Using street theatre to increase awareness of and reduce mercury pollution in the artisanal gold mining sector: a case from Zimbabwe

Abstract An illustrative example of street theatre used in international development as an awareness-building tool is Nakai , a drama produced by the United Nation's Industrial Development Organization's Global Mercury Project (GMP) in Zimbabwe to increase knowledge of the hazards of mercury use amongst artisanal gold miners in the Kadoma-Chakari region, Zimbabwe. Nakai performed to almost 9000 people, but its influence on behavioral change in the GMP project area could not be studied due to the extremely unstable political situation at the time in Zimbabwe. Nakai evolved as a non-participatory didactic drama with the belief that a transportable equipment-demonstration school would serve as a more effective platform for participation and empowerment. About 700 miners were trained in these demonstration units and learned how to process gold more efficiently and reduce mercury losses when the whole ore is amalgamated and when the amalgams are burned in open air. Indicators of success were not very evident since the repression of the police on miners and theatre players limited sound assessment of the awareness initiatives. The system of mineral processing centers in the region inhibits behavioral change because the centers' owners reap benefits from recovering gold from tailings using sophisticated techniques such as cyanidation, while rudimentary mercury amalgamation techniques are reserved for the artisanal miners. In practice, national and local elites can easily consolidate power and direct project benefits to themselves, reducing the possibilities empowering the miners.

[1]  Stephen Merrick Metcalf,et al.  Identifying strategies for effective artisanal and small-scale gold mining interventions in Kadoma-Chakari, Zimbabwe , 2008 .

[2]  Victoria J. Michener.  The participatory approach: Contradiction and co-option in Burkina Faso , 1998 .

[3]  D. Kerr,et al.  African Popular Theatre: From Pre-Colonial Times to the Present Day , 1995 .

[4]  J. Okoth,et al.  The use of theatre to mobilize and sensitize rural communities to participate in tsetse control in Bugiri district, Busoga, Uganda: a case study. , 1998, Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology.

[5]  Samuel J. Spiegel,et al.  Resource policies and small-scale gold mining in Zimbabwe , 2009 .

[6]  Theatre for Development: An overview , 2002 .

[7]  Helene Fuller,et al.  Culture and Development: The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa , 1991 .

[8]  A. Dash,et al.  A community-based health education programme for bio-environmental control of malaria through folk theatre (Kalajatha) in rural India , 2006, Malaria Journal.

[9]  Savvakis C. Savvides,et al.  International development , 1990 .

[10]  D. Kerr,et al.  Moving beyond developmental paradigms: A case study and analysis of a TfD workshop in Bangladesh , 2009 .

[11]  M. Bamberger.  The importance of community participation , 1991 .

[12]  V. Rao,et al.  Community Based (and Driven) Development: A Critical Review , 2004 .

[13]  Zakes Mda.  When People Play People: Development Communication through Theatre , 1993 .

[14]  K. D'souza.  Design and pilot implementation of a model scheme of assistance to small scale miners: phase 1. (ADD009). , 2000 .

[15]  S Panford,et al.  Using folk media in HIV/AIDS prevention in rural Ghana. , 2001, American journal of public health.

[16]  Preben Kaarsholm.  Mental Colonisation or Catharsis? Theatre, democracy and cultural struggle from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe , 1990 .

[17]  M. Adams,et al.  The mechanisms of adsorption of Hg(CN)2 and HGCl2 on to activated carbon , 1991 .

[18]  Theory Meets Theatre Practice: Making a Difference to Public Health Programmes in Southern Africa. Professor Lynn Dalrymple: South African Scholar, Activist, Educator , 2012 .

[19]  Marcello M. Veiga,et al.  Appraising the Global Mercury Project: an adaptive management approach to combating mercury pollution in small-scale gold mining , 2010 .

[20]  Brian J Dill.  The Paradoxes of Community‐based Participation in Dar es Salaam , 2009 .

[21]  Gavin Hilson,et al.  Mercury: An agent of poverty in Ghana's small-scale gold-mining sector? , 2006 .

[22]  Ola Johansson.  The Lives and Deaths of Zakia: How AIDS Changed African Community Theatre and Vice Versa , 2007, Theatre Research International.

[23]  J. Platteau.  Monitoring Elite Capture in Community‐Driven Development , 2004 .

[24]  Janis A. Shandro,et al.  Cyanidation of mercury-rich tailings in artisanal and small-scale gold mining: identifying strategies to manage environmental risks in Southern Ecuador , 2011 .