Zimbabwe is being stripped bare in the name of “investment,” yet for millions of ordinary citizens, the only visible returns are poisoned water, destroyed livelihoods, and an environment pushed to the brink of collapse. 

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A recent in-depth investigation by The Standard in partnership with the Information for Community Development lays bare what many communities have been crying about for years: so-called investors—particularly some Chinese mining companies—are grabbing water sources, diverting rivers, blocking access to communal boreholes, and operating with shocking disregard for both people and nature. 

What is unfolding across the country is not development. 

It is extraction without responsibility, accumulation without accountability, and growth without humanity.

From Bikita to Munyati, from Shamva to Redcliff, the pattern is depressingly familiar. 

Once a mining project is approved, water ceases to be a public good and becomes a private asset. 

Rivers that sustained villages for generations are blocked with concrete walls. 

Boreholes are drilled for industrial use while villagers walk kilometres in search of muddy pools. 

Gardens dry up, livestock perish, and food security collapses. 

Communities that once lived with dignity are reduced to desperate bystanders in their own land, watching wealth being hauled away while their children go hungry.

What makes this especially obscene is that access to clean water is not a privilege in Zimbabwe—it is a constitutional right. 

Section 77 of the Constitution explicitly guarantees every person the right to safe, clean and potable water. 

Yet in mining-affected areas, this right is treated as expendable, easily overridden by corporate interests protected by political power. 

When rivers are diverted and downstream communities left dry, when boreholes collapse and are never repaired, when villagers are told to endure “temporary inconvenience” for projects that generate billions, the Constitution is being openly mocked.

The human cost is devastating. 

Women and girls bear the heaviest burden, spending hours each day searching for water instead of going to school or engaging in productive work. 

Farmers abandon their fields because irrigation is no longer possible. 

Livestock—often the last form of security for rural households—die from thirst or disease. 

Entire communities are pushed deeper into poverty, not because they are lazy or unproductive, but because the very resources that sustained them have been seized.

Worse still, the damage is no longer limited to water scarcity. 

This rainy season has brought chilling reports of cattle dying after drinking water contaminated by cyanide flowing from reckless mining activities. 

The recent case at Mgagao Farm in Shamva, where alleged cyanide pollution linked to Chinese mining operations is suspected in livestock deaths, should alarm every Zimbabwean. 

Cyanide is not just an environmental pollutant; it is a lethal poison. 

If animals are dying, what about the long-term impact on human health, underground water systems, and soil fertility? 

How many more silent tragedies are unfolding in remote areas, far from cameras and official concern?

In Redcliff, the destruction of a mountain adjacent to Cactus Dam is another glaring example of mining run amok. 

That dam is not just a body of water; it is a lifeline for domestic use, agriculture, and aquatic ecosystems. 

Undermining the surrounding geology threatens the dam’s structural integrity, endangers aquatic life, and puts entire communities at risk. 

Yet mining proceeds as if these dangers do not exist, or as if the lives dependent on that water are expendable.

Defenders of these projects often argue that mining brings jobs and development. 

This argument collapses under even minimal scrutiny. 

What kind of development destroys food production, poisons water, and leaves communities worse off than before? 

What kind of job creation justifies the permanent loss of rivers, fertile land, and human dignity? 

A few low-paying, insecure jobs cannot compensate for the systematic dismantling of entire rural economies. 

Nor can they justify the reality that communities living atop vast mineral wealth see none of the billions earned from its exploitation.

The role of the state in this crisis is deeply troubling. 

Environmental Impact Assessments are approved despite obvious risks. 

Regulatory bodies appear either captured, incompetent, or unwilling to act. 

Complaints are ignored, petitions gather dust, and officials feign ignorance even as suffering becomes impossible to deny. 

This is not merely a failure of policy; it is a moral failure. 

When government institutions side with investors against citizens, they cease to serve the public interest.

It is also impossible to ignore the neo-colonial character of this extraction. 

Zimbabweans were promised that independence would return land and resources to the people. 

Yet today, foreign companies extract minerals, export raw wealth, and leave behind environmental ruin—eerily reminiscent of colonial exploitation. 

The only difference is that this time, it is facilitated by a post-independence elite that speaks the language of sovereignty while presiding over dispossession.

Investment is not inherently bad. 

Zimbabwe needs capital, technology, and industrial growth. 

But investment that destroys water sources, poisons ecosystems, and impoverishes host communities is not development—it is predation. 

Genuine investors operate within strict environmental standards, respect community rights, and ensure that local people tangibly benefit. 

Anything less is exploitation dressed up as progress.

Zimbabwe stands at a crossroads. 

It can continue down this destructive path, sacrificing communities and ecosystems for short-term gains enjoyed by a few. 

Or it can reclaim the idea of development as something that improves lives, protects the environment, and respects constitutional rights. 

This requires political courage: enforcing environmental laws, holding polluters accountable, suspending operations that threaten water sources, and ensuring that communities have a real voice in decisions affecting their land.

The cries from Bikita, Munyati, Shamva, and Redcliff are not anti-development slogans. 

They are demands for justice, dignity, and survival. 

If Zimbabwe continues to ignore them, it will discover too late that no amount of lithium, steel, or foreign currency can replace poisoned rivers, dead cattle, collapsed dams, and broken communities. 

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