GLASGOW, Kadoma — For three years in a row, Casper Gatsi was able to hit the jackpot and amass massive wealth through his small-scale gold mining venture here.
BY PHILLIP CHIDAVAENZI
Today, several years down the line, his fortunes have waned, leaving him to scrap the bottom of the barrel for a living. At the peak of his wealth, he had become a proud owner of three houses in the mining town’s plush suburbs and a fleet of top-of-the-range vehicles, a status symbol of wealth derived from profitable mining.
But with the new life he had built for himself having been shattered like a spider’s web in the fog of the season’s end, he was forced to relocate to the backwater of Glasgow where he started off from the very bottom.
“It seemed too good to be true,” Gatsi recalled in a recent interview with NewsDay Weekender.
“It was like just waking up and, suddenly, you had so much money you didn’t know what to do with it.”
Although it was apparent that the dizzy moments of instant riches have been short-lived, Gatsi was reluctant to confess how everything collapsed around him.
In a snap survey done in Kadoma by this paper, however, it emerged that many small-scale gold miners and panners here lacked the technical know-how of managing wealth. For just 2kg of gold, one could pocket as much as $45 000.
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Andrew Kaureni, a resident of Glasgow, said he had seen many young people rise to the very pinnacle of prosperity, and almost as suddenly, fall with a thud after failing to manage their newfound opulence.
“When one hits a rich belt of gold, they mine out so much money they can’t imagine that there will come a time when they will have nothing again,” he said.
He said this was particularly common with people that had not gone far with their education, and perhaps grew up in poverty-stricken families and therefore lacked the capacity to handle and manage instant riches. Carlos Baureni, another “victim” of sudden wealth, admitted that he lost all that he had accumulated due to poor management skills. “Whenever you get the money, you always tell yourself that you will always get more, but sometimes your luck can run out,” he said, slowly shaking his head as if regretting the lost opportunities.
Some of the young panners have paid a huge price for gravitating towards the evils that money attracted.
At Patchway Business Centre in Chakari, is a place known as Mesina, attracting young women from as far as Harare and Mutare to try their luck as sex workers.
Gold miners and panners are traditionally known to be big spenders and Mesina, where copious amounts of beer flow endlessly while young women preen about like peacocks on display, provides just the right environment for gold miners to part with their hard-won money in exchange with frivolous pleasures.
“I know of someone who blew $100 in one night on beer and women,” Baureni said.
“But reality dawned in the morning that he was left with $200 and didn’t know how he would account for the other $100 because they had made plans on how they were going to use the money.”
Naison Bango’s story echoes that of Gatsi. He told NewsDay that he suspected witchcraft in the loss of his wealth.
Pressed further, he was reluctant to admit that his plunge back into the abyss of poverty could be traced back to his own lack of skills to manage wealth.
“Well, maybe. But I strongly suspect some of my relatives were unhappy with my wealth. They have also been mining but were not as lucky,” he said.
During the day, “Mesina” is calm and serene, like every other normal business centre, but becomes alive at night when gold miners troop back from the gold fields to enjoy the excesses that money from gold afford them.
According to gold miller…. Many of those who are employed on short-term contracts are paid the moment they provide their gold to the miller.
An estimated 1,5 million panners and over 30 000 registered small-scale miners engage in gold mining.
With the town’s major companies — David Whitehead Textiles, Kadoma Glass Company and Cold Storage Company — either having caved in or operating under the red ink line, many people here now find succour in gold which lies underground in abundance, waiting to be discovered by the lucky punter.
