By A Correspondent| It has recently come to light that Zimplats has drafted and had signed a memorandum of understanding which it has had signed by the Chegutu Mhondoro Ngezi Zvimba Community Share Ownership Trust and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, in which is seeks to have government of Zimbabwe and the communities exonerate it from its legal obligation to dispose 10% of its shares to the Community Trust.
The memorandum of agreement was signed in April 2023, less than five months after a legal case was filled challenging Zimplats’ attempt to wiggle out of its obligation to ensure communities from where it has been extracting platinum resources can derive a direct benefit from such resource wealth. Instead those Zimbabwean communities continue to experience poverty shrouded hidden grand token donations that have far less impact that on their plight which will only be alleviated by direct participation in the platinum wealth being mined by that company.
The latest moves by Zimplats to ill-advisably coax a whole government ministry administering economic empowerment are being made in the face of a pending High Court case by Chegutu Council Chairperson, Tatenda Gwinji, in Tatenda Gwinji vs ZImplats Chegutu Mhondoro Ngezi Zvimba Community Share Ownwership Trust, Zimplats,,Minister of Industry and Commerce and Others HCH 457/22 .
In the ongoing case the Chegutu Council Chairperson is seeking an order from the courts that Zimplats remains obliged at law to dispose of 10% shares to local communities in line with the legally binding Deed of Trust it signed in December 2012 to establish the Zimplats Chegutu Mhondoro-Ngezi Zvimba Community Share Ownership Trust?
While this is clearly a matter waiting determination by the courts, with Gwinji and Zimplats having presented their initial arguments in court sometime in January this year (2023), Zimplats appears to be attempting to pre-empt any negative decision by convincing government, through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, to exonerate it from the contentious 10% share obligation. It’s a classic case of pulling the rug from under the courts, tripping due process long before it can be played out.
What is even more interesting is that neither the Community Share Ownership Trust and the Minister of Industry and Commerce filed any opposing papers to the case filed in court and served on them late last year in 2022. This left only Zimplats and its Corporate Executive (Busi Chindove) as defendants facing off against Gwinji.
Such failure or conscious decision by the Community Trust and the Minister not to challenge the claims by Gwinji could only mean their not intending to contest before the courts the claims Gwinji was raising. It has always been Gwinji’s assertion that he is not fighting government or the community, in fact that it is solely the community that will benefit from his success by getting 10% shares in Zimbabwe’s largest mining business worth billions of dollars.
The question gwinji seems to be asking is, “Why”, after initially standing down before an open and transparent court process has the community trust chairperson gone ahead and signed off on an agreement that is it stands deprives the hundreds of thousands of residents and beneficiaries within the communities of a real chance at prosperity on the back of the mineral resources wealth. Why has the Minister of Industry and Commerce endorsed such a clandestine selling out behind the curtains of a transparent legal process? Does this speak to a official government position, that Zimplats should be left scot free, even before the courts have passed their decision.
Zimplats’ predictable move to pre-empt an adverse legal outcome against them can be understood as a desperate attempt at exclusive enrichment, unprepared to dispose a mere 10% to communities around it. But what has come over these trusted custodians within the communities and government, so as to so easily discount their people’s aspirations and welfare?
Mr. Tatenda Gwinji is adamant that he will fight to the end, having already alerted government on what he believes to be it being misled by Zimplats and having written to the community trust demanding answers to its latest complicity in favour of Zimplats interest and not the people. “I cannot understand why they cannot just wait for transparent due legal process to play out. If I lose, rather if the people lose, due to my argument before the courts having no legal standing so be it. But why nicodemusly get Chiefs and Minister to sign off on a betrayal before the court have their say?” declared Gwinji.
“They are being misled by the promise of questionable businesses Zimplats is promising to start in the name of empowerment on behalf of communities, but which businesses Zimplats will own. What has become of such promises like those claimed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle for the community we were misled on a few years ago. Will those businesses Zimplats now promises as a preferred alternative under economic empowerment, even put together, ever have more value than 10% shareholding in Zimplats which is worth billions of dollars on global markets? Yet somehow people’s representatives are sign off for that lesser value without even hearing the court’s opinion?”
What is clear is that someone is being taken for a ride, consciously or having been grossly ill-advised and misinformed. Whatever the outcome of pending legal proceedings the reality is that Zimbabwe is a nation blessed with vast mineral resources wealth evidenced by the more recent lithium rush only shadowing long standing platinum and other resource wealth.
The latest moves by Zimplats, in its decade of persistence to deny Zimbabwean communities a small share of platinum wealth, while its holding company Implats readily shares platinum wealth from Zimbabwe with South Africa’s Bafokeng community shareholders, shows that there is much that corporate greed has put at stake. So much that they must be brazenly attempt at circumventing a pursuit of justice before Zimbabwe’s courts of law.