EnviroPress Reporter
The remaining villagers in the Murape Village on the margins of Bikita Minerals are now free to fetch water from a tap in the mining compound following several months of victimisation, finger-pointing and threats of eviction.
Less than a dozen families remain in the village after several others were evicted with little or no compensation.
“In the interim, we have graciously allowed villagers access to a tap inside the mine for drinking and cooking purposes, which they have been utilising without any issue. Bikita Minerals has in the last two years drilled 38 boreholes in Bikita and Masvingo North,” Bikita Minerals Spokesperson Collen Nikisi told EnviroPress in an interview.
“We had planned to drill a borehole near Murape village but this is contingent upon ongoing relocation discussions with relevant stakeholders, including the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, government officials, the District Development Coordinator, councillors, and Chief Marozva, regarding eight families residing within our mining claim. Once these discussions reach a mutually beneficial conclusion, we will proceed with drilling a borehole for the relocated families,” he said.
Bikita Minerals maintains that the villagers, who were settled by government during the Land Reform Programme in the early 2000s, have been occupying mine land.
Before the new offer by Bikita Minerals, the few families that remained on the land after resisting eviction had faced increased difficulties accessing water for use at home. This was after the lithium mining company dug a two-metre-deep perimeter trench ostensibly to stop trespassing.
The trench cut the villagers from a disused opencast pit which had been their only source of potable water for several years.
However, some of the villagers said the mine tap water option offered by the mine was not practical due to the average 5km distance that one needs to travel to the mine compound.
“To get water from the tap, you have to find somebody driving to the mining compound so that they take your containers with them. The distance is too long for one to walk all the time,” said one villager who refused to be named.
Another villager, Godhelp Tinarwo said community members’ efforts to draw attention to their plight had largely failed since the mine seemed to have bought off all influential people.
“The people of Murape are suffering without basic services like clean water. I suspect something is going on behind our backs because our leaders are no longer bothered. We have had several disputes with Bikita Minerals; we have engaged them to state our grievances, and there has been courts cases but nothing has materialised,” said Tinarwo.