By Staff Reporter
In Zimbabwe’s mineral-rich countryside, a quieter theft is underway. Beyond the clamour of excavators and the spectacle of groundbreaking ceremonies, a more insidious industry has taken root. It is a systematic diversion of mineral wealth by politically connected elites, aided by opaque bureaucracies and an ineffective anti-corruption institution.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the allocation of mining claims and concessions, routinely granted without public tender, transparency, or due diligence. Instead of competitive bidding and legal compliance, lucrative rights are often handed out behind closed doors to firms and individuals with the right political affiliations.
In this process, community rights, environmental concerns, and legitimate small-scale miners are easily swept aside in the rush for patronage.
This extractive favouritism, while not new, has reached new heights amid Zimbabwe’s push to attract investment under its Vision 2030 development blueprint. The government’s thrust to develop a US$12 billion mining industry has all but thrown due diligence out of the window.
The government’s mantra ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’ has become, in practice, a euphemism for deregulated cronyism in the mining sector. “Access to Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth today depends less on merit than on proximity to power,” observes Donald Nyarota, communications and advocacy officer with the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG).
He contends that allocation of mining claims and concessions is often done without transparency or due diligence.
“There are frequent reports of politically connected individuals and companies being awarded lucrative mining rights without public tender, sidelining local communities and legitimate small-scale miners.
“This creates a patronage system where access to mineral wealth is tied to proximity to power, not legal merit or community benefit.”
The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), the state’s official anti-graft body, appears either unwilling or unable to intervene. Legally empowered but structurally weak, ZACC is more often seen at ribbon-cuttings and conferences than in courtrooms. It lacks the teeth and perhaps the political will to bite the political hand that feeds it.
Its failure to investigate high-profile allocations or enforce disclosure requirements in the extractive sector underscores what many Zimbabweans have come to suspect: the anti-corruption apparatus is performative, not prosecutorial.
Tafadzwa Chikumbu, director of Transparency International Zimbabwe, voiced guarded optimism at a recent anti-corruption summit in Harare. In a carefully worded address, he called for stronger institutions and “shared responsibility” in combating graft. But such calls, while well-intentioned, are increasingly disconnected from the everyday realities of citizens facing eviction by mining companies, trucks thundering past their homes, and toxic dust settling on their fields.
“At Transparency International, we firmly believe that transparency and good governance are not just ideals. They are critical instruments for delivering a future that is just, inclusive, resilient, and prosperous,” says Chikumbu.
Zimbabwe is not alone in this. Across the continent, the promise of mineral-fuelled development often masks the consolidation of elite wealth, even leading to losses of $88.6 billion annually due to illicit financial flows.
However, Zimbabwe’s case is particularly acute because its formal anti-corruption frameworks, on paper, rather robust in parallel with a deeply entrenched informal economy of kickbacks, favours, and impunity.
Sweden’s ambassador, Per Lindgärde, echoing EU positions, noted at TIZ’s Integrity and Accountability Summit that corruption remains “possibly the greatest obstacle to democracy and the full enjoyment of human rights.”
His country has made anti-corruption a pillar of its development work in Zimbabwe, with support for independent media, civil society, and gender-responsive governance. Yet even these efforts risk becoming cosmetic if the country’s political elite remain unaccountable and judicial reform remains stalled.
The result is a perverse feedback loop: corruption entrenches inequality, inequality fuels disillusionment, and disillusionment weakens public institutions—making them even more susceptible to capture. The real casualty is public trust, which has eroded so thoroughly that many Zimbabweans no longer expect justice; they merely hope to avoid becoming collateral damage in someone else’s deal.
Anti-corruption summits, while important, will not reverse this dynamic on their own. What is needed is political will, independent enforcement, and transparency measures with actual consequences. Until then, Zimbabwe’s mining boom will remain a tale not of shared prosperity, but of elite consolidation, one concession at a time.