MANY countries in the so-called Third World have developed rapidly because of successfully exploiting their mineral deposits.
For example, South Africa developed to great industrial heights simply on the back of diamonds and gold.
The Arab countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates etc — have become huge success stories because of successfully mining one mineral – oil.
Our neighbour Botswana has developed tremendously from practically nothing – a desert to a middle-income country because of diamonds.
We can go on and on.
In this article we are going to look at the rich history we had of mining so that hopefully it will inspire us to convert the rich mineral deposits we have in the country to great riches like we did in the past.
The history of gold which gave rise to the Great Mutapa Empire, has been covered quite extensively in the past in this newspaper and so we will not discuss it today.
We are going to look at other minerals like copper and iron.
H. Ellert helps us with our story.
Copper is a very important mineral.
It is the mineral that has made Zambia into a thriving economy it is today.
There was a lot of copper mining in Zimbabwe before colonialism.
There is plenty of copper in Zimbabwe today and we can still go back to great copper mining like in the past.
Not only was there copper mining in the country, the mined copper was also processed in the country by our forefathers into various products which were then used in trade and even as money.
As Ellert notes: “There is considerable evidence of ancient copper mining at Umkondo Mine in Masvingo, at Mhangura, Shamrock mines in northern Mashonaland and at Copper Queen and Skipper mines in the Midlands Province.
Examples of early manufactured copperware in the form of wire and X-shaped ingots support the level of technology and attendant metal working skills which date from times well before the arrival of the Portuguese.”
When the Portuguese later arrived in Zimbabwe, they confirmed seeing copper being mined and processed by our ancestors.
One of them, one Manuel Barreto, writes as follows: “Of the existence of copper there is no doubt, for we have seen it.
Among the kaffirs (blacks) it is used as money.”
One of the Portuguese again, Roman Catholic priest Luis de Fugneriod Cardozo, in 1680, wrote about copper he had seen in the Manica Province “where the local Africans dug the copper with great facility producing ‘some loaves’ of the smelted metal.
These copper ingots were then traded at the rate of 12 ingots for one bertangil of cloth…”
What a great story about our past mining this is.
This should definitely inspire us.
We now come to one of the most imported minerals in the world toda, iron, which always goes together with steel.
“The Iron Age society which the Portuguese encountered when they arrived on the highlands of Zimbabwe in the beginning of the 16th Century already possessed the technology to mine and smelt iron.
There is evidence that iron was exported via the port of Sofala.
There are a number of sites in Manica District of which Muvita-Munhinga is perhaps the largest.
Examination of this site has produced evidence of open-cast surface ore extraction and nearby smelting.
The remains of furnaces and slag are evidence of a large-scale industry in pre-colonial times.
Iron ores are readily available at a number of historical sites throughout Zimbabwe and the most significant of these were centred at Wedza Mountain (the Njanja), Shurugwi, Redcliff and Buchwa.
The extent of the Njanja iron industry and their association with the Portuguese of the Zambezi Valley is extremely important.
The Njanja produced a wide variety of iron implements, tools and weapons which they traded with their neighbours.
For example, the extreme value of the iron hoe blade, the ‘badza’ as a unit of exchange and agricultural tool was noted by the Portuguese during their early contacts with Mutapa.”
The above talk about our success with iron in the past brings me to the sad story of Ziscosteel.
Two weeks ago a Zimbabwe delegation made up of engineers from local authorities, the District Development Fund and Government visited the East European country of Belarus to look for road equipment such as graders, tippers and dozers to buy.
While they were on that tour, they had an opportunity to visit a company that manufactures passenger buses for use in urban areas.
As they were being taken on a conducted tour of that bus company’s plant, their host, a top official of the company, bemoaned the lack of iron and steel in their country, metals which are key to the production of the buses.
The cry for iron and steel by that company official made the Zimbabwe delegates think about Ziscosteel back home.
If our poor Ziscosteel was up and running, imagine the amount of trade that would develop between that bus company and Ziscosteel.
Experiences like the one above should energise us to revive the giant Ziscosteel plant.
Ziscosteel was the biggest consolidated steelworks plant in all Africa, North and South.
Furthermore, Ziscosteel produced the best steel products in all Africa.
Our great past in iron production and beneficiation must urge us to bring back our iron and steel industry, Ziscosteel in particular, like in the past.
With a vibrant steel industry, our dormant industries will wake up from their current slumber.
On top of that, we will earn lots of foreign currency from exports of steel products which are becoming scarcer and scarcer everyday.
Zimbabwe is rich in a variety of minerals.
Some of them, like lithium, are a darling of the developed world.
What is stopping us from making money as a country from the large number of strategic minerals we have?
I don’t think there is anything that stops us from getting lots of foreign currency from minerals like gold, gas and diamonds.
What we should stop doing is to put small-scale mining at the forefront of our mining industry.
Small-scale mining must be promoted, but it should never be the core of our mining industry.
The ‘makorokoza’ cannot be the captains of our mining industry.
Our mining must be large-scale.
We have gold on every square kilometre of land in Zimbabwe.
However, those riches cannot be fully exploited by ‘makorokoza’.
With gold, we must now go for large-scale mining if we are going to reap great rewards as a nation.
The present piecemeal approach to mining will get us nowhere because a lot of the gold is lost to unscrupulous dealers and gangsters.
Yes, we must go for large-scale gold mining in the country!
Gold is capable of meeting almost all of our foreign currency needs if we put the industry right.
Zimbabwe is going to be the most-developed country in Africa if all our mineral resources are fully exploited to our benefit.