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(NEWZIMBABWE BLOGS) Marange: It’s now time for NGOs to move on

Marange: It’s now time for NGOs to move on
By Tafadzwa MusararaMining, NEWS, Politics Last updated on: March 22, 2012

“Mr. Chairman, I say with authority that the Zimbabwe government have and will never treat the Marange diamond fields classified and shut it from any well meaning persons or organisations. It remains my government’s pledge to give access to the civil society.

“Further, Mr. Chairman, I would like to remind fellow plenary participants that it is the Zimbabwean government that proposed the roadmap in Swapokmund for the certification of our mining operations in Marange which include, inter alia, cooperation with progressive civil society.”

Obert Mpofu addressing the Kimberly Process 2010 Jerusalem Plenary.

This statement reverberated in my mind as we negotiated the dusty and steep road into the Marange diamond fields during the civic society tour of the facility on March 7, 2012.

This trip was historic because it was the first official visit into the famous diamond fields by all members of the civic society including my brother and friend Farai Maguwu, who had won European awards for reporting on the “human rights abuse” and the “opaque mining operations” by Mbada and Marange resources.

It was also historic that the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations’ (NANGO) former KPCS focal committee members were seeing the operations for the first time together with all other civic groups that had not made reports about the goings on in this world’s most potent diamond deposit valley.

Personally, I anticipated that Maguwu, whom I was paired with, was going to tell me more about the operations given his reports on the area that made world headlines and caught the attention of Downing Street and the White House. Unfortunately, the brother was blank!

The dispensation granted by Mpofu to allow civic society access to Marange diamond fields is also in compliance with KP’s administrative decision which states that, “KP civil society coalition representatives in Zimbabwe will have access to the Marange area so as to allow continued reporting on KPCS implementation.”

The aim and objective of this trip was very clear: to allow civil society to see and assess the diamond extractive processes by the four mines, namely Mbada Diamonds, Marange Resources, Anjin and DMC. Accordingly, the top management of the mines took us around and fielded questions from the media and civic society.

The visit also confirmed that indeed the four companies earned the KP certification. Without any doubt, no diamond operations in the world has more sophisticated and state-of- the art artillery like what we saw. The closed camera population per square meter outnumbers that of the Big Brother TV show.

The ore is guarded by armed guards, police’s CID unit, camera monitoring rooms both in Marange and in Harare. The electric fence forms a thick forest that bars illegal miners from entering the designated diamond fields. The body searches both manual and electronic are just thorough and you have to hide any charms that might be in your person because nothing is sacred.

I was privileged to be chosen to get into the sorting rooms to see the diamond stones being sorted. The process is so complex that even the sorter cannot touch the stones with bare hands. The stones are dropped into a special can, which will shut when full and can only be opened in Harare. When violated, the can will lock and cannot be force opened whatsoever.

We also noticed that the entire Marange area had demilitarised in compliance with the KP administrative decision of 2009 as we noticed that private security personnel were in charge of all security arrangements. No cases of beatings by the military were recorded in the 18 months and this was also vouched by Tiseke Kasambala of Human Rights Watch during her interview with the CNN.

The relocations of the families in Chiadzwa to Arda Transau exceed the minimum requirements of the United Nations Vancouver Declaration Human Settlements 1803. The relocation saw families move from a semi-arid region to an area which falls under region two endowed with arable land and much better rainfall patterns. The houses built are spacious and meet the demanding needs of polygamous settings. All the sons of these families will also benefit from the scheme, as they will also have their own houses built for them upon marrying.

The entire civic society groups that went on this tour knew before the tour that the event was a guided one. The Marange diamond fields are protected areas in terms of the law and you cannot expect anyone to be allowed to have free reign.

The NANGO civil society groups issued a press statement in less than 24 hours after end of the visit. How discourteous! Having been allowed by government of Zimbabwe access into the Marange Diamond fields to asses on their own the extractive operations, NANGO must have submitted their report to the Ministry of Mines highlighting their concerns and observed the audi alteram partem rule. Yes, hear the other side before making your charges public.

This unfortunate character of some of the western-funded organisations not to afford the other side or the “accused” the right of reply was epitomised by Farai Maguwu who alleged that there was mass killings in Marange sponsored by the diamond mining companies without giving them opportunity to respond.

“I want to put it on record, Mr. Chairman, that the civil society movement in Zimbabwe has been sadly hijacked by some of our mediocre brothers who have never excelled in life and want to feast on crisis creation in Zimbabwe. Facts fabrication is their specialty. We will defeat them intellectually,” said Mpofu at the Jerusalem conference.

The four diamond mines in Marange have contributed to the fiscus in their first three years of operations more than double of what all the Anglo-American, De Beers, Lorhno, Rio Tinto, Ashanti and Zimplats mines have paid into the fiscus since the arrival of the Pioneer Column. NANGO must now re-direct its firepower accordingly.

Tafadzwa Musarara is the chairman of Resources Exploitation Watch. Can be contacted on musarara@yahoo.com

Labels: DIAMONDS, KIMBERLEY PROCESS, MARANGE DIAMOND FIELDS

posted by MrK @ 7:52 PM