SAP 2.76/WP.130
Industrial Activities Branch
Working Paper
Small-scale gold mining:
Examples from Bolivia, Philippines & Zimbabwe
Edited by Norman S. Jennings
Acquiring mineral rights in Zimbabwe: A summary of procedures
These notes are based on the revised Mines and Minerals Act (Chapter 21.05) of 1996. Note that there is no distinction made between the individuals or organizations acquiring rights, for instance as small-scale or large-scale. All mineral titles are secured under the same procedures.
Prospecting procedure
Prospecting licences
The holder of a prospecting licence or his agent must be over the age of 18. There are two types of prospecting licence -- ordinary and special. These confer identical rights except that the special licence enables the pegging of a base mineral block six times the size of a block pegged under an ordinary licence.
The licence, which must be in the possession of the prospector for production on demand, authorizes him to search for any mineral, mineral oils and natural gases on land open to prospecting and peg one block of precious metals or precious stonne es or base minerals. He cannot, however, peg coal, mineral oil or natural gas deposits, which rights can only be obtained through the issue of a special grant on a discretionary basis.
Approved prospectors
In addition to the above, no prospector may undertake any prospecting operations unless he is the holder of a "Certificate of Registration as an Approved Prospector" issued by the Secretary of Mines. This does not, however, prevent a Prospecting Licence Holder from commissioning an Approved Prospector to act on his or her behalf.
Any person wishing to obtain such certificate will be required to complete an application form, obtainable from any mining commissioner's office, pay the prescribed fee (currently Z$350), lodge two standard passport type photographs and make arrangements with the mining commissioner to answer an oral test on the rights of prospectors and landowners and the pegging procedures.
Subject to the endorsement of the Secretary of Mines, a Certificate is issued. It is personal to the holder and is valid for five years after which it may be renewed unless it has been previously cancelled or suspended.
Ground not open to prospecting
Some of the more important areas which are closed to prospecting are as follows:
(It should be noted that in any of the above categories the landowner can permit prospecting by giving written authorization.)
Improvements which can be included in a block
The following improvements may be included within the boundaries of a mining location, but prospecting and mining rights may not be exercised within certain prescribed limits of the improvements -- road, railway track, electrical power line, aqueduct, pipeline, occupied dwelling, well, bore-hole, dam, reservoir or an area reserved in terms of the Roads and Road Traffic Act for road material.
Notice of intention to prospect
Prior notice of the intention to prospect must be given to the owner or appropriate authority or person in writing of the following:
This notice shall, in the case of the holder of a prospecting licence, be valid for a period of 120 days. In respect of the holder of a special grant or an exclusive prospecting order it will be valid for the duration of the grant or order. Failure to give such notice is a serious offence.
Legal obligations of prospectors
A prospector may not drill or excavate an area whether at the surface or underground, until he has established a mining location by erecting a prospecting notice covering the area. He has to forward a copy of the notice to the mining commissioner and the landowner or occupier as the case may be, together with a copy of a plan of a scale of not less than 1:25,000, identifying where the notice has been placed.
Timber
Having posted a prospecting notice the prospector may, subject to the Forest Act, take and use for firewood any dead wood within his location provided that the area has not been reserved against the taking of timber or is Communal Land. Such timber shall be paid for in advance at the prescribed rate. If the area is Communal Land the prospector will have to reach an agreement with the district administrator regarding the taking of timber.
Water
The prospector may take, free of charge, from land not closed to prospecting, for primary (domestic) purposes, any public or private water, provided such taking does not interfere with the use of that water for primary purposes by the owner or occupier of the land.
Buildings
The prospector may, within his location, erect temporary accommodation for himself and his employees and also erect temporary buildings or machinery for use in connection with his prospecting work. These temporary constructions must be removed within ten days of the expiry of the prospecting notice or within any longer period which the mining commissioner may specify. If, after seven days of posting his prospecting notice, the prospector still wishes to house employees within his location which is on occupied private land, he must advise the occupier of the land in writing and describe the position of this accommodation. If the occupier objects to the site, the prospector must either reach a mutual agreement with the occupier over another site or, if mutual agreement cannot be reached, then the matter must be decided by the mining commissioner.
Pegging procedure
The detailed pegging procedure for precious metals comprises the erection of a peg with the prospecting notice attached to it. From the date and time of posting this notice the prospector has exclusive prospecting rights within a radius of 300 metres of the notice for a period of 31 days. These exclusive rights apply only to ground which was open to prospecting at the time of the posting of the notice. From the discovery point, the limits of the block are determined and must be marked with pegs.
Within 31 days of posting the registration notice the pegger must, if he wishes to gain title to the minerals within the block pegged, apply to the mining commissioner for registration, submitting the prospecting licence used; a paper copy of the prospecting notice; a paper copy of the registration notice; a plan in triplicate, at a scale of not less than 1: 25,000 (as used by mining commissioners' offices) showing the situation of the block pegged; and the registration fee as prescribed (currently Z$150). A similar process exists for base minerals, except that the area of the block can be larger.
A development programme for the Button Mine
Mining and metallurgical considerations
The first step in developing a mineralized gold-bearing zone is to obtain a rough idea of its persistence. For this it is necessary to carry out limited diamond drilling to confirm that the reef exposed at the bottom of the existing pits continues at depth. However, while drill cores are useful in that they show where the reef is, core assays must usually be taken as indicative. The larger samples of chips produced by reverse circulation drilling, which is favoured by the larger operators for its speed, give less information on the reef structures but a rather better idea of the grade.
Neither are of much help in defining an ore reserve on a small gold mine deposit, and if the reef intersections are consistent from a few drill holes along a reasonable length of strike, and the assays, while erratic, look attractive, the aspirant miner is advised to get underground quickly and send some ore to a mill while blocking out reserves.
Mining at the Button Mine is, like at most small-scale mines, simply a matter of digging down until either the ventilation is too bad for mining, water is encountered, or the unoxidized mineral zone is reached and found to contain active sulphide minerals which inhibit mercury amalgamation.
Even if these constraints are overcome, the operation will tend to be self-limiting because it becomes increasingly difficult to create a pit that is both small enough for only the reef to be mined, yet big enough to contain the pumps, compressed air lines, ventilation ducts and water piping needed to operate at depth.
Further, such ore is expensive to produce. The cost of mining drops to under half of that of pitting (or rather, shaft sinking) once a system of stoping is introduced, whereby ore is mass-blasted downwards from a block or ore delineated by raises and drives at its limits.
Mining development on quartz reefs like those at the Button Mine therefore commences with a shaft sunk on the reef, its incline conforming to the general dip. This ensures that ore gets to the mill at an early stage and a cash flow commences. The nearby Mont d'Or smallworking was developed in this fashion. Because of the greater speed and capacity of vertical shafts, best practice is to sink a vertical shaft off the reef, intersecting it about half way down the presumed ore body. Whatever the shaft type, once it has been developed, haulage drives are sent out parallel with the reef but in the footwall (i.e. under the reef) at levels of 30-50 m apart vertically. From these haulage levels, cross-cuts, reef drives and raises are made to "block out" that portion of the ore body.
This development work exposes four sides of a block, typically about 40 m long and 30 m high, which can be surveyed and sampled to give a satisfactory estimate of the amount of gold present. Only after this has been done can the ore there be counted as proven -- a state of affairs which can be used as collateral for loans for further development or the purchase of milling equipment, etc.
The chamber created while mining out a block is a "stope". Mining of a reef block is usually by the technique known as underhand stoping. "Boxholes" are driven up from the haulage drive into the base of the reef block. These funnel the broken rock into the transportation method -- typically hand-pushed cocopans -- used to haul the ore to the shaft. A raise is put up through the centre of the potential stope to the upper reef, which provides access and ventilation to the stope for miners, along with a route to supply compressed air, water and materials. This raise is opened out laterally from the top, forming inclined side walls. The stope can then be conveniently mined, dropping broken ore downwards and out through the boxholes, as in all steep-dipping reef mining.
The multiple nature (stockwork) of the Button mine means that much schist has to be mined at the same time, so that the "waste dilution" is excessive. In a small mine this is dealt with by manual sorting of reef from waste at the surface on slow moving conveyors, usually employing the wives of the miners for this task.
Because of the complex nature of many gold reef ores, it is essential to test the drill core samples metallurgically. There is limited evidence from comments in the relevant Geological Bulletin that the gold in the ore at depth at the Button Mine is "refractory", i.e. it does not amalgamate or cyanide easily. There are various techniques to overcome this, but until the extraction characteristics of the ore zones have been firmly established (meaning perhaps 20 tests and 400 assays), no decisions should be made on what flowsheet and plant to use.
Payments to producers of gold
Purchases by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)
via Fidelity Refiners (Pvt) Ltd (Fidelity)
| Day 1* | Date of lodgement |
| Days 2-7 | Refining of gold |
| Day 7 | Price date; being the morning price fixed at the commencement of business on the London market on this date |
| Day 8 | Refining complete. Fidelity will calculate proceeds due to each producer concerned and advise RBZ accordingly. RBZ will credit Fidelity's gold account in Z$, and the Chamber's foreign currency account (FCA) in US$ -- both credits for value date Day 10 (i.e. the funds thus credited on Day 8 are only available from Day 10). |
| Day 10 | Gold purchase documentation completed by Fidelity and, in the case of US$ proceeds, documentation forwarded to the Chamber where documentation of disbursements commences. |
| Day 11 | Completion of disbursement of documentation for US$ proceeds, and transfer instructions passed to the Chamber's FCA; Z$ proceeds disbursed by Fidelity. |
| * Day means Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays in Zimbabwe and the United States. | |
