Fifteen miners are feared to have died following a collapse at a gold mine at Penhalonga in the Mutasa District of Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe, on Thursday 4 January 2024. The men are understood to have been artisanal miners who entered the Redwing Gold Mine to dig in an informal way, and are thought to have damaged pillars left by earlier miners as supports, triggering the collapse. Rescue teams from Metallon Corporation, who formerly owned the site, entered the mine but were forced to turn back due to unstable conditions.
Metallon operated the Redwing Mine between 2016 and 2019, during which time the company lost US$82 million. The mine has been taken over by Better Brands Mining, a company owned by local MP Scott Sakupwanya, which has used local people equipped with traditional tools to extract gold from the mine. This operation has been beset by safety problems, with more that 100 miners thought to have died since the takeover. The mine was closed by the Environmental Management Agency in January 2023, following a series of fatalities, but reopened in March 2023.
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