DIAMOND RUSH . . . illegal diamond miners at the Marange fields where Zimbabwe’s military is accused of using brutal force

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s government is appealing against a ruling by the Harare High Court last week confirming UK-based mining firm African Consolidated Resources Plc (ACR)’s right of title to claims on the notorious Marange diamond field.

“We have appealed against that judgment, that is what the AG (Attorney General) has been working on. That is the government position,” Mines Minister Obert Mpofu told ZimOnline on Thursday.

Mpofu, a stalwart of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party that is in a power-sharing government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party, would not say when exactly the appeal was lodged with the Supreme Court that is Zimbabwe’s highest court of law.

He referred questions on the matter to AG Johannes Tomana, who was not immediately available for comment.

In a statement following its court victory last week, ACR said it was committed to “dialogue with the Zimbabwe government", in what the market saw as an olive branch suggesting the UK firm’s could be willing to partner the government in extracting the Marange deposits.  

The Harare government seized the Marange diamond field from ACR in October 2006 and allocated the claim to the state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation.

The government moved into the controversial diamond field after thousands of illegal miners descended on Marange, which ACR had held for some time but apparently without any production.

A team from the Kimberley Process Certification System (KPCS) that visited Zimbabwe last June called for a temporary ban on trade in diamonds from Marange after unearthing gross human rights violations and other illegal activities at the diamond field allegedly committed by the army.

Mugabe sent the army to Marange in 2008 to flush out illegal miners and dealers from the diamond field. But human rights groups have accused security forces of using brutal force to take control of the diamond field and later forcing villagers to illegally mine the diamonds for resale on the black market for precious minerals.

However the army and police have refused to leave Marange while Harare denies allegations of human rights abuses and says calls to ban diamonds from the controversial diamond field were unjustified because Zimbabwe was not involved in a war or armed conflict. – ZimOnline