Zimbabwe's Chiadzwa Mine is currently producing 50,000 to 60,000 carats in diamonds per week, but, according to Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu, they have the capacity to produce more.  Mpofu appealed to Parliament that the Zimbabwe Mining Development Company (ZMDC) was unable to reach its mining potential because of a lack of proper mining equipment.  The ZMDC has controlled mining since a recent attempt by the army to chase away illegal diamond miners.

Chiadzwa is currently under investigation by the United Nations diamond regulatory body known as the Kimberley Process, created to stop the flow of blood diamonds into the international market.  After a long history of exporting blood diamonds, Zimbabwe is now a member of the Kimberley Process Scheme, which merely states that diamonds cannot be exported from a country if the proceeds finance a war against that country’s accepted governing body.  Since the diamonds are not funding a rebel army, any diamonds leaving the country are currently considered “conflict-free”. 

However, when the army went to remove diamond miners from the Chiadzwa mine, they shot many of them or let them die from diseases picked up in the deplorable conditions in which they were living.  It is said that the state security forces then dumped the bodies at Mutare Provincial Hospital Mortuary.  At Parliament, while making his request for more updated mining machinery, Mpofu denied that the police and soldiers killed anyone.  He stated that, “The police said it was the illegal diamond miners who killed each other during the scramble.”  The ‘illegal’ miners were, in fact, invited to the mine after the government seized the mine from the British-based Africa Consolidated Resources in 2007. 

Still, Mpofu argues that, with more modern mining equipment, the Chiadzwa mine could produce as much as $600,000 in diamonds per day.  He was unable to produce an amount that is mined each day now.  The Kimberley Process investigation team is expected to check into the numbers of carats reported as exports, as those numbers are often withheld when the diamonds are mined through violence.  Given the reputation of President Robert Mugabe, the KPCS team should look very carefully at the situation at Chiadzwa.  The President has been silent on the topic, allowing his advisers to speak for him.

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