Beaten and Paralysed at Acacia’s North Mara Gold Mine:

The Story of Zakaria Nyamakomo

One man’s struggle for justice in Tanzania and the lengths a multinational company will go to deny it

4 February 2019

In a remote corner of northwest Tanzania, in the early hours of the morning of 9 October 2013, 27-year old Zakaria Nyamakomo Marwa was searching for waste rocks at Acacia Mining’s North Mara Gold Mine (the ‘Mine’). The father of three young children, and responsible for supporting his widowed mother and younger siblings, Zakaria was struggling to make ends meet. His meagre earnings from farming and fishing were not enough to feed his family.

Like some friends and neighbours, he occasionally scaled the walls surrounding the nearby mine after dark to search for waste rock. Doing so was risky: he had heard many had been killed, including his younger brother when walking near to the Mine, and others beaten by police and security officials guarding the Mine. But he was desperate and if he was lucky, it might earn him enough for food on the table and clothes for his children.

That night, Zakaria was not lucky. He waited with others near the Mine till there was no security in sight. When it was safe, they climbed the wall and began their search. But before long, Zakaria and the dozens of other so called “intruders” were spotted by mine security.

Acacia Mining’s subsidiary has an agreement to pay the Tanzanian police to guard the Mine in coordination with the Mine’s own security staff. The security patrol fired teargas and gave chase to the intruders. Zakaria fled, but in the chaos, he fell. By the time he picked himself up, the police were upon him, stamping on him and beating him viciously with batons. The police often assault “intruders”, but are not held to account for their actions. As the blows rained down, Zakaria later recalled that it was as if they were “trying to kill a snake”.

Such was the ferocity of the attack, Zakaria was beaten unconscious. He doesn’t know what happened next, only regaining consciousness the next day in a local hospital. Doctors told him two of his vertebrae were shattered and he would never walk again. “I didn’t want to believe it,” Zakaria later said. “I cried with such bitterness.”

Several months later, in May 2014, Zakaria was sent home because he couldn’t afford the hospital bills. Confined to a broken-down wheelchair, he needed help to navigate the rough terrain of his mother’s small plot of land. His wife left him shortly after his return because he could not provide for his family, and, unable to give her proper care, his youngest child Angel, still an infant, died not long after.

As the blows rained down, Zakaria later recalled that it was as if they were “trying to kill a snake”

It took until February 2015 for Zakaria to pluck up the courage to journey from his home to the Mine’s grievance office to make a claim. His wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the door so he sat outside as a Mine official wrote out his complaint. Zakaria cannot read or write. Like many*, he was scared of saying it was the police who beat him, fearing reprisals, so he told the official his injuries resulted from a fall at the Mine. He believed this offered the best chance of getting any assistance.

* Tanzanian hospitals require that assault victims submit a form known as Police Form Number 3 (PF3) prior to being treated…The PF3 requirement impedes access to health. For those who have been assaulted by the police themselves—or who are reluctant to go to the police for fear of facing repercussions—treatment is out of reach, either because police outright refuse to provide the form or because victims are afraid to request it. – Human Rights Watch 2013 Report

The company official told Zakaria that he would be contacted within 30 days. As the months went by with no response, he began to lose hope.

Acacia’s Denials

In July 2016, a local village chairman, aware that Zakaria had been injured by police at the Mine, urged RAID to see him. RAID staff were visiting the area as part of ongoing research into the high number of security-related deaths and grievous assaults at the Mine.

RAID took down Zakaria’s account and spoke to others about what had occurred. A witness who was in the pit the same night as Zakaria provided a detailed statement confirming Zakaria’s account about the police beating.

RAID contacted Acacia in November 2016 to raise Zakaria’s case with them. Acacia responded that Zakaria had been injured not by police, but in a fall, as cursorily recorded 7 months after the incident in a hospital discharge form taken from Zakaria. In response to a request from the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights, which wanted to hear directly from alleged victims of corporate-related abuses, RAID produced a video on his plight.

Questionable Evidence

Following publication of the video, Mine officials approached the local Tanzanian police commander, Morris Okinda, about the incident. Okinda had a dubious reputation and been involved in harassing local activists. But Mine officials had found him to be helpful.

The involvement of Okinda in the case set in motion a series of events resulting in elaborate and shifting accounts to discredit Zakaria and absolve the Mine and police of any responsibility for his injuries. Later it said Zakaria had been in a drunken fight at Nyangoto village with a man named Stivine Girimbe and fallen into a local mine pit. This later changed to the fight having taken place at Kegonche with Zakaria falling into a pit latrine. Acacia obtained from Okinda a police report about Zakaria, which it sent to RAID along with other materials including: a police detention register and charge sheet for Girimbe, two photocopied pages of entries in a Police Report Book, and select court-related documents concerning charges against Girimbe. Based on these materials, Acacia accused Zakaria of fabricating his allegations against the police at the Mine.

When RAID inspected the documents it was clear they were full of anomalies. Yet the Mine did not question this flawed evidence and instead chose to rely on it to discredit Zakaria’s account.

(a) The “helpfully” provided police report

The half-page report from police commander Okinda included a cover letter signed by him. It was addressed to the “The Security Manager, Acacia North Mara Gold Mine Ltd” and said “I appreciate for your mutual assistance and hoping this report will be helpfully [sic]”.

The letter was dated October 2017. Oddly, so was the police report, indicating it was created at the same time as the letter, four years after the incident. It stated that Zakaria had “sustained injuries on his head and waist” from falling into “a local mine pit” in Nyangoto village after being struck on the head with a beer bottle by Girimbe (who, RAID learned, has died and so cannot deny the report). It expressly sought to absolve the Mine of any responsibility by stating “the incident didn’t happen within the ACACIA Mining area therefore ACACIA Mining had nothing to answer”.

(b) The dubious police records

The entries in the Police Report Book purported to show that Zakaria had reported being assaulted by Girimbe. Yet Zakaria’s address was incorrect, his name was misspelled, and his date of birth was wrong. Moreover, the entry for Zakaria recorded the time as 13:44 on 9 October 2013. At the time, Zakaria was lying paralysed in a hospital many miles away.

The detention register had its own contradiction: it showed that Girimbe was in police cells before his supposed assault on Zakaria had been reported.

Concerned about the inconsistencies in the police documents, RAID asked a lawyer to visit the police station to examine the original “Police Report Book” to check it against Acacia’s photocopy. Alongside a senior police officer, the lawyer looked carefully through the relevant pages but the entry was nowhere to be found, casting doubt on the authenticity of the photocopy provided to the Mine. The police officer had no explanation for where the entry could have come from if it was not in the original Police Report Book. After making some phone calls, he told the lawyer it was only police commander Okinda who could explain it.

The documents Acacia relies on to discredit Zakaria

The Mine’s story falls apart

In June 2018, RAID staff travelled to North Mara in Tanzania to try to get to the bottom of the case. One of the people they spoke to was the Kegonche Chairman, Peter Mwitambuli, to ask about the alleged fight between Zakaria and Girimbe. The Chairman said that an assault by Girimbe had taken place. He remembered being called to a resident’s house to find a neighbour he knew well lying unconscious on the floor. The man was a friend, John Magebo, and he quickly took John to the nearest police station to seek assistance.

The Chairman explained that he had been asked by police commander Okinda to give a statement sometime in late 2017 or early 2018. He said that he had told the police that it was John Magebo who was injured by Girimbe, but that the police insisted that he sign a statement saying that it was Zakaria Nyamakomo. The Chairman told RAID that he had later been interviewed by the Mine and had told the Mine what happened: that it was John Magebo who had been injured by Girimbe, but that the police had insisted he say it was someone named Zakaria Nyamakomo. He also told RAID that he asked the Mine to show him a photograph of the person who was injured so that he could identify him, but that the Mine had not done so.

When RAID showed a photograph of Zakaria to the Chairman, the Chairman was adamant. He did not know the man in the photograph, and it was definitely not the neighbour who had been assaulted by Girimbe.

 The commander warned Zakaria that if he pursued his allegations… in the end, he would be “begging” for assistance.

The Chairman signed a statement confirming that the man assaulted by Girimbe was not Zakaria. RAID questioned others in the hamlet who also remembered the fight. They too confirmed the injured man was John Magebo, not Zakaria.

During the same visit, RAID spoke again to Zakaria, putting Acacia’s version of events and allegations to him. Zakaria was clear. He did not know a Stivine Girimbe, had never lived in Kegonche and had never been in any fight there. RAID spoke to other witnesses who confirmed Zakaria’s account as well. They included a witness who provided a signed statement saying that he saw Zakaria at the Mine on the night of October 8-9. RAID had previously obtained a signed statement from another witness who had seen Zakaria being beaten by police that night.

RAID also learned that Zakaria had been threatened by police commander Okinda. The commander warned Zakaria that if he pursued his allegations against the Mine, it would be “a problem”, and that in the end, Zakaria would be “begging” for assistance.

Acacia fails to address the case 

RAID provided the new information, including the signed witness statements, to Acacia in August 2018 explaining that this may have been a case of mistaken identity and that the version of events upon which the company was relying was untenable. RAID urged the company to reconsider the case and provide an appropriate remedy to Zakaria. But rather than engaging with the facts, or providing any evidence to back their assertions, Acacia once more denigrated Zakaria’s claim as untrue.

Acacia says that Zakaria can put his claim through the Mine’s grievance process, but Zakaria has done that already and received no response from the Mine to his initial complaint. The Mine controls the process, and the same Mine Investigations Team tasked by the company with liaising with the police would be responsible for making “findings of facts” to determine his claim. Even the appeal committee that would ultimately determine his claim lacks independence, as all its members are currently appointed by the Mine, and the Mine retains ultimate overall control over the process.

Zakaria remains in severe pain. Having lost his wife and youngest child, unable to work, he and his two remaining  children are wholly dependent on his widowed mother, who struggles to scrape together more than £6 each month to sustain the family.

 Zakaria’s case is emblematic of Acacia’s conduct regarding North Mara. He is one of many who have died or suffered life changing injuries at the hands of security forces guarding the Mine. The victims have received little or no compensation from the company and no justice. It is a stark example of what happens when someone with limited means is up against the power of a multinational company.

There is every reason for Acacia to ensure that Zakaria is compensated and receives an apology for the treatment he has endured, and to do the right thing. It has international and legal responsibilities to do so. Acacia claims it respects local communities and adheres to human rights principles, but this case and many of others documented by RAID illustrate the emptiness of such rhetoric. Acacia Mining, its board and majority shareholder Barrick should take urgent action to rectify the situation and ensure, throughout their operations, victims like Zakaria are appropriately compensated.

To learn more about why seeking remedy from Acacia is a poor option for victims see here

For further information see here

North Mara Gold Mine Limited, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of England and Wales incorporated and London Main Market listed Acacia Mining plc ( LON: ACA ), whose majority shareholder is Canada’s Barrick, which hold 63.9 per cent. In 2018, RandGold and Barrick Gold merged to create the largest gold mining company in the world with a market capitalisation of over $23 billion