Panning for Gold Is Nasty Business in Zimbabwe : Mining: Panners work, many illegally, along thousands of miles of rivers in the gold belt. But it has clogged waterways and dams with silt and caused devastating soil erosion.

Gold fever killed Annah Chayera.

Sand and boulders crushed her when a crude, hand-dug mine shaft collapsed in a gold belt known since biblical times.

Stuart Simba was luckier. He only got a police bullet in the shoulder while fleeing an illegal dig.

A decade of growing unemployment in this southern African country has spurred thousands like them to try their luck at the rivers that crisscross the region.

In rugged bush 55 miles northeast of Harare, the capital, hundreds of panners carry alluvial sand to the water’s edge from a maze of unpropped shafts recklessly burrowed 50 feet or more into the bank of the Nyaguwe River.

They swirl sand and water in pans hewn from the trunk of the mahogany-like munhondo tree. The sand washes away and, when luck smiles, leaves pinhead flecks of pure gold or, sometimes, a nugget the size of a dove’s egg.

Panners work along thousands of miles of rivers in the gold belt that runs diagonally across the country.

In northeast Zimbabwe is Mt. Fura, once thought to be the land of Ophir, described in tales of Phoenician seafarers retold in the Old Testament’s Book of Kings.

Milton placed “Paradise Lost” there, and Rider Haggard chose it for the site of King Solomon’s legendary mines.

Modern archeological investigations generally have discredited the legends, but the origins of Lebanese cedar trees and wild lemons found in the landlocked region hundreds of miles from the coast never have been fully explained.

What is certain, historian Henrik Ellert said, is that the legends attracted Portuguese explorers. They were searching for gold in the 16th and 17th centuries, and found it.

“The Portuguese records show it was panned by local villagers in the river beds in exactly the same way it is done now,” said Ellert, a Danish-born Zimbabwean who writes books on regional history.

Natives exchanged the gold, called goride in the local Shona language, for cloth and beads.

Traders took it by foot and dugout canoe to a natural deep-water harbor known as Sofala in what is now Mozambique. From there, it was shipped to India and Goa to be traded for spices.

Zimbabwe ranks as the world’s 11th-largest gold producer. Annual output of about 18 tons from legal mines earns $300 million for the treasury.

Gold mined or panned illegally is estimated to be worth an additional $20 million a year, putting Zimbabwe alongside Brazil and Papua New Guinea in that category.

So pure is the alluvial gold that it easily can be melted and fashioned into bracelets or other items for smuggling. Panned gold dust can be hidden in such places as the shafts of ballpoint pens.

Matthew de Klerk, a prospector who owns a legal gold claim, said the modern traffic works this way:

Dealers buy illegal gold from miners in local currency, sell it for hard currency on bullion markets in Europe and India, then sell the hard currency in Africa for more than twice the original cost of the gold.

The Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines estimates that at least 50,000 people are panning gold illegally, most of them because they cannot find jobs.

Officially, the unemployment rate is 23% in this nation of 9.5 million, representing an increase of 60% since 1985. Private economists put the figure much higher.

Little panning was done in the 1970s because the war of independence made it too dangerous. Laws against illegal mining were enforced before that, when Zimbabwe was white-ruled Rhodesia.

Today’s free-lance prospectors ignore laws that restrict the purchase of gold to the state bank and forbid panning for environmental reasons.

Panning has clogged rivers and dams with silt and caused devastating soil erosion, even desertification, along the once-fertile water courses, the Natural Resources Board reported.

“Tragically, we don’t have the men or enough four-wheel-drive vehicles to police our rivers,” said Keith Harvey, a board official.

Authorities confiscate thousands of dollars worth of gold from the few illegal prospectors arrested each year, but individuals seldom are fined more than 1,500 Zimbabwean dollars ($600 U.S.), according to the Chamber of Mines.

“It is worth the risk,” said panner Elias Mutasa. “There’s goride here. Plenty plus.”