded into the new framework.
Public audits of the original Marange-Zimunya trust are essential. Without reckoning with the past, the new programme risks appearing as little more than political theatre. Civil society is demanding a Commission of Inquiry into the misuse of CSOT funds, the role of ZANU-PF elites, and the collusion of mining firms who defaulted on their pledges.
Meanwhile, there are legitimate concerns about corporate influence. The presence of ZCDC and Anjin on the new trust board invites questions about conflicts of interest. Will companies tasked with paying into the trust also be permitted to oversee how funds are spent?
Activists such as Cosmus Sunguro of the Zimbabwe Diamond Workers Union argue that any future dividends must be tied to verifiable production figures and declared profits. “Without disclosure,” he warns, “we cannot know if the community is receiving what it is owed.”
What Is At Stake
If Marange and Zimunya are to benefit from their mineral wealth, the new CSOT must be more than a public relations reset. It must represent a genuine shift in governance—away from patronage and towards participation.
The government has pledged to revamp the legal and regulatory infrastructure underpinning the trusts. That is welcome. But it must also depoliticise trust management, prevent elite interference, and build robust accountability systems that communities themselves can access and control. Only then will the phrase “community empowerment” regain meaning in Marange.
The diamonds are still there. So are the people. What’s missing—still—is trust.