‘I weep for my child, I weep for my land’

 JAMES CHAVULA

Staff Writer

December is no longer for merrymaking in Esnar t Chilimba’s gemstone-adorned homestead at the heart of Masenjele Village, Traditional Authority Chanthunya in the drought-prone district of Balaka.

The festive season gave way to mourning on December 27 2023 when her fourth-born son, Daniel, drowned in a yawning pit left by illegal miners backed by a Chinese merchant villagers nicknamed Nyoni.

The abandoned excavations that left half her crop field worthless and risky proclaims how Malawi’s unregulated mining is degenerating into a resource curse.

“The gems have become teardrops,” says the 42-year-old mother of five.

She held her breath, rubbing a tear while tossing reddish sparkling stones scattered around her grass-thatched hut. The gems, called sunstones, lost their value with the Standard Three boy’s death.

“When I wake up every morning, I gaze at the pits surrounded by mounds of soil, where children play as did Daniel when he last went swimming two years ago. He was polite, hard-working and my trusted helper. He had his own house at 10 and left two bags of groundnuts that he produced singlehandedly,” Chilimba recalls.

She had departed for Senzani Trading Centre at sunrise the day “the pit-trap swallowed Daniel”.

Children play in and around the three excavations from sunrise to sunset.

“It’s a death trap that reminds me how I lost my 10-year-old son and prized farmland to strangers who didn’t care to say goodbye or fill the pit after getting all they wanted. They didn’t even attend the funeral or send condolences,” she laments.

The pit turns into a dangerous dam during the rainy season.

It covers a rocky, treeless spot half a football field.

What remains is a crime scene State-salaried mining regulators and environmental protectors claim to have never visited.

However, it has attracted campaigners for mining justice, government officials from Balaka District Council, Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and the departments of lands and mining.

“I stopped sharing the story with visitors because I don’t see the benefit,” says the deceased’s father, Bailos.

However, the varied visitors say the same thing: It is daylight robbery— everything not to do when mining in a fragile economy that hinges on agriculture and human rights.

Director of Mining Mphatso Chikoti says his department, formerly a ministry, is not aware of the tragedy, but such sights blight the sector touted as the next big boost for economic recovery and growth.

Mining contributes one percent to Malawi’s economy, but policymakers expect it to account for 12 percent of gross domestic product by 2027.

“As mining authorities, we work closely with the Malawi Environmental Protection Authority [Mepa] and other government agencies to keep such things in check, but we didn’t know about it. The abandoned mine was not licenced, so it wouldn’t be easy to trace the culprits and this is a common problem,” he said during a meeting in Balaka.

Chikoti shook his head when The Nation showed him a scanned land sale agreement signed by a man who locals identified as the runaway Chinese merchant’s go-between.

Chilimba and her two neighbours got K500 000 in two installments for the land where they once grew maize, pigeon peas and millet.

“It’s a raw deal,” says the woman. “I wanted about K5 million knowing there were precious stones underneath, but Alex Msowoya was a brutal negotiator.”

Concurring, Sinoya Nkumbira says the sunstones were all over the place, but locals did not know their worth until the middleman, Msowoya, arrived from Lilongwe in 2022.

“We sold our land and everything on it hoping to get rich, but ended up poorer,” he says.

The allure of the sunstones came at the expense of the green cover, fertile farmlands, lives and livelihoods.

The trail of destruction amplifies a call to action, especially for authorities locals accused of inaction and bribery rapidly turning gemstone and gold mining sites into free-for-all minefields.

Amid low awareness and scanty law enforcement, illicit miners plunder farmland, natural forests and fertile topsoil.

“I only knew I was dealing with a middleman when his Chinese boss arrived with an excavator. Nyoni later employed me to carry the rocks on my head for low pay, making me and my family willing slaves on our own land.”

As the groaning machine dug deeper into the bedrock, 25 casual workers from the neighbourhood ‘carted’ a bagful at a time to a shed where they isolated gems from mocks.

Meanwhile, the pit grew.

The death of the boy “who always worked with a smile” left his peers and neighbours horrified.

“Those who benefitted from our misery have forgotten us,” says Bailos, standing on the spot where the boy’s hut, called gowelo in Yao culture, crumbled in disuse.

The growing frustration rings across T/A Chanthunya’s hilly territory, also rich in rare earth.

“The mining merchants only cared about precious stones. He acquired our land, rapidly extracted the gems and vanished by June 2023,” says village head Masenjere, who still keeps the land sale agreements he signed as a witness.

The village comprises about 270 homes and at least 1 000 people, who constantly lose livestock to the pits.

He states: “After Nyoni’s sudden withdrawal, I impounded the excavator to demand a communal borehole; clinic and school block which he promised our community where schools, hospitals and water points are faraway.

“The rightful owners showed up to reclaim the machine, but we still want Msowoya and his boss to come and repair the damage.

“Authorities in the government should wake up and stop mining from becoming a curse. All this, including the loss of life, would not have happened if lands, mining and environmental officials were not corrupt or sleeping on the job,” said GVH Masenjere.

In 2020, a leaked phone conversation exposed a top official in the Department of Mining demanding money and mobile phones in exchange for a mining licence.

During the release of his assessment of gaps in Malawi Extractive Industry Transparency Initiatives, Mavuto Bamusi said” the leak could be symptomatic of graver corruption, negligence of duty and capture by those who are supposed to regulate illegal mining which is dominated by political elites and connected business men who seem to thrive on the neglected chaos.”

The human and environmental cost in Balaka—a fast-rising mining destination, has stirred a backlash from human rights watchdogs, who want government to restore order in the emerging extractive sector.

Balaka District Civil Society Network mining justice task force leader Gift Mtupa finds it worrisome that mining activities are happening “with total disregard for laws and the environment”.

“We call upon Mepa and mining authorities to strengthen monitoring mechanisms for environmental and social impact management plans for both unapproved and approved extraction works.

There is also need to strengthen capacities of district and community stakeholders for everyone to take their roles seriously in stopping unsustainable mining activities by illegal miners,” he said.

To Natural Resources Justice Network chairperson Kenneth Rashid, the excavations expose a deeper crisis.

He narrates: “A lot of duty-bearers have been to the pit that claimed Daniel’s life, but nothing has happened.

“We see similar negligence of duty in all mining districts, where mining activities are strangely regulated by officials from Capital Hill in Lilongwe which strangely appears reluctant to deploy mining officers closer to where mining is happening. This cannot continue, especially with the rush created by the opening of the official gold and gemstone market at the Reserve Bank of Malawi.”

RBM spokesperson Boston Banda says the central bank enforces know-your-customer processes and supports tree planting and landscape restoration efforts because it “shares the concerns about environmental degradation and risks that illegal mining causes in communities” at the source”.

Interestingly, Mepa, the regulatory authority established by the Environmental Management Act enacted in 2017, knows how “unregulated mines pose high threats to the environment”.

“They accelerate land degradation. Oftentimes, the pits dug by artisanal miners remain not refilled. This leaves the land more vulnerable to erosion and collapse as they weaken the natural protections of slopes and stream banks,” Mepa chief Wilfred Kadewa told Weekend Nation.

He says Mepa is devising means to reach out to everyone through local councils and other partners “to ensure they understand all the legal implications of not abiding by the environmental protection guidelines”.

“Mepa has taken actions to penalise and enforce regulations against individuals and entities that have caused significant harm to the environment. However, with the lean team on the ground, monitoring and enforcement of environmental penalties has often been a complex and slow process,” he said.

However, the environmental protectors’ penalties fall outside the extractive industry, where gemstones and gold mining have become a menace.

Mining and Mines Regulatory Authority (MMRA) director general Samuel Sankhulani says the two-year-old government agency “currently has limited capacity to be present in the remote areas where the illegal activities are taking place, but due to its collaboration [with district councils and activists] it is able to maintain closer ties to the areas where these activities are taking place.”

He said the mining regulator has prioritised formalisation of small-scale and artisanal mining and strengthening collaboration with district councils and other partners, including civil society near mining zones.

“Where it is not possible to formalise, MMRA will let the national security apparatus to do its job of bringing law and order to the country. Beyond gold mining, we have had arrests and taken cases against illegal miners to court. Despite questionable rulings in certain circumstances, the fact that some prosecutions have been undertaken is a success story in itself,” he said.

ActionAid Malawi is running a year-long project to empower local communities in mining districts affected by climate change.

Project manager Charles Finisi-Phiri says authorities must promote public welfare and sustainable development.

“Malawians, including authorities, must be concerned about the social and environmental impacts of mining activities because unregulated mining can bring short-term profits, but cause long-term harm to the environment, public health and community wellbeing. While striving to meet our daily needs, we should also think of the future generation,” he says.

As the wait for justice and stronger institutions continues, Chilimba weeps for her defiled land and little Daniel, who was certainly not as lucky as his biblical namesake who emerged unscathed from a lions’ den.

She states: “My son, the trees and the hope of getting richer is gone. The fertile soil, which was my only inheritance, is buried in rocky heaps where nothing grows. If the government does not act now, this country will be reduced to abandoned pits, which will worsen hunger and poverty