Why gender matters - Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining ...

Case study 8
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included agreements about how
many families were eligible for
relocation and an “asset for asset”
based scheme of compensation.
Engagement and negotiation
at the resettlement site
Rio Tinto located and purchased six
blocks of land (known as the “Shashe
Block”) in a nearby region, Masvingo
Province, and began construction
of new community infrastructure
in consultation with the local
government. The infrastructure
agreement that was negotiated
included provisions for Rio Tinto
to build a school, rural health
centre, housing for teachers and
nurses, a church, 17 boreholes and
roads, as well as a timeline for their
construction and eventual handover
to the government.
The most controversial and difficult
aspect of these negotiations centred
around the allocation of land that
each family would receive, as the
Shashe Block had become occupied
by other families from Masvingo
province under the Zimbabwe
government’s “Land Reform and
Resettlement Program”. With no
other land available to resettle the
Masvingo families, and Rio Tinto
expressing concern about settling
the Murowa families on less than the
65 hectares each which had been
promised earlier in the process, the
negotiations became deadlocked.
What followed was two years of
difficult and intensive meetings
and workshops, throughout which
women remained central players in
the negotiations and ensured gender
considerations were incorporated
into distribution of benefits.
The allocated land underwent
improvement and preparation,
allowing the resettled communities
to plant a crop immediately, and
reap a valuable harvest in the
2002/3 season.
Developing a sustainable
community
At the handover of the Shashe
resettlement scheme, Rio Tinto
also committed itself to a
“Communities Action Plan” which
provides for health, training and
agricultural capacity building
programmes for ten years after
resettlement. The aim of the
programme is to offer agricultural
skills and capacity building to
enable the farmers to run farming
activities that could sustain them.
Other initiatives include running
a national training programme for
farmers, and introducing hybrid
cattle and high yield crops. In the
Master Farmer training programme,
approximately 75 per cent of the
students are female. Currently there
are six micro-gardens running and
90 per cent of membership in these
gardens is women. Almost 99 per
cent of project committee members
are women. 8