8 supporters
Fungai Nhau’s death exposes how Chinese capital and local corruption strip Zimbabweans of justice and dignity
The killing of Fungai Nhau by a Chinese mine boss in rural Zimbabwe is an act of cold violence that reveals the structure of power that defines the country’s extractive landscape. A Chinese national shot an unarmed Zimbabwean citizen and ended his life without fear of real legal consequence. The act exposes how foreign capital, local political elites, and weak state institutions intersect to create conditions in which African workers can be killed for almost nothing. In a functioning legal system, such a killing would have been followed by immediate arrest, prosecution and a credible trial process. In Zimbabwe, the killing has been reduced to a crude private settlement recorded in a handwritten note, trading a man’s life for cattle and a few hundred dollars.
( The hand written settlement)
The above handwritten settlement agreement produced after the killing of Fungai Nhau reads like a confession of institutional failure and social corrosion. It reduces a man’s death to a list of cattle and a few hundred United States dollars, and it records signatures and a chief’s stamp where a criminal court record should appear. The paper shows how customary authority can be converted into a cover for impunity when legal institutions prove weak, when victims lack resources to pursue formal justice, and when powerful economic actors maintain privileged relationships with the state. The agreement therefore offers more than an instance of local compromise; it shows how power, money and custom can be combined to erase accountability. The document supplied to me by the user demonstrates a crude calculation of compensation and a routinised acceptance of monetary closure instead of criminal process. That practice undermines any claim to rule of law in areas where extractive capital operates.
Chinese actors operate inside this environment with a level of impunity that would not exist in their own country. They exploit both economic desperation and institutional collapse. The killing of Fungai Nhau is not an isolated crime. It belongs to a growing pattern of violent confrontations, wage disputes, labour abuses, and environmental destruction surrounding Chinese mining operations in Zimbabwe. In June 2020, Chinese mine boss Zhang Xuen shot two workers in Gweru province during a wage dispute. He was charged with attempted murder, but delays, lack of interpreters, and political shielding stalled the case. Local watchdogs such as the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association described the incident as part of a systematic pattern of violence at Chinese-run mines. They warned that the state’s inability to enforce labour and criminal law had created a dangerous climate where Chinese managers acted as though local laws did not apply to them.
Chinese mining operations in Zimbabwe expanded rapidly in the last two decades as the ruling party ZANU–PF deepened economic ties with Beijing. China became Zimbabwe’s largest foreign investor in the extractive sector, taking control of gold, chrome, coal and diamond operations. This relationship is built on strategic resource extraction, low-cost labour, weak environmental oversight and informal political protection. Local communities have repeatedly reported abusive practices, wage theft, failure to provide protective equipment, and physical violence when workers resist. These reports are well documented by independent legal groups and journalists, including court affidavits and witness testimonies.
The impunity stems from a fusion of foreign capital and domestic political corruption. Senior ruling party figures have personal and financial stakes in many mining operations. Their networks facilitate the granting of licences, protect investors from prosecution, and suppress local resistance. When violence occurs, political power is used to neutralise law enforcement and convert crimes into private settlements, as in the case of Fungai Nhau. Chiefs, police officers, and party officials often play roles in these settlements, giving them an appearance of legitimacy without the substance of justice.
The use of cattle and cash to settle the killing of a worker echoes older patterns of indirect rule and colonial extraction, when imperial powers exploited local structures to impose foreign authority. Under Western colonialism, companies extracted minerals and agricultural commodities through coercion and violence. Indigenous chiefs were sometimes used to maintain order and discipline labour forces. Modern Chinese operations replicate this structure with different actors and similar logic. Beijing’s state-linked companies act as the new metropole, Zimbabwe’s ruling party serves as the gatekeeper, and local communities bear the cost of extraction.
Chinese imperialism in Africa differs in form from nineteenth-century European colonialism but not in effect for ordinary workers. European powers imposed direct administrative control over colonies, whereas Beijing operates through investment deals, party-to-party relations and debt diplomacy. Yet the underlying economic relationship remains extractive: foreign actors gain access to resources at low cost, and local populations absorb environmental, social and human costs. In both systems, legal accountability for violence against Africans is weak, often symbolic, and subordinated to economic priorities.
The settlement for Fungai Nhau’s death calculated compensation as if his life were a commodity. Basic economic arithmetic shows the scale of injustice. A conservative estimate of his lifetime earnings, based on a low annual income of 3,000 United States dollars over forty years of working life, amounts to at least 120,000 dollars. A more realistic figure, using an income of 5,000 dollars, would reach 200,000 dollars. The family received an amount equivalent to fifteen cattle of around 6,500 dollars. That is less than one-twentieth of the value of his potential lifetime contribution. This calculation shows the brutal asymmetry between the value of a life and the price offered by the perpetrator’s side.
Such settlements happen because families lack access to legal representation and because the state does not enforce criminal law against Chinese nationals. Economic desperation pushes families to accept immediate cash, even when it means surrendering their right to justice. Chiefs and local leaders participate in these settlements not because they hold real authority over criminal matters but because they are drawn into political patronage networks that reward silence.
This situation cannot be understood in isolation from broader Chinese economic strategy in Africa. China’s rapid growth requires vast quantities of minerals. Africa offers rich deposits of gold, platinum, chrome, lithium, cobalt, copper and other strategic resources. Zimbabwe fits neatly into this strategy. Chinese firms, often backed by state-owned banks, secure long-term mining concessions through deals with governments desperate for investment. These deals are structured to give Chinese companies operational control and access to tax exemptions while leaving host governments dependent on royalty flows and political patronage.
The social cost of this strategy is visible across the continent. In Zambia, a catastrophic tailings spill at a Chinese copper mine earlier this year polluted rivers and destroyed crops in surrounding communities. Investigations by independent environmental experts revealed that the company attempted to downplay the scale of the disaster and that state officials sought to manage the story rather than enforce penalties. In Angola, Chinese companies were expelled from several mining sites following public outrage over illegal activities and community displacement. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chinese-controlled cobalt mines have been repeatedly accused of using child labour, unsafe practices and bribery of local officials. These patterns demonstrate a consistent model: investment, resource extraction, weak oversight, environmental damage, labour abuse and political shielding.
Chinese officials often defend these activities by invoking friendship and mutual benefit. They describe incidents like shootings or spills as isolated and express confidence in local legal systems. Yet the outcomes show that foreign nationals rarely face meaningful penalties. Local communities face intimidation and poverty, while ruling elites protect investment relationships that benefit them personally.
Western imperialism relied on explicit racial hierarchies and colonial law to enforce labour discipline. Chinese imperialism operates through economic leverage, party-to-party relations and strategic silence. Both produce similar outcomes for African labour: minimal wages, dangerous conditions, and impunity for violence. The key difference is rhetorical rather than structural. China speaks the language of solidarity and South-South cooperation while extracting resources on terms that replicate colonial relations.
Zimbabwe’s ruling elite play a decisive enabling role in this arrangement. Corruption within the ruling party provides the critical shield that allows Chinese companies to act without fear of prosecution. Senior figures profit directly through hidden joint ventures, kickbacks, and contract allocations. These networks distort governance and ensure that incidents of violence or environmental harm are resolved quietly. Chiefs and police officers are drawn into this network, either through pressure or reward, creating a multi-layered shield around foreign investors.
The human impact of this system is profound. Workers face poverty wages, long hours, physical abuse and unsafe conditions. Communities lose access to clean water, fertile land and sacred cultural sites. In places such as Boterekwa, mountains have been flattened and forests destroyed by mining operations. Water sources are polluted, leading to long-term health consequences for local populations. Traditional livelihoods disappear as mining displaces agriculture and tourism. Environmental degradation leaves lasting scars long after the mineral wealth has been shipped overseas.
The economic argument for tolerating this arrangement is weak. Resource extraction has not generated broad-based prosperity for Zimbabweans. Instead, it has enriched political elites and foreign investors while leaving communities poorer. Economic data show that much of the mining sector operates in a low-tax or tax-exempt environment. Labour conditions remain exploitative. When accidents or killings occur, companies pay small settlements, and production continues. The state lacks both the will and the capacity to regulate effectively.
The legal dimension is equally troubling. Zimbabwean criminal law places homicide under state jurisdiction, not private negotiation. Chiefs have no lawful authority to settle murder cases. Yet political actors allow chiefs to play a public role in these settlements to create a façade of community resolution. This bypassing of the criminal justice system undermines the rule of law and entrenches a dual system where ordinary citizens face prosecution, and foreign investors face negotiation.
The international dimension adds another layer. China has pursued a deliberate strategy of securing resources through political alignment rather than transparent market competition. It has offered loans, infrastructure projects, and political support to African governments in exchange for access to strategic minerals. This strategy gives Beijing leverage over host governments, which fear losing investment and diplomatic backing if they act against Chinese interests.
Western governments and institutions often criticise Chinese practices in Africa, but their historical record shows similar patterns of exploitation. During the colonial period, European companies extracted vast mineral wealth with little regard for African lives. Colonial administrations deployed armed force to suppress labour unrest and expropriate land. After independence, Western corporations often maintained control through joint ventures with local elites. Chinese operations have adopted similar methods but frame them in the language of South-South solidarity, which makes their presence politically palatable to ruling parties while leaving structural exploitation intact.
Dissident African scholars and analysts have described this pattern as neo-extractivism, a system where postcolonial states rely on resource extraction controlled by foreign capital while suppressing domestic dissent. They argue that both Western and Chinese powers benefit from weak African governance and elite capture, ensuring continued access to cheap resources. In this system, African workers remain at the bottom of the hierarchy, facing exploitation, dispossession and violence.
The killing of Fungai Nhau therefore represents more than a criminal act. It is a symptom of an entire structure of political economy. A Chinese national felt entitled to shoot a Zimbabwean worker and rely on local power structures to shield him. The state allowed the killing to be converted into a cash settlement. Chiefs participated in a process that has no legal basis but serves political and economic interests.
The response required goes beyond prosecuting a single individual. It requires dismantling the networks of political protection that sustain Chinese impunity. It requires strengthening judicial independence, ensuring that homicide cases involving foreign nationals are prosecuted transparently, and ending the use of chiefs as shields for corporate crimes. It requires making mining contracts public and enforceable and ensuring communities have legal representation. It requires political reform to break the alliance between foreign capital and local elites.
Citizens will have to confront the cost of silence. Fear and economic desperation have allowed this system to endure. Without organised resistance and legal action, the killings and environmental damage will continue. History shows that imperial systems, whether Western or Chinese, depend on local collaboration. Ending impunity requires breaking that collaboration through political mobilisation and legal enforcement.
Comparisons to colonialism are not rhetorical exaggerations. They are grounded in economic structure and legal reality. Under colonialism, Africans had little recourse against foreign violence. Under the current Chinese-dominated extractive order, they have no effective recourse either. Both systems rest on the denial of African agency and the treatment of African lives as expendable in pursuit of foreign profit.
International pressure can play a role, but meaningful change must come from within Zimbabwe and other affected African states. States must reclaim control of their natural resources, enforce environmental and labour law, and end the practice of shielding foreign nationals from prosecution. Communities must demand legal representation and refuse settlements that undermine justice. Political elites must be held accountable for their role in sustaining impunity.
The killing of Fungai Nhau provides a clear case that can galvanise such a movement. It exposes every layer of the system: the foreign perpetrator, the weak legal response, the political protection, the economic desperation, the environmental backdrop, and the historical parallels with colonialism. It is a moment that can be used to articulate a broader demand for justice and sovereignty.
Chinese officials will continue to insist that such killings are isolated incidents. They will highlight their investment figures and speak of friendship. But the record of repeated shootings, environmental destruction, and labour abuses shows a clear pattern. Western powers committed similar crimes during the colonial period and after. The only real difference is the language used to justify the violence.
The choice facing Zimbabwe and other African countries is not between Chinese and Western imperialism. It is between continued subjugation to external powers and building institutions capable of defending national and community interests. Fungai Nhau’s death is a warning of what happens when foreign capital and local corruption dominate the legal order. If that warning is ignored, more workers will die, more rivers will be polluted, and more sacred lands will be erased.
Communities across the continent are beginning to resist. In Angola, local protests forced expulsions of some Chinese operators. In Zambia, outrage over environmental disasters has generated political pressure for accountability. In parts of Zimbabwe, miners and community groups are organising against land grabs and abuses. These actions remain fragmented, but they show that imperial structures can be challenged when citizens refuse silence.
Fungai Nhau’s family should not have had to accept cattle and a handful of dollars for his life. His killer should have faced the criminal justice system. The community should have been protected by the state. Instead, the state stood with foreign capital, as it has done many times before. The same state stood with foreign capital when colonial companies exploited the land, and it stands with foreign capital again today. The actors have changed. The structure has not.
The question is whether Zimbabweans and other Africans will continue to accept this structure or whether they will confront it directly. The answer will determine whether the next generation lives under another century of extractive domination or whether it finally reclaims its sovereignty and dignity.
Authored By:
Popular Information is powered by readers who believe that truth still matters. When just a few more people step up to support this work, it means more lies exposed, more corruption uncovered, and more accountability where it’s long overdue. If you believe journalism should serve the public, not the powerful, and you’re in a position to help, becoming a PAID SUBSCRIBER truly makes a difference.
<a href=”http://<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://cdnjs.buymeacoffee.com/1.0.0/button.prod.min.js” data-name=”bmc-button” data-slug=”ggtv” data-color=”#FFDD00″ data-emoji=”” data-font=”Cookie” data-text=”Buy me a coffee” data-outline-color=”#000000″ data-font-color=”#000000″ data-coffee-color=”#ffffff” >buymeacoffee.com/ggtv
https://ko-fi.com/globalgeopolitics
Enjoy this post?
Leave a comment