The monitor, South Africa’s Abbey Chikane, reportedly returned to Zimbabwe last week and has cleared a batch of Chiadzwa stones for export. This is despite the deadlock reached over Zimbabwe’s trade future that means the KP has not sanctioned Chikane’s mission or authorised the certification.
A recent meeting of the KP in Jerusalem failed to reach a decision on Zimbabwe, which was last year barred from international trade over human rights abuses at Chiadzwa. The KP had given Zimbabwe almost a year to fall in line with the minimum international standards of diamond trade, but there are ongoing reports of brutal military control of the diamond fields and smuggling.
Most recently, six directors of one of the mining firms mining at Chiadzwa with the government’s approval have taken the fall for corruption, said to be widespread at the site. Rights groups have warned that top ZANU PF officials involved in the mining groups are driving the plunder of the area, with some reports suggesting that more than half of the diamonds mined are being smuggled out of the area for ZANU PF’s gain.
Regardless of the situation, the Mines Ministry has insisted it has met the international standards, and has been piling pressure on the KP to allow full diamond exports to resume. Mines Minister Obert Mpofu has already threatened to sell the stones without KP approval, which some observers have said is an intimidatory tactic to force the KP’s hand.
Chikane’s reported unilateral decision to certify Chiadzwa diamonds, without approval from the KP, is now a worrying development. Alan Martin from the pressure group Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that the development is “shocking and troubling.”
“People expected Zimbabwe to be upping the ante in trying to force the KP to fold like an old tissue,” Martin said. “But I don’t think anybody expected Chikane would be brought in to be aiding and abetting Zimbabwe in this way.” Martin added: “The situation presents him (Chikane) as being Harare’s boy.”
Questions have previously been raised over Chikane’s credibility as the monitor for Zimbabwe. He was implicated in the arrest of diamond researcher, Farai Maguwu. Maguwu, who has played a pivotal role in exposing the rights abuses at Chiadzwa, but was arrested shortly before a KP meeting earlier this year.
He has since said that Chikane “shopped” him to police, after a private meeting between the two, where Maguwu tried to detail the ongoing abuses at Chiadzwa.
Meanwhile, the situation has also thrown the KP’s crumbling credibility into sharp relief. PAC’s Martin said on Tuesday that the KP needs to take “tough and unified” action against Chikane, and also seize any diamond shipments from Zimbabwe. “This is indeed crunch time for the KP to prove that they can enforce the certification regime they have boasted,” Martin said.
* Sw Radio Africa
