ONE hundred fatalities. That is the estimated number of workers to have died at Redwing Mine in Penhalonga in Manicaland province.
The mine is owned by Pedzisai “Scott” Sakupwanya, a businessman-cum-politician who is reportedly a close ally of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
He is one of the people that feature heavily in the damning exposé by an international broadcaster, Al Jazeera for their alleged role in massive money laundering and gold smuggling syndicates that are milking the country of its resources.
He is clearly a blue-eyed boy of the First Citizen of this country, who gifted him with an award — the Best Gold Buyer of the Year for 2021.
He also put the young man at the centre of the party’s fundraising efforts, naming him in a six-member committee that included Phillip Chiyangwa. Everisto Mudhikwa, Zodwa Mkandla, Tafadzwa Musarara and Antony Pote.
That has put Sakupwanya at the nerve centre of the party’s operations and despite his alleged involvement in the Gold Mafia saga, he has been cleared by Zanu PF to contest for a parliamentary seat.
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Government, after initially dismissing the Al Jazeera investigation, eventually said it was launching investigations into the people caught up in the smuggling racket.
We have been told that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit has frozen the assets of individuals implicated in the Gold Mafia exposé, including those of Ewan McMillan, Kamlesh Pattni, and Simon Rudland.
But Sakupwanya appears to have escaped the investigations or the inconvenience of having his accounts frozen by the authorities.
Which brings us to the regular fatalities at his Redwing Mine.
The Centre for Research and Development (CRD), Ziva Community Empowerment Trust, and Penhalonga Youth Development Ratepayers Trust are claiming that 100 artisanal workers have died at the mine since 2020.
Even against the country’s worsening fatalities in mining — 139 deaths from 125 accidents in the first nine months of 2022 according the deputy chief government mining engineer Tapererwa Paswavaviri late last year — that is pretty staggering.
How is he allowed to get away with this unprecedented scale of literally paying for the gold with the blood of desperate artisanal miners?
Even his paymasters and political protectors ought to be ashamed of themselves.
We understand CRD director James Mupfumi’s frustration over the fact that Sakupwanya’s Betterbrands is allowed to continue operating despite being the definition of a graveyard.
“Sakupwanya does not care where gold is coming from; he just cares about meeting targets of the Gold Mafia in Dubai. Sakupwanya has sacrificed labour — including child labour, environmental degradation, and is failing to pay taxation to local authorities. Mining is being done at the expense of human life and this is the reason why sometimes he has been defying the government ban to mine at Redwing because he has been protected by the political elite who are benefiting from the gold smuggling ring,” Mupfumi said.
To add insult to injury, the Environmental Management Agency has allowed Betterbrands to resume operations again on the token condition that it purchases eight gas monitors to detect concentrations of gases.
How many more lives need to be sacrificed in the hunt for gold and the money that comes with it? Evidence from Al Jazeera’s Gold Mafia investigative documentary suggests this particular vampire is never satisfied.