Rituals, Rites And Rumours: How Women Claim Power In Zimbabwe's Informal Gold Mines

(MENAFN- The Conversation) In Zimbabwe they say, Hanzi bhande rinonzvenga vakadzi vakapinda mumigoghi (The Gold belt will disappear if women go into the underground mine).

Many men on artisanal or small-scale gold mining sites are uncomfortable working with women in their syndicates because of this commonly held cultural belief, that women“pollute” the sacredness of the mining space.

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Yet women remain a lively, if sidelined, community in the country's growing mining sector. By 2000 there were more than 500,000 people working in artisanal and small-scale mining in Zimbabwe. By 2018 it was estimated that number could be up to 1.5 million. But this doesn't include people operating illegally.

Women's roles have varied inside this industry: they have been vendors, sex workers, and alluvial gold washers, panning for gold along streams.

We are researchers of resource extraction and environmental change and of history and the environment . Zimbabwean women in artisanal mining are the subject of our recent paper , drawn from a larger study in Mazowe, 40km from the capital, Harare.

While the main goal of the research was to understand women's experiences and power relations in this apparently masculine sector, we realised there was something else to be uncovered. A secret world of ritual, rite and rumour.

We found that women under spiritual and ancestral possession (often referred to as masvikiro ) have developed a new commercial vision on the mines.

They have created spiritual shrines that are visited by men seeking to make their fortunes. They profit from the beliefs of miners that their ritual instructions help them find gold.

Women at these mines are not allowed to go underground themselves, but their occult spirit being accompanies miners deep underground and guides them in looking for gold.

So, some women have tapped into spiritual economies in Mazowe to support their livelihood. Even in a deeply patriarchal society, these women push back against the social and cultural order of masculine mine spaces.

Our study of occult practices is one of the outcomes of extensive fieldwork over the course of 13 months in the small mining community of Jumbo in Mazowe.

Research involved interviews with 40 women and 20 men, as well as social conversations and observations. It included analysis of social media, mining reports and archive material. The goal was to shine a light on the dynamics that shaped women's experiences in a gold mining frontier.

This included exploring the connections between gender and the occult, and the intimate rituals of how women survive on the mines.

Persisting land inequalities in Zimbabwe have catapulted women into artisanal gold washing to support their rural livelihoods. Yet poverty was not the only trigger; other women acquired gold mining licences and accumulated more profits in Mazowe.

Some women in Mazowe engaged in cross border trading activities and those who worked as domestic workers in South Africa and Botswana returned to Mazowe and invested in gold pits. They sub-contracted male labourers to work for them – a process that came to be known as ku sponsor makomba (financing gold pits).

In the post-2000 era, illegal gold mining continued to escalate. This was followed by a surge of sex workers in artisanal gold mining sites across the country. Sex work offered a lucrative business opportunity for women in a declining economic situation . Women in our study highlighted the need to provide food for their families as a key factor that pushed them into the sex trade.

A further commercial opportunity in Mazowe's mines became spiritual work.

In Zimbabwe there is a long history of superstitions about women and mining. We discovered occult practices are popular and are used for different purposes by various social groups.

In the postcolonial period, miners have become targets of a growing number of fake prophets and diviners. They promise easy access into the mining world and a guarantee of striking rich gold veins.

Men in the mines use the occult to increase their dominance and masculinity over other men. There are many forms of rituals, including using marijuana (mbanje) to instil courage and chase away evil spirits.

Some women tapped into these existing spiritual life worlds to make money through spiritual entrepreneurship. In Mazowe, for example, Nehanda – a powerful and revered ancestral spirit – is still venerated. Artisanal miners shared stories about visits to these shrines to seek advice from women under the possession of Nehanda's spirit. The diviners provide specific instructions for rituals that the men need to perform at mining sites.

There were also numerous stories of how the older women were consulted by miners. It was reported, for example, that one helped the miners through kurombesa (the use of ritual charms). Miners would suck her breast and then they would strike a gold belt afterwards.

While these stories portray a“mythical” productive role played by women in ritual practices, they also show how this mining community regards the female body. In this case, it is associated with good fortune and at the same time death. It's important to note that the sucking of breasts was seen to be a sacred activity and miners were supposed to honour the purity of the act.

These local beliefs have roots in the country's precolonial history. Like many cultures across Africa, Zimbabwean iron smelters have traditionally used female body features in decorating and creating the shapes of their mining tools.

Read more: Colonial powers tried to stifle traditional healing in Zimbabwe. They failed and today it's a powerful force for treating mental illness

Sex workers in the district also developed new strategies of making a living, tapping into rituals and using rumours circulating in the community. These women gained an understanding of the social economic dynamics of mining settlements: when some miners get money from selling gold, they spend it on alcohol and sex.

However, some men in the community feared the agency of sex workers who were using rituals. They referred to these women as“sperm mongers” who secretly kept used condoms to take the sperm to“witchdoctors” to create potions to bathe in. It was believed this would make them sexually appealing.

While some sex workers denied the claims, a few admitted to them. One said:

We argue that instead of being just“polluters of the mines”, women are central to understanding the ritual life of artisanal gold mining in Zimbabwe.

A neglected part of women's history can be understood by unpacking their entrepreneurial everydayness. This can help to trace the role of women as they work to survive within male dominated communities.

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