Zimbabwe diamonds lose glitter

By Jane Fields in Vila De Manica, Mozambique

THE young dealer in a cap fiddles with his BlackBerry. As he reaches for a beer, I see the stone he’s holding.

His companion, a Malian, turns to me on this terrace in central Mozambique. “You want?” he whispers.

Driven out of Zimbabwe’s eastern diamond fields by police, illegal diamond dealers now operate in this town ten minutes from Machipanda frontier.

You know you are in diamond country when you reach the border. “You want diamonds?” asks the official checking the serial numbers on our car engine. “I can get you one: 16 carats,” he promises.

Vila de Manica is not rich. Tea-bag-size sachets of washing powder are on sale in a dusty market.

However, diamond money has changed the landscape here – literally. Dotted among the drab concrete buildings are houses freshly painted in yellow and purple. Coils of razor wire top the walls. There are satellite dishes, armed security guards.

Outside the Flamingo Restaurant four dealers order rounds of Manica beer. They speak bitterly of the brutality of Zimbabwean police.

The Marange fields were the scene of a frenzied diamond rush from 2006 to last year. Schoolchildren threw their books into the bush and dug alongside their teachers. Dealers booked into the Holiday Inn in the nearby city of Mutare.

President Robert Mugabe’s security forces ended the free-for-all last November, moving into the fields with dogs and guns. Rights groups say 200 people were killed. The brutality nearly got Zimbabwe suspended from the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), the global diamond trade body.

Earlier this month, the KPCS gave Zimbabwe until June 2010 to implement a plan to bring it up to international standards.

But military abuses reportedly continue.

“Zimbabwe is very bad,” says a Somali dealer. He has a front tooth missing after a beating in Marange last year, he says. Police stole £4,800 he was carrying. “Our friend had both his legs broken two weeks ago. He lost £21,000,” claims a dealer from Mali.

The dealers say it’s easier operating in Mozambique. The police leave them alone if their passports and visas are in order. They travel to and from northern Nampula province. The Zimbabwean diamonds they deal in go to Dubai and then Asia. They say the stones are mostly industrial grade, used for machines.

In a clothes store, a Lebanese man in an Emporio Armani T-shirt says he’s from Essex, where his three children go to school. His brother has bought property in Vila de Manica. “Now I sell stones,” he says.

He looks at my cheap flip-flops and moves away. I am obviously not a serious buyer.

It’s getting harder to smuggle Zimbabwe’s diamonds. The authorities have awarded contracts for Marange to two companies: Mbada Mining, a little-known local firm, and Canadile Miners, which has South African investors. They are investing heavily.

There’s just one problem: according to a court ruling, the claim belongs to African Consolidated Resources, a company listed on the London stock exchange. Desperate for money – mines minister Obert Mpofu believes diamonds can bring Zimbabwe £360,000 a day – the government has gone ahead with mining, pending an appeal.

A pharmacy in Mutare is sparsely stocked but can sell you an electric diamond scale for £20. Scotsman

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