A report by the Centre for Research and Development said plundered Zimbabwean diamonds were feeding a thriving black market that had been established across the border in Mozambique. “Hundreds of international buyers have descended on the Manica town of Mozambique to buy Chiadzwa diamonds,” the centre said. It implicated soldiers and senior officials in the Ministry of Mines in the looting of the diamonds from Chiadzwa fields located in the Marange area of Manicaland.
Hundreds of panners, who had left the diamonds fields at the height of gross human rights abuses by the army, have allegedly returned to work in syndicates with the soldiers. Soldiers are allegedly brutally assaulting anyone caught wondering in the diamond fields without military escort. The news of the thriving Manica black market for diamonds came as the Kimberley Process (KP), an international watchdog against the mining and trade in conflict diamonds, announced that a final verdict on Zimbabwe’s controversial Chiadzwa diamond fields was still to be made.
KP chairperson and Namibia’s Mines Minister Bernhard Esau said his visit to Zimbabwe last month was not a review mission but “a bilateral visit for informative purposes only”. He said the final report of the KP review mission that visited Zimbabwe in June and July was yet to be finalised and only then would a decision on suspension of Harare’s membership be made. “Any decision by the KP as to Zimbabwe’s KP membership will be taken in light of that final report on which Zimbabwe will have an opportunity to comment and in compliance with the agreed KP rules and procedures,” Esau said in a statement.
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