Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

There is a rising interest in the Global South, to ensure that mineral resources are governed to benefit
local communities where they are extracted. The shared Africa Mining Vision and economic
aspirations in Zimbabwe seeking to integrate equity in governing and extracting mineral resources
reflects such interests. Yet despite these aspirations and commitments to mining development that
does not continue to disenfranchise communities, voices of communities remain peripheral to
commitments to improve the mining industry that has historically been illustrated unequal,
stimulating scholarship on the natural resource curse and recently unequal ecological exchange.
I begin this research by asking how people in Mutoko district experience black granite mining
and its governance. I inquire seeking to bring forth voices from below, those affected first-hand by
extraction and produce an ethnocentric account of mining anthropology rooted in the Habermasian
concept of the lifeworld and how its colonization by the system (government-corporation-complex
responsible for mining) shapes socioeconomic and environmental affairs at the margins. My key
findings show that communities shoulder the multiple burdens of black granite extraction without
getting its rewards. Broken bridges, damaged roads, dirty air, hazardous living environments and
loss of land are some of the key socioeconomic effects currently being experienced. The current
governance regime characterised by outdated laws, dishonesty, intimidation of the governed permits
the burdens described to perpetuate. I conclude that in the marginalised lifeworld resides knowledge,
capacity and experiences that must be fully accounted for in reshaping governance of extraction to
lift the burdens of mining from communities.