RAPAPORT... In a country where unemployment levels are a staggering 90 percent, Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields — despite the fact that they are dangerous, unstable and volatile — are the country’s major source of employment. But the majority of the fields, where diamonds were discovered in 2006, are not being commercially mined. Only a 7.7-square-mile area is worked by government-licensed Mbada Diamonds and Canadile Miners, who employ a total of 600 workers between them. A third joint venture with Anjin Zimbabwe, a Chinese company, reportedly was signed this summer for a 1.5-square-mile parcel.
There is a vast diamond-rich stretch, in excess of 250 square miles, that remains under the control of the military until the Zimbabwe government finds private investors to take over the operations. In the meantime, members of the local diamond trade are forced to forge alliances, or so-called syndicates, with the soldiers who patrol and secure the area if they want to search for diamonds. From the panners who work the fields, to the middlemen who “bridge” the stones to Mutare city, from where they are smuggled into Mozambique, soldiers are the key intermediaries who keep the diamond traffic moving in this resource-rich land. Without the military presence, the diamond business would dry up and those now working in the trade would starve.
Mutual Dependency
A precarious, uneasy, but mutually dependent relationship exists between the panners and the soldiers. The panners need the soldiers to access the diamond fields. Soldiers, on the other hand, straight from the military barracks and inexperienced in identifying a rich trail in a mine or a piece of valuable diamond rough, need the illegal civilian miners, with their knowledge of the diamond fields, to locate and recover good stones.
“Without the soldiers, there is no work,” states Richard, a worker who was laid off at Tanganda Tea Company in 2007, joining the ranks of the unemployed during Zimbabwe’s decade-long economic and political turmoil. Now a panner, Richard says the rule is simple: “The soldier takes half of the spoils. The rest of the civilian members of the syndicate take the other half.”
But this interdependency is a double-edged sword and there is a constant threat of violence to those who try to find a way around the soldiers’ control. Panners venturing into the fields without permission from the soldiers to dig on their own, in order to avoid surrendering half their pickings, run the risk of severe beatings if they are caught trying to “eat alone,” as the practice is known in popular parlance. Panners who try to take advantage of the soldiers’ limited knowledge of diamonds by undervaluing stones during the counting and collection process, or those who attempt to conceal stones under their tongues, between their toes or at a “safe place” in the bush, also face severe beatings or are forced to work for nothing while the soldiers “recoup their losses.”
Soldiers, explains a panner named Taurai, “can be cooperative one minute and hostile the next. Working with them sometimes is unpredictable but then, without them, we will go hungry.”
A Campaign of Brutality
The uneasy alliance between the illegal panners and the army often tips into brutal reprisals when diamond regulators shine a spotlight on the controversial arrangement. Crack units of the Zimbabwe military routinely carry out flash campaigns against the same illegal panners they normally partner with, whenever the Kimberley Process (KP) monitor or some ministerial delegation is about to tour Marange.
Just such an army operation, conducted this summer beginning in late July, targeted hundreds of illegal panners in the area. The crackdown came in anticipation of a visit in August by Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) Monitor Abbey Chikane and the African Diamond Producers Association, who were overseeing the first batch of diamonds from Marange freed for export with KP certification.
Exports of all Marange-mined diamonds had been embargoed since November 2009 while KP members debated whether the human rights abuses of miners by the military in Marange — with the tacit approval of the Zimbabwe government and its longtime dictator Robert Mugabe — constituted sufficient wrongdoing to deny certification. The question was whether the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are on the same scale as the “blood diamond” civil war abuses in Sierra Leone and Angola that led to the creation of the KP in the first place and whether they could be reason enough to deny certification. Since alluvial diamonds were first discovered in Marange in 2006, the area has gained notoriety for the richness of its diamond reserves, as well as the lawlessness that exists in the mining areas.
Ironically, although the recently reinstated KP certification only applies to diamonds mined in the commercially owned fields, it has been in the government-controlled unofficial and illegal fields and the surrounding communities that the army has waged the campaign that left dozens of panners and community members wounded.
Amon, an area miner, says a soldier tipped him off in advance about a 2008 raid but he chose to ignore the advice to go home and continued digging. “The military unit came in a flash on a Sunday evening,” he recalls. “The whole place was surrounded and we were instructed to lie down. Severe beatings followed, while dogs were set on those who tried to run away. After almost seven hours of beatings, we were bundled into an army truck and sent to Adams Barracks,” a notorious military interrogation and holding center.
“There, more punishment awaited us,” continued Amon. “We were set free on Monday afternoon after being sternly warned that the diamonds belonged to ‘the big people’ and we would die if we were caught in Marange again. But I returned there once the storm was over. We can’t stop working because we will die. There are no other jobs out there.”
According to Amon, the most recent crackdown this past summer, while brutal, resulted in fewer fatalities than many past raids. Soldiers moved around Marange, conducting door-to-door searches in the community. “They are coming here with guns, beating up elderly people whom they accuse of harboring illegal panners. We have known no peace since these diamonds were discovered here,” says a resident of Marange. Soldiers slinging guns closed down rural businesses and rounded into trucks youths gathered in Hot Springs, Nyanyadzi and Chakowa, the business centers close to the diamond fields where panners, buyers and soldiers searching for syndicate members all link up.
Business as Usual
But once Chikane left, it was back to business as usual. Both sides went about the job of mining diamonds as if nothing had happened. This was, after all, just the latest in a long history of raids and crackdowns and they have become commonplace, an accepted part of doing business. Neither the wrath of global human rights organizations nor the glare of the world press has brought stability to this untamed area.
Makorokoto, 26, has been a victim of army brutality in Marange multiple times. In 2008, he survived the military onslaught that organizations such as Human Rights Watch say left 200 people dead. “I was not counting, but the number of people killed during that time is certainly much more than 200. Helicopters were flying so low and firing indiscriminately. On the ground, those who survived the helicopters would be finished off by foot soldiers. Some people were dying on the spot. Some were left for dead,” recalls Makorokoto, who waited out the latest 2010 summer raid in Mutare city. He has suffered beatings at the hands of the army several times, including twice being taken to Adams Barracks, but Makorokoto keeps returning to the fields because it is his only source of employment.
Amon admits that the army crackdowns can “spoil the party.” But, he adds, “You have to understand that the soldiers are not always nasty. What they do is send a different unit for the attack than the one we will be working with. Some of the soldiers work well with us because they realize there is a market for these diamonds out there and they can’t do the work without us.”
In fact, some of the panners are proud of the relationships they have forged with soldiers. Innocent Matanda, who has been a panner all his working life, having started off digging for gold, is proud of seven contact numbers he has for soldiers he has worked with before. “It is important to keep these phone numbers because one needs to constantly be checking with different soldiers when their units will be redeployed to Marange,” he explains. “That way, I am always ahead, knowing which army unit is being deployed next. I use past contacts to forge new syndicates. Because the soldiers are rotated, it is easier to link up with those one has worked with before. Sometimes, the soldiers themselves call me in advance so that I can start organizing a group of panners ahead of the deployment.”
Will Commercial Ventures Be Any Better?
Industry observers agree that it is almost impossible to stop the illegal mining and smuggling of diamonds from Marange without establishing internationally acceptable commercial mining ventures in these vast alluvial diamond fields. But, despite the physical dangers inherent in the current system, commercial mining ventures hold little appeal for the miners who work here now.
Asked to choose who should remain in Marange — soldiers or private firms — panners and villagers are unanimous. While the soldiers are rough, they agree, they at least provide an opportunity to earn an income.
“They actually encourage us to work and point out to us that these could be our last days in the fields since the government is parceling out the land to the whites and Chinese,” Matanda says.
Risk Vs. Potential Reward
Richard doesn’t really care whether formal industry flourishes again in the country. Most industry workers in the few firms that have reopened since the formation of the coalition government in February 2009 earn less than $80 a month, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the country’s largest labor federation. In Marange, despite the dangers, Richard makes at least $500 monthly. Panners are the low-end earners in the long diamond chain from Marange to Vila de Manica, the hub city for diamond trading.
“Venturing in without forging a syndicate with the army is more profitable, but it is like asking for death,” explains an illegal miner. Another hazard is sneaking into the richer land occupied by the commercial firms. Itai, a panner who lives in the community, points out fresh wounds received, he says, when he fell on his face against a rock as he fled vicious Canadile guards after sneaking into the firm’s plant.
Illegal miners say it’s possible to hit a jackpot after only a few hours of work, but two weeks of digging also can produce nothing. “At times, we don’t get much and we sell the few stones to buyers based in the fields for next to nothing, in which case the soldiers take all the money and only give us enough to buy food to sustain ourselves while we work. It’s not unusual to return home empty-handed after spending a month in the fields. Similarly, it is very normal to come here for just a few days and strike it rich,” says Matanda.
It is a life of great risk and potentially great reward. It is life as they know it.
Editor’s note: Farai Mutsaka is a journalist based in Zimbabwe, who for the past ten years has written for local, international, print and online media.
Smuggling as a Way of Life
It is an ideal transit route for smuggling diamonds: a porous border, a trail of bush paths used since time immemorial by cross-border relatives and families and a poorly policed Mozambique border town of Vila de Manica, conveniently located 20 miles east of the Zimbabwe city of Mutare.
Trading dried fish and second-hand clothes used to be the main economic activities in Vila de Manica before the discovery of diamonds in neighboring Zimbabwe in 2006. In the years since, the city has grown into a mid-size cosmopolitan hub for diamond trading.
Lebanese are the most noticeable foreigners flooding the town and they are the richest buyers of the stones coming out of Marange. Nigerians easily make up the biggest local African population, while Congolese, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau nationals constitute the foreigners who have taken up residence. It is from Vila de Manica’s relative safety that these new residents receive and transmit diamonds smuggled out of Zimbabwe through Beira, a Mozambique port city approximately 170 miles from Vila de Manica.
Once-dilapidated houses are taking new shape, as Lebanese diamond buyers rent them and renovate them to their own tastes. Guards, mainly Zimbabwean and Mozambican, patrol houses that were only a year ago collapsing and scrutinize every passing motorist to spot potential suppliers. A Lebanese crew has taken up residence in one of the city’s more livable hotels, and uses it as a clearinghouse for diamonds from Marange.
“This has become a diamond city, even if the diamonds just move through here. Most of the money circulating here is in one way or the other linked to diamonds,” says a Lebanese who identifies himself as Farid. “We have brought life here. The supply is always good, except when soldiers in Zimbabwe carry out one of their ‘operations.’”
Diamonds are not a hushed subject here. They are part of everyday life. The ease with which the stones reach foreign buyers contrasts sharply with the sweat — and sometimes blood — involved in the illegal mining of the diamonds in Marange. Vila de Manica is a hospitable market, where there are few security hassles. Foreigners here employ Zimbabweans and Mozambicans as guards and translators. Nigerians, buzzing the town on their traditional motorcycles, mainly work as middlemen for the other nationalities. Dennis, a Nigerian, says he relocated to Mozambique from Mutare after Zimbabwe security agents launched a massive campaign against foreign buyers in Mutare in 2008. He works as a middleman, saying the Lebanese buyers trust only him and several of his countrymen, and he claims he can tell a prospective seller immediately how much his stones are likely to fetch.
Not a Blessing, But a Curse
As Vila de Manica and the foreigners who have descended on this city flourish, the people who have occupied Marange for generations consider the discovery of the diamonds a curse. The Zimbabwe government already has told 136 families in Chirasiki in the Marange diamond fields area that they will be forced to leave their homes to make way for commercial mining. In August 2010, the Chinese-owned Anjin Zimbabwe, the newest commercial joint venture, moved the first group of 12 families to an abandoned state-owned farm, where they are living in makeshift homes with no roads, adequate sanitation facilities or such amenities as schools and hospitals.
“Marange has become hell since the discovery of diamonds; we have known no peace. First, it was the soldiers. Now, after the soldiers appeared, we have to deal with the Chinese, who are removing families,” said 67-year-old Beauty Mutonho. “The worst thing about the Chinese is they don’t recruit labor from the community. They demand proof of Zanu PF party membership [the party of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe] before one can get a job. At least the soldiers allowed our children to work and bring something back home.” Meanwhile, villagers in this diamond-rich land scrape for food. To make money, they trap wild birds, roast them and sell them to the tourists who fill the buses traveling the highway.
The families already moved by Anjin Zimbabwe are sharing the farm’s main house and were given $1,000 and groceries per family as compensation for the move. Their living conditions, they say, have worsened because some of them had built their whole lives around Marange. The rundown farm, called Arda Transau, used to be a thriving venture before the government took it over under the land reforms that targeted white farmers.
Manicaland Provincial Governor Chris Mushohwe says the relocation is a temporary situation and that the Zimbabwean government and its partners in the Chinese, Mbada and Canadile commercial ventures, will have built houses and relocated the rest of the families by December. But Shuwa Mudiwa, the member of parliament (MP) for Marange, accuses the government and mining companies of gross neglect. “The local people feel they have been cursed by the discovery of diamonds here. They have suffered the worst form of abuse, first at the hands of soldiers, and now the companies here. The Chinese are particularly bad because they have been the first to carry out relocations against the will of the community. They have not built any structures at the farm. In Marange, they have defiled a rural and conservative setting.”
The Lay of the Land
The Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), a mining investment agency of the government, controls an area of 270 square miles in Marange. The land is divided into four special land grants measuring 1.5 square miles, 2.3 square miles, 7.7 square miles and 255 square miles.
With the discovery of diamonds in the country in 2006, the ZMDC entered into two joint ventures on the 7.7-square-mile parcel, giving equal areas to Mbada Diamonds and to Canadile Miners. Both firms’ licensing is still a subject of an investigation by a special committee of parliament because of the close ties between the commercial mining licensees and political officials and the criminal records and reputations of many of the company officials who now control mining operations. ZMDC holds a 50 percent share in both firms.
Mbada Diamonds is led by Robert Mhlanga, a former helicopter pilot for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and a major player as a Zimbabwe military commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 1990s war. Mbada has a management contract that entitles it to collect 5 percent of the gross turnover from mining revenues as management fees. Officially registered in Mauritius as Condurago, the firm uses Mbada Diamonds only as its trading name and is the most mechanized mining operation in Marange. Kimberley Process (KP) Monitor Abbey Chikane says in his report for the KP that Mbada is mechanized to similar levels as middle and large operations in such countries as Namibia. The firm is a partnership between ZMDC and New Reclamation, a South African scrap metal company.
Canadile, a smaller, less mechanized operation located on an equal-size piece of land as Mbada, is the source of many of the smuggled diamonds that have found their way to Vila de Manica. A joint venture between the ZMDC and Core Resources, a South African company, Canadile is generally acknowledged to be the most “porous” of the three commercially licensed mining operations in Marange. Buyers in both Mutare and Villa de Manica report they are getting increased supplies from Canadile workers, who are able to smuggle the stones with ease because of poor security infrastructure at the site.
In February, two of Canadile’s directors — Komilan Packirisamy and Viyandrakumar Naidoo — were arrested at a checkpoint on their way from Marange after being found in possession of 57 pieces of diamond rough valued at $28,000 in their car. They were later acquitted by a local court, although the special parliamentary committee investigating the operations of Canadile has raised questions about their conduct and their intention to remove diamonds from the plant.
A third commercial license was more recently granted to Anjin Zimbabwe for the 1.5-square-mile parcel. The government has refused to comment on reports that the Chinese owners are mining in partnership with the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, the country’s military force.
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2010. To subscribe click here.