Zim’s First Lady accuses VP Mujuru of “illicit diamond dealing”

Addressing supporters President Robert Mugabe’s wife was extremely critical of personal and professional qualities of the Vice President Joice Mujuru.
“Those positions which you hold were given to you and you can be removed. It is possible,” she added apparently hinting at a dismissal.
 More significantly, Grace accused Mujuru of corruption including illicit diamond dealing and extorting shareholdings in private companies.
She alleged that Mujuru had bought newspapers to write bad things about her.
“(You’re) are going around the country saying Mai Mugabe is bad; she is hated by the President’s relatives, but tell me what about you? So your husband’s relatives love you?», the First Lady added.
Mujuru’s family owns a stake in one of Zimbabwe’s private diamond mining company, River Ranch.
The Mujurus now live on a requisitioned farm, Alamein Farm, 72 km south of Harare, which has been found by the Supreme Court in Zimbabwe to have been illegally seized from the farm owner.
Mujuru recently sparked a potential diplomatic spat following her tongue-in-cheek comment over India’s Surat. She said that India had “built a whole town” from smuggled Marange diamonds.
Surat, a city in the Indian state of Gujarat, was considered the world's biggest diamond cutting and polishing centre.
“Right now they are claiming that the Marange diamonds have been exhausted but no one here has any diamond rings or other jewels,” she said in her native language Shona.
“No jobs were created locally in diamond polishing. All the diamonds were taken to India wh ere they have built a town from Chiadzwa [Marange] diamonds – it’s called Surat and yet Zimbabweans continue to struggle.”

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished