The Zimbabwean government has reinforced its prohibition on alluvial and riverbed mining in a bid to mitigate severe environmental degradation. The renewed ban, announced on Tuesday, aims to curtail the persistent illegal mining activities that have plagued the country since the initial ban was introduced in 2020.
During a post-Cabinet media briefing, Jenfan Muswere, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, declared that the Cabinet had directed an immediate cessation of riverbed mining. This decision follows mounting concerns over the environmental havoc wreaked by the practice since it began in 2011 across Zimbabwe’s rural provinces.
“The Cabinet noted that ever since its commencement in 2011 across the country’s rural provinces, large-scale and mechanical alluvial mining or riverbed mining has resulted in water pollution, siltation, degradation of river channels, and disruption of riverine ecosystems,” Muswere stated.
Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Anxious Masuka, who also chairs the interministerial committee on mining and the environment, underscored the government’s commitment to enforcing the ban. He revealed that law enforcement agencies will be deployed to ensure compliance, targeting illegal miners who continue to operate in rivers, either as artisanal or mechanical miners.
“Although we have the legal underpinning to ensure that mining can take place in a legalised environment including alluvial mining, there is a class of illegal miners that go onto a river and begin to mine whether as artisanal or mechanical miners,” Masuka noted. “We want to ban alluvial mining and in banning it means we have to resource the ministries, the departments, and agencies that are mandated with ensuring enforcement of laws.”
Masuka further announced that stringent penalties would be imposed on offenders, including the confiscation of mining equipment, as part of the government’s broader strategy to protect the nation’s waterways and ecosystems.
The renewed enforcement efforts mark a critical step in Zimbabwe’s ongoing struggle to balance economic interests with environmental preservation, amid the increasing pressures of illegal mining activities.
