Money doesn’t grow on trees …

Money doesn’t grow on trees but there’s plenty of it to be found beneath and beyond.

There are risks in getting it out of the ground – gold, that is.

A gold rush is taking place across this land.  Abominable conditions at gold workings countrywide are overseen by local fat cats and their Chinese partners acting as greedy controllers and paymasters.

It is a deeply dark and dismal world, not the one normally associated with the glitter of gold. The overseers come almost daily to collect the gold and, depending on how much has been retrieved, pay the diggers and panners a few dollars.

Ordinary unskilled labourers burrow down open unbolstered shafts running tens of metres below the surface. When a shaft collapses no emergency services are nearby and there is no counting of dead miners left to fossilise underground.

The men live in isolated, dirty and dangerous bushland. Never mind wild animals and snake bites, they sleep in the open in this bitterly cold southern hemisphere winter although a few have managed to rig ragged black plastic sheets on sticks for a little shelter. There are no toilets, there’s no clean water, no electricity, no cellphone coverage and very little food to be warmed on small camp fires kindled with plastic waste.

Having not washed for days or weeks workers save up their small earnings and head to the nearest towns to freshen up, drink beer and go to prostitutes. In some areas the hookers themselves trek to the diggings with misguided visions of riches.

So why do it? “It’s a job, bro,” said one young man on a visit to town to buy new clothes and find some brief female companionship with his savings..

You don’t have to a rocket scientist to understand why the hills and dales are being invaded like never before. It has been spurred by global trade uncertainties in the Trump era. This week one kilogram of gold fetches about US$106,400 and is set to rise further by year-end. Ten kgs extracted in a single week can bring in a cool $1 million for the controllers and overseers.

In world markets gold once again holds sway as a secure hedge against economic instability and fluctuating currencies.

In the catastrophic local economy unemployment is at record levels and long established companies are closing their doors.  “Informal sector” street trading, similar activities, the hunt for gold and even rising crime account for 80 percent of the national workforce now living in survival mode (with doubtful success.)

The central bank in Harare says in its latest official stats that formal legal gold exports rose by 24 percent in the first half of this year, earning the fiscus US$ 748 million.

What isn’t clear: Exactly how much illegal gold is smuggled out to Dubai and China by elites without touching sides. It is an enormous amount.  We do know that endless suitcases srtuffed full of $100 bills arrive home with little hindrance, soon to be laundered domestically to cover all tracks.

What is clear: Environmental degradation is unprecedented. The Chinese bring in machines that silt up rivers and streams and scour holes in mountainsides with little official restraint over their activities.

Same old story. The haves have it all, the have-nots barely survive.