BUSINESMAN James Rushwaya has re-opened Pejamatang Mining Company after 15 years of a legal battle,champions women empowerment

KADOMA – BUSINESSMAN James Rushwaya has reopened and remodelled operations at Pejatama Mining Company with thrust of championing employment of locals first, women at the forefront and a zero-tolerance war on the drug abuse epidemic. Rushwaya is one of the country’s best physiologists and is uncle to Zimbabwe Mining Federation president Henrieta Rushwaya. The transformation is noble and champions women empowerment .

When Rushwaya returned to the site less than six months ago, he found a community faced with hopelessness. “What happened when I came back four or five months ago, I found chaos. ” There was a lot of prostitution.

There was a lot of substance abuse,” Rushwaya said. Instead of seeking distant investors as his first priority, he looked to the streets. He recognized that the survival of the mine depended on the survival of the youth.

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“The first thing that I did was to make sure that all those youth who were involved in all those things like drugs and so forth, we made sure that we employed them,” he said. The impact was immediate. In the dusty villages surrounding the mine, the idle loitering that once defined the area has been replaced by the discipline of the shift clock.

This stability is trickling down to the next generation, with school enrollment figures finally climbing. “A lot of the young people were not going to school. But I am aware that we have made a big change. Now the small children, some of them who were just loitering around doing nothing, now they are all going back to school,” Rushwaya added.

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