By Alex Bell
08 March 2010
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has called for a complete overhaul of the laws governing the country’s diamond trade, saying all the mining leases that the government has awarded to firms in the Chiadzwa diamond field should be cancelled.
The Supreme Court has ready ordered the state authorised companies mining the fields to halt their operations, over the ongoing ownership wrangle for the claim with a UK based firm. Currently Mbada Diamonds and Canadile Miners, which are both joint ventures the government formed with two South African firms last year, are mining diamonds at Chiadzwa. They took over from the London based African Consolidated Resources (ACR), who were forced out of the claim at gunpoint in 2006, despite having the legal title to mine the diamonds.
Biti said over the weekend that the leases awarded to Mbada and Canadile were done so ‘fraudulently’, explaining that the MDC’s national executive resolved to have all mining operations in Chiadzwa stopped until a clear law on diamond mining is established. He added that there is also no revenue entering the government’s coffers despite millions of diamonds being mined by the firms.
“There is nothing coming from Chiadzwa. There is nothing coming to the fiscus from Chiadzwa,” Biti said at a rally over the weekend.
“Chiadzwa represents the biggest find of alluvial diamonds in the history of mankind. In the interest of transparency, all mining licences, leases, special grants that have been given in Chiadzwa must be cancelled forthwith. All mining operations must cease. There must be a new diamond law in Zimbabwe,” Biti said.
The Finance Minister’s comments come as an independent monitor ordered by the international diamond trade watchdog, the Kimberley Process, has arrived in Zimbabwe. Abbey Chikane, the head of the South African Diamond Board and a former Chairman of the Kimberley Process, was finally appointed as a monitor for the diamond fields after four months of fighting over a suitable candidate. He arrived last week and has been meeting with mines ministry officials and the state-authorised mining firms operating in Chiadzwa.
Chikane’s presence in the country forms part of a list of guidelines set out by the Kimberley Process last year to try and bring Zimbabwe back in line with international trade standards. Zimbabwe escaped a widely supported ban from trade over human rights atrocities at the diamond fields. But the Kimberley Process instead gave Zimbabwe until June to sort out its diamond industry, ordering it to follow the guidelines.
Such guidelines have largely been ignored and role of the Kimberley Process has also been publicly shunned by the government. Mines Minister Obert Mpofu recently warned that Zimbabwe will sell diamonds without Kimberley Process certification (KP) should the watchdog rule that efforts to comply with its standards are inadequate. Mpofu’s threats echo comments made by Robert Mugabe more than two weeks ago, when he also threatened to withdraw from the Kimberley Process.
“If the KP is unsatisfied with our efforts and wants to be difficult saying that we have failed to comply with their requirements... we will not lose sleep, but rather we will just pull put and not lose anything,” Mpofu said.
“The KP does not own the diamond trade markets. Zimbabwe will pull out of the KP and sell its diamonds to those markets,” he said.
Gabriel Shumba, from the Zimbabwe Bloods Diamonds Campaign, told SW Radio Africa on Monday that such threats must be taken seriously, saying: “ZANU PF will find some way to sell these resources to fund their politically motivated repression ahead of elections.” Shumba explained that, despite the existence of the Kimberley Process, which was tasked with ending the trade in conflict diamonds, there are still ways of selling diamonds “regardless of the abuses taking place when these stones are mined.”
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