Ministry behind diamond miners Parly snub

By Clara Smith 

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s mines ministry has apparently advised the two firms mining diamonds at Chiadzwa in the east of the country not to cooperate with a parliamentary probe into operations at the controversial diamond field, it emerged yesterday. 

In yet another bizarre twist to Zimbabwe’s diamond saga, officials from Mbada Investments and Canadile Miners – the two firms mining diamonds at Chiadzwa – on Monday stood up the parliamentary committee for nearly an hour, with no word from them as to what was delaying them. 

When a Canadile official eventually turned up at Parliament building where the hearing was due to take place, it was to hand the committee two letters, one from the mining firm and another from the mines ministry, and both confirming that company directors were not coming for yesterday’s hearing and would not do so in future. 

Committee chairman Edward Chindori Chininga refused to disclose the full contents of the letters but told journalists that Candile and Mbada’s refusal to appear before his committee was based on advice from the Ministry of Mines. 

He said: “We have not received anything (explanation) from Mbada. But what we have been given by Canadile is an opinion that is coming from the ministry and that is that they are not coming and they attached an opinion from the ministry supporting their decision. 

“I can’t divulge what is in their letters. But from what we see (from the opinion attached) we doubt that they will come considering the letter they got from the ministry. If that letter is original then we doubt they will change their mind.” 

Mines Minister Obert Mpofu was not immediately available for comment on the matter.

Chininga, a former minister of mines and a member of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party, said the actions of the two firms have left his committee with little option but to demand that the diamond miners appear before it or be charged with contempt of Parliament, a jailable offence. 

Yesterday’s snub was the third time the two diamond miners have thumbed the nose at the parliamentary committee that wants the two firms to explain their operations at Chiadzwa that is also known as Marange diamond field.  

Canadile and Mbada executives have on two previous occasions refused to appear before the committee and when they missed another hearing last week they claimed they could not discuss their work at Chiadzwa before the courts rule on an application by British-based African Consolidated Resources (ACR) challenging the two diamond firms’ rights to exploit the diamond claims.

ACR owns legal title to the diamond claims but was controversially forced off Chiadzwa by the government about four years ago.  Chininga’s committee had however insisted that the Mbada and Canadile shareholders appear before it yesterday because the parliamentary investigation had nothing to do with the ACR court challenge. 

The parliamentary committee among other things wants to establish why and who licenced Mbada and Canadile to exploit the Chiadzwa deposits without following proper procedures. 

The two are joint venture companies between state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) and some South African investors 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). 

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. – ZimOnline

[newsletter]