"De Beers Stole Our Diamonds!" Alleges Mugabe

Diamonds are obviously Mugabe’s best friends. He lives for them, by them and his regime and administration is financed by them. Where else could he source the sort of funding that it takes to run a party like ZANU PF and live the garish lifestyles that we see daily in the press?

But whilst he loves diamonds, he almost daily goes out of his way to make some of the most absurd allegations known to man…

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"The Zimbabwe government has accused diamond giant De Beers of looting from the controversial Chiadzwa mining fields over a period of 15 year without declaring the proceeds to the State.

President Robert Mugabe is quoted by the state-run Herald newspaper last week as fingering De Beers among other multinational firms as looters in the Marange diamond fields by pretending to be carrying out exploration work.

Asked to elaborate, Mugabe's spokesman George Chiramba, told Mmegi that for 15 years the Zimbabwe government believed De Beers was only prospecting and carrying out tests when the company was actually mining."

As with most allegations made by Mugabe and his minions, there is no substantiation to back their claims, but for Mugabe's administration, the allegation is good enough. We also have to remember that Mugabe-ites have been mining and moving the diamonds out of the fields and many diamonds have 'disappeared' without trace. Mugabe will allege that these diamonds were mined by De Beers.

"When the government finally realised this and tried to arrest them, that's when they hurriedly pulled out and claimed the diamonds were not of commercial value," Charamba sais. "It's not a secret that alluvial diamonds mined at the surface. It is not like kimberlite. Why should it take 15 years for such an experienced company to conclude that our diamonds are of no value to them?

"But we cannot take the issue further because we cannot establish how much of the diamonds have been taken. But the most important thing now is that we have our mines back." Meanwhile, De Beers Director of International Relations has described Mugabe's accusations as incredible and fictitious. "We were in the Marange fields from 1993 to 2006," Andrew Bone told Business Week by phone from London.

"We only did core sampling.

"The deposits we found there do not fit our portfolio.

"There were also disputes regarding the allocation of a second concession to another mining company ACR. That's why we pulled out. But the bottom line is that there are ridiculous allegations and there is no evidence of De Beers mining diamonds in that area."

I have always noted Mugabe's habit of pointing fingers at other parties when the truth is a little closer to home.

Mugabe accuses De Beers of theft - while he and his loyalists help themselves to the diamonds in the Chaidzwa fields. If there are as many diamonds in the fields as we have been led to believe, then I would have expected the Zimbabwean economy to have begun some sort of recovery with the injection of sizable funds into Zimbabwe from the legitimate sale of the diamonds.

But has anyone noticed that Mugabe claims the country is broke?

"Chiadzwa is one of the world's most controversial diamond fields that have generated reports of gross human rights abuses against the illegal miners by soldiers sent to guard the fields after the British firm ACR left."

Perhaps one soldier put it very well when he stated, "When you are standing in a river, it does not make sense that you can die of thirst," - or words to that effect.

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man