HARARE – Zimbabwe’s labour movement has called for an investigation into mining of diamonds at the controversial Chiadzwa field, amid allegations that top officials from President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and the military are looting the gemstones for sale on the international black-market for precious stones.

Chiadzwa, also known as Marange, is one of the world’s most controversial diamond fields with reports that soldiers sent to guard the claims after the government took over the field in October 2006 from a British firm that owned the deposits committed gross human rights abuses against illegal miners who had descended on the field.

“The ZCTU (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions) is advocating for a fully fledged investigation into the chaos that has surrounded Chiadzwa over the past years resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Zimbabweans,” the labour movement said in a statement at the weekend.

“It would seem those in authority want to continue to 'dip their fingers into the cookie jar' and block any form of inquiry into the happenings at Chiadzwa. Those responsible for the mess must be brought to book because the country cannot continue being held to ransom by a few fat cats who are bent on continuing to line their pockets,” added the ZCTU.

“Let the diamonds be mined and sold in a transparent manner that will benefit the country.”

The ZCTU call comes after Parliament’s mines and energy committee probing affairs of two firms granted licences by the government to mine the diamonds in Chiadzwa has unearthed irregularities in the firms’ operations.

The government-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) last year partnered little known Grandwell of South Africa to form Mbada Investments which is mining diamonds at the Chiadzwa field.

The ZMDC also partnered another little known South African firm Core Mining and Minerals in a joint-venture operation trading as Canadile Miners to exploit the deposits.

The joint ventures were formed as part of measures to bring mining of diamonds at Chiadzwa in line with standards stipulated by world diamond industry watchdog, the Kimberley Process (KP) which brings together diamond trading countries and civic society groups to prevent trade in conflict or blood diamonds.

But the two companies’ operations in the notorious diamond field are shrouded in controversy amid revelations that some members of the boards of the two firms were once illegal drug and diamond dealers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone.

Mbada chairman Robert Mhlanga, who is a former Airforce of Zimbabwe helicopter pilot is known to have close ties with Zimbabwe’s military establishment that is accused of stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds from Chiadzwa and offloading them onto the foreign black market for precious stones. 

Mbada was last month forced to abandon a planned sale of 300 000 carats after it emerged that the firm had failed to follow laid down procedures.

The KP has since last year been under pressure to impose an international ban on Zimbabwe diamonds after a team of investigators from the diamond watchdog unearthed rights abuses and other irregularities at Chiadzwa.

The southern African nation however escaped a KP ban last November but the global body gave Harare a June 2010 deadline to make reforms to comply with its regulations

By Zimonline