Mugabe threatens to defy diamond trade standards

By Alex Bell
17 February 2010

Robert Mugabe has threatened to defy the diamond trade standards laid out by the international trade watchdog the Kimberley Process, saying the country’s gems can be sold ‘elsewhere’.

Mugabe was speaking at the Tourism and Infrastructure Investment conference which is underway in Harare, at which the country has been trying to market itself as a safe tourism and investment zone. The ageing dictator told journalists that the country’s diamonds would be sold, regardless of the Kimberley Process, which has set Zimbabwe the task of complying with international diamond trade standards.

“We are trying to play it their own way, that is following the KP but we can do it otherwise and we can sell our own diamonds elsewhere,” Mugabe said.

SW Radio Africa correspondent Simon Muchemwa reported from the conference venue that Mugabe’s comments will further dissuade already sceptical donors, many of whom had shown interest in investing in Zimbabwe’s diamond sector. Muchemwa called Mugabe’s comments ‘disturbing’, adding that “no one will want to invest in mining if the government can’t respect international standards.”

Mugabe also lashed out at the European Union (EU), which on Tuesday extended targeted sanctions against the Mugabe regime for another year. The 27-member bloc said travel bans and asset freezes against Mugabe and about 100 of his cohorts would be extended for another 12 months, but the names of six individuals and nine companies were removed from the sanctions list. Mugabe said he was not surprised by the EU decision, and lashed out at the EU for being ‘jealous’ of the country’s natural resources.

“We know their attitude. They don’t want anyone, any country in the developing world, to make any meaningful developmental strides,” Mugabe said.

The Kimberley Process, which has been tasked with ending the global trade in ‘blood diamonds’, has given Zimbabwe until June to fall in line with international trade standards. The move was in place of the country’s widely supported ban from trade, over abuses at the Chiadzwa diamond fields where the military’s brutal control in the name of the state is still ongoing. But the Kimberley Process refused to ban the country, hiding behind an excuse that Zimbabwe’s diamonds are not ‘blood diamonds’. Instead, Zimbabwe as been ordered to follow a set of guidelines approved by the Kimberley Process to attempt to bring the country back in line with international standards.

The guidelines include the demilitarisation of the diamond fields, which has not happened, and rights groups are still reporting that there is strict military control of Chiadzwa and the villagers there. According to the guidelines there is also supposed to be an independent monitor in place to oversee the sale of all stones from Chiadzwa. A monitor has only just been agreed on, after four months of stalling. Mines Minister Obert Mpofu was quoted in the state-run Herald newspaper as saying the government had accepted Abbey Chikane, the head of the South African Diamond Board and a former chairman of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, as monitor for the diamond fields.

In the meantime there has been no way to control the illegal sale of the gems that are being airlifted out of Chiadzwa with no authorisation from the Kimberley Process. An official from the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) made the shock admittance in parliament earlier this month that diamonds were being airlifted from Chiadzwa to Harare without police or Kimberley Process supervision. Masimba Chandavengerwa, the MMCZ’s acting head of marketing, told a parliamentary committee on mines and energy: “At the moment, the airlifting is being done without our knowledge.”

Meanwhile, the UK firm that holds the legal rights to mine Chiadzwa has had its mining licence cancelled in Zimbabwe. Africa Consolidated Resources (ACR) is in the middle of an ownership fight with the state authorised company currently mining the diamond claim - Mbada diamonds. ACR which holds the legal title to the diamond claim in Chiadzwa was evicted at gunpoint from the claim in 2006; a move that a High Court judge last year ruled was illegal. The government has appealed this ruling.

“My clients received a letter last week informing them of the intention to cancel their licence,” the firm’s lawyer Jonathan Samkange is quoted as saying. “We were given up to March 10 to appeal against the decision.”

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