Who will guard the guards?

Written by The Editor

Monday, 19 July 2010 15:28

The decision by the Kimberley Process (KP) to allow Zimbabwe to export its gems under 'supervision' was rather shocking – considering the gross human right abuses going on at Chiadzwa mining fields.

KP’s supervision is not going to mean much if it does not start by watching the guards who will be guarding the diamonds at Chiadzwa, which is a virtual no-go area.
We all know that the army guarding the diamond fields is still very much Zanu (PF)-dominated and that its top officials have been implicated in shady deals regarding the precious stones. Some of them have been, and still are, illegally selling the diamonds in broad daylight.
It is also no secret that Zanu (PF) is power hungry and desperate to regain its former glory. It will stop at nothing - looting the diamonds just as it has plundered national resources in almost every sector of the economy. Party fatcats will use the money to safeguard their own selfish political interests.
Zimbabwe's Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, told Parliament last week that even though the country sold US$30 million in rough diamonds from the Marange this year, there were no financial records of these transactions at the Treasury.
President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace, had already said that Zimbabwe was going to find ways of selling the diamonds with or without KP's permission. Grace Mugabe was last year said to be exporting diamonds to China. The move saw the American government imposing sanctions on people from Malaysia and Singapore who were apparently facilitating the sale of loose diamonds on the world market for her, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and other top defence force officers.
Vice President, Joice Mujuru, who is on both the United States and the European Union targeted measures lists, was also implicated in a diamond shady deal last year. She had her own anthill (churu cha Mai Mujuru) at Chiadzwa. Her daughter was sucked into the diamonds saga when she tried to sell the gems without KP certification. Mujuru threatened a senior executive of a British company with unspecified action after the company refused to handle US$15 million worth of “blood diamonds” that her daughter wanted to sell.
A special United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) investigation, former South African head of the crack Scorpions police unit, Frank Dutton, was hired by the UNDP to investigate the allegations from July to December last year. It is anyone's guess what happened to that report.
According to the agreement reached at the World Diamonds Conference last week , by September Zimbabwe will be able to carry out two supervised exports of rough diamonds from Marange . During this period, the Kimberley Process will conduct a review mission to Zimbabwe, which will be held in conjunction with the first visit to the country by the Kimberley Process Monitor.
But World Diamond Council president Eli Izhakoff warned that, while the agreement could be regarded as progress, there remained much to do.
This confirms the majority of people's fears that if the KP does not watch the movement of the diamonds right from the source with hawk eyes, nothing can stop these habitual looters from pillaging our economy again.

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