Blood and dirt

Diamonds are forever for Mugabe

TENDAI BITI, Zimbabwe's finance minister, has described the 60,000-hectare Marange diamond field in the country's east as “the biggest find of alluvial diamonds in the history of mankind”. Potential revenue is estimated at $1 billion-$1.7 billion a year, about half the crisis-ridden country's total forecast GDP this year and enough to end its economic woes almost at a stroke. But if the revenue fell exclusively into the hands of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF it could, critics argue, spell the return of a single-party dictatorship and end the present shaky power-sharing arrangement between Mr Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

This was the conundrum facing the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the diamond trade's international watchdog, when it recently met in Israel to decide whether to continue to ban the sale of Zimbabwe's alleged “blood diamonds” or to let sales resume. Zimbabwe's ministry of mines, controlled by ZANU-PF, reported earlier this month that it had stockpiled 4.6m carats of diamonds, worth some $1.7 billion, since the organisation suspended official sales in November after allegations that troops guarding the fields had, among other atrocities, massacred more than 200 suspected illegal panners.

The Kimberley Process was set up in 2003 by governments, the diamond industry and NGOs to stop the trade in rough diamonds that had helped pay for rebel groups and governments to wage civil wars in countries such as Congo, Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Its 49 members, representing 75 countries, including Zimbabwe, have agreed to comply with strict standards and promise not to buy diamonds that have not been certified as “conflict-free”. Civil-rights groups say that proceeds from the Marange field are being used to pay ZANU-PF militias to continue attacking MDC people, human-rights campaigners and white farmers.

The state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, which is controlled by ZANU-PF, announced in January that it had paid an $800,000 dividend from the Marange field, part of which is now being mined by two South African companies in joint ventures with the corporation. The London-listed African Consolidated Resources insists, however, that it has the mineral rights to the 1,800-hectare site, deemed to contain the field's richest deposits. Its claim has been upheld by Zimbabwe's Supreme Court but continues to be ignored by the government. Mr Biti, an MDC man, says his treasury has received no diamond revenue at all.

Instead of the outright ban on Zimbabwe diamond sales recommended by the World Diamond Council last year, the Kimberley Process decided in November simply to suspend sales for six months to give the government another chance to comply with its standards and to withdraw all troops from the area. Abbey Chikane, a former boss of the South African Diamond Board who was appointed the group's first head, was asked to monitor things. To the surprise of many, he recommended in a report leaked earlier this month that Zimbabwe be allowed to resume sales, despite reports of continuing human-rights abuse and the sale of uncertified diamonds on the black market, with proceeds going into the pockets of a group of ZANU-PF bigwigs and army officers.

The lengths to which Mr Mugabe and his party are prepared to go to keep a lock on this new-found source of wealth were exemplified by the arrest on June 3rd of Farai Maguwu, head of a Marange-based NGO and a first-class source for what is going on in the area. He is accused of undermining the state by allegedly giving Mr Chikane a top-secret document believed to contain details of skulduggery.

Bizarrely, Mr Chikane, whose brother Frank was chief of staff to South Africa's former president, Thabo Mbeki, let Zimbabwe intelligence agents accompany him to his meeting with Mr Maguwu, despite warnings that this could endanger the NGO man's life. Apparently believing that the document Mr Maguwu gave him may have been “fraudulently acquired”, Mr Chikane says he handed it to ZANU-PF officials for authentication. If convicted, Mr Maguwu could face up to 20 years in jail.

On June 18th Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe's powerful and wealthy minister of mines, told a meeting of his country's chamber of commerce that he had got a letter from the Kimberley Process demanding Mr Maguwu's immediate release if Zimbabwe were to be allowed to resume diamond trading. Mr Mpofu retorted that he could not possibly intervene in Zimbabwe's justice process, which his party also happens to control. Zimbabwe, he said, would sell its diamonds whatever the group decided. “Nothing will stop us.”