Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe claimed early 2016 that $13 billion was lost through leakages since diamond mining began in Marange in 2006.
A local non-governmental organisation, Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) then said last July that the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KP) could have assisted Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF to “plunder” diamond revenues since 2011.
“If Zimbabwe cannot account for diamonds worth $13 billion then it is hard for the KPCS to assure consumers it is doing a good job keeping conflict diamonds out of circulation,” it said.
“The KPCS remained mum following President Mugabe’s shock confession. No fact-finding mission was dispatched to Zimbabwe, at least to assure diamond consumers the incident was a misnomer and the KPCS was taking remedial action.
“The KPCS could have turned a blind eye to the Marange scandal because it didn’t want to be embroiled in yet another hotly disputed matter involving Zimbabwe. Between 2010 and 2011 Zimbabwe threatened to break up the KPCS if it was not allowed to unconditionally export its diamonds, claiming it had surpassed the KPCS minimum standards.”
Mugabe does not share the same theory peddled by CNRG as he was a victim of the ‘deceiving’ miners.
He said in June this year that the Chinese companies — Anjin and Jinan — that operated in Marange until February 2016 used him as he was made to “wave dummy cheques”.
The Chinese diamond miners allegedly pledged $10 million to develop communities affected by mining activities, but nothing materialised.
“The Chinese used us and that is why we kicked them out,” Mugabe was quoted by NewsDay as saying at the time to thousands of his supporters in Mutare.
“Even me, an old man, I feel used. They made me walk around waving dummy cheques, yet they never fulfilled the promise they gave. We then had a misunderstanding with the Chinese and we kicked them out along with the South Africans and the Lebanese. They lied to me, but we will not forget the people of Manicaland.”
Such “deception” and alleged pillaging of diamond revenue was the reason, as Mugabe openly boasted, Harare pushed the diamond companies out.
The government then established the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) in March 2016 to promote ‘transparency and stop smuggling’.
The Chinese resisted the consolidation of diamond operations in Marange, but Mugabe claimed that they were defeated in court.
“They went to court, but lost. This has slowed us down, but I can assure you that once we are mining and selling our diamonds, we will fulfil the promise made, not by government, but by the Chinese,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s mines minister Walter Chidakwa also sensationally claimed last July that a group of suspected diamond looters once plotted to assassinate him when he stopped mining operations in Marange last year.
“It’s difficult to manage diamonds. There are some people, who benefited from diamonds. Some are Zimbabweans,” he was quoted as saying by NewsDay.
“It’s not me who stopped diamond mining of companies in Chiadzwa. It is President Robert Mugabe. Even minister Mushohwe knows that we sat after a Cabinet meeting and the President asked me if I feared dealing with these mining companies and you know when the President says that, I had to take action.”
“Today, I want to make it clear that if you were part of the looting, please stop it. After I stopped them (diamond companies), they reported to other ministers, but the ministers referred them back to me. Some even cried in my office and I had to give them tissue paper (to wipe away tears). Some even suggested taking me out, but God protects us.”
So, he was the man who sort to clean the “mess” in Marange.
Crocodile tears
Sceptics, however, find it difficult to accept that Harare was not complicit in the pillaging of the country’s diamond revenue.
The very same people who are screaming on top of their voices that “we were robbed”, ignored ex-finance minister during the government of national unity (GNU), Tendai Biti’s calls to plug diamond looting in the country.
He claimed then that there was a limited flow of diamond revenue to the Treasury despite the fact that the government owned part of all diamond companies in Marange.
Biti was forced to cut Zimbabwe’s budget in 2012 to $3.4 billion from $4 billion after receiving $41 million from $600 million that he expected from diamond sales.
However, his colleagues from President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party in the GNU as well as the diamond miners denied allegations of poor remittances.
“It is either he (Biti) is untruthful, incompetent or illiterate. He made the blunder and miscalculated. He must be man enough and admit that he made a mistake,” said Anjin board member Munyaradzi Machacha in 2012.
“He must tell the nation where the money we gave to Treasury is.”
Interestingly, months after the end of the GNU in 2013, the ZANU-PF led government started saying that there was a poor remittance of diamond revenue from Marange by miners.
One wonders why there was a sudden change of the tune, given that their hymn during the GNU was leakages were a figment of Biti’s imagination.
This makes the Marange story somewhat difficult to understand as it was shrouded in a dark of secrecy.
I doubt KP even had a full picture of what was going on in the vast diamond fields.
Officials in Harare promised a new start with ZCDC telling anyone who bothered to listen that it was no longer business as usual.
Their messages had been very positive.
"The ongoing reforms in diamonds and the coal industry are already seeing the turn-around of these sub-sectors, providing impetus for higher growth of mining," finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said last July.
"With the capitalisation of the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Mining Company (ZCDC) diamonds output during the first half of 2017 were 1,1 million carats against 690 000 carats produced during the previous year."
However, there was something wrong with the figures being bandied with reckless abandon.
For a country that claimed to be revamping the diamond industry and promoting transparency, this was a difficult sale.
How do we reconcile Harare’s figures with the data released by the Kimberley Process, which indicated that the country produced 2,1 million carats in 2016 worth $105 million?
The discrepancy in production figures was not the only issue worrisome as security in Marange was also a matter of concern.
In July, the local media claimed that an illegal diamond miner was killed while three were seriously injured after they were shot by ZCDC guards in Marange.
The Herald newspaper reported that ZCDC security guards exchanged fire with 200 armed illegal diamond miners who broke into the company’s premises around 3am on July 18.
ZCDC chief executive Moris Mpofu, however, said that there was no security threat at the mine and the situation was “under control”.
The state-owned diamond company had a lot of work and convincing to do to ensure it gains the public trust.
Genuine transparency was sine qua non, especially for a diamond mining company.
Zimbabwe’s neighbours are raking in millions if not billions of dollars from diamond mining every year, helping shore up their national coffers.
The same can be done in the country if they are genuine about real transparency and servanthood.
Zimbabwe recently announced that it discovered new areas away from Marange that might have diamondiferous kimberlites.
If this proves to be true, then the country had another opportunity to conduct its diamond mining industry in a professional and transparent manner for the betterment of the lives of many a people who are teeming in abject poverty.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
