This statement is self-explanatory as to the attitude of the US on Zimbabwe. This extra-territorial application of their own municipal law on another sovereign state is in violation of International law and Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter.
The Herald
By Tafadzwa Musarara
ELI IZHAKOFF, President of the World Diamond Council and a renowned diamond expert in his address to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme June 2011 Intercessional Plenary said, "What we need to ensure, however, is that tasks that the KP takes upon itself are manageable, and KP remains untouched by national, bilateral and regional political agendas. If we assume tasks that we do not have the means to handle, or we allow politics to infiltrate our work, the KP will be paralysed, and those very human rights that we are trying to defend may be put at risk."
This statement tells all that agendas that are alien to the KPCS founding principles are being pursued by some participant member states to settle political scores.
This 49 member states organisation was established through a United Nation resolution 55/56 in 2000 to ". . . stem the flow of conflict diamonds - rough diamonds used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments."
KPCS defines conflict diamonds as rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments. Zimbabwe has no rebel movement in Marange neither is it ally to one. The Marange diamonds, according to the KPCS definition are neither conflict or blood diamonds.
When setting up the KPCS, the UN did not abdicate its responsibility to preside over human rights violations and reassigned it to the KPCS to do that. There still is vibrant machinery within the UN to deal with matters of human rights.
While it is important for all member states to observe and respect human rights, the KPCS has no mandate or competency to adjudicate on human rights matters. It is simply a technical-cum-trade organisation that is run mainly by geologists whose knowledge of the law is probably limited to the 10 commandments. Human rights assessment is not part of the KPCS mandate neither does it constitute the minimum KPCS requirements. The Civil society-led by Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada- have observer status and are not participants. Regrettably, the civil society has cast itself as a defacto International Criminal Court within the KP operating as the complainant, prosecutor and judge. It has made serious allegations of human rights abuse in Marange and the KPCS made a verdict based on the false and frivolous charges.
The dysfunctionality of the KPCS has been clearly exposed by the Marange Diamond fields monitoring process. Three years ago, more than 40 000 illegal miners invaded the marange diamond fields precipitating massive leakage of rough diamonds out of the country mainly through the Mozambican boarders. No western KPCS participant, including the USA, raised concern over that. When the government resorted to arrest the situation by driving away these illegal miners and restore sanity and put formal mining operations, the KPCS got interested, at the instigation of the civil society, and condemned these rough diamonds and labelled them "blood diamonds."
Little known Farai Maguwu, an ordinary Mutare resident quickly formed his own "NGO" and started to write fictious and malicious reports about the happenings in Marange. In the main, he cited the military's alleged heavy-handedness in the area in driving out the illegal miners and reported that thousands of people were killed and that the area has many unmarked mass graves. Farai Maguwu, who has never been in the Marange diamond fields officially in the last five years, has failed to provide the demographics of the people ‘killed' and the names of their perpertrators. However, his movie scripts on Marange were taken by the KPCS as gospel truth despite his failure to have the collaborating evidence. The government proposed, on its own, to the KPCS a work plan it will undertake in order to meet the KPCS minimum set requirements. This became the Swapkomund Agreement and was adopted by the KPCS. The plan entailed that they will be, a gradual de-militarisation of Marange and taking over of the security by police and private guards, securing of the diamond blocks, compensation and relocation of locals, building of schools, proper accounting of exports. Abbey Chikane was appointed to monitor the process.
The three mines namely, Mbada, Marange Resources and Anjin invested two years and more than US$800 million to develop their infrastructure to the accepted levels. Zimbabwe received no external technical or financial assistance in this endeavour. At the last held KPCS Jerusalem Plenary, the monitoring team reported that Marange Resources and Mbada met the KPCS minimum standards and therefore qualify to export diamond outside any monitoring mechanism. Some experts embedded in the monitoring team described Mbada and Marange Resources as the mines with the most modern and state-of-the-art technology in Africa.
The monitoring team then reported to the Jerusalem KPCS 2010 Plenary that indeed Mbada and Marange resources had met the minimum requirements and must be allowed to export without further supervision. USA, Canada, and EU blocked the decision and invoked section IV (5) of KPCS Adminstrative Matters of the KPCS administrative which calls for 100 percent consensus. This is impossible to have all 49-member states organisation on anything.
Mrs Susan Page, US under-secretary of state led the US delegation at the Jerusalem plenary and also at the last Kinshasa Intercessionary plenary. She was the only foreign minister present and it showed that the American delegates were guided by US foreign policy and not the KPCS founding principles.
In 2005 former US assistant secretary of state, Chester Crooker said in a testimony to the US Senate for the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, "To separate the Zimbabwean people from Zanu-PF we are going to make their economy scream and I hope you Senators have the stomach for what you have to do."
This statement is self-explanatory as to the attitude of the US on Zimbabwe. This extra-territorial application of their own municipal law on another sovereign state is in violation of International law and Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. The UN General Assembly Resolution 210 of December 1991 denounced "economic measures as a means of political and economic coercion against developing countries".
Minister Mpofu rightfully put in context the attitude of USA during his address to the 2010 KP Jerusalem plenary when he said,
"Mr Chairman, the status of our bilateral relations with some western countries is well known. But sadly, we have elephant that want to trample a mouse. It does not come on its own but go and call other elephants namely EU and Canada just to help it kill the mouse."
After EU, USA and Canada vetoed the decision to allow the two Zimbabwean mines to export freely, a crisis occurred as to the status of Marange diamonds fields since the monitoring exercise had expired at the November Jerusalem Plenary. Several consultations were made with the three objecting countries but yielded no results as they remained adamant.
At the last Kinshasa meeting all participants reiterated that there is need to make progress on Marange Resources and Mbada since they had met the kpcs minimum standards. The KPCS Chairman Mathew Yamba issued a Chair notice that was drafted by the Woking Group on Monitoring led by EU and other members which included RSA, USA, China, India , Botswana.
The notice recognised the satisfactory progressmade by Marange Resources and Mbada and directed they are free to export without any supervision. Maybe as an afterthought, the US and Canada raised an objection to the notice that they were part of its drafting. However, like any organisation the Chair notice stands and the two mines are now KP full compliant.
These events show that, unless the KPCS sticks to its founding statutes and rules, it is heading for collapse. The consensus rule must be amended to simple majority otherwise USA and EU will continue to abuse it in their frantic attempts to make the Zimbabwe economy scream.
Despite the fact that 70 percent of the world diamond are produced in Africa, only two out of seven working groups are headed by African countries. This means that Africa is still subservient to the western interests and its own interests continue to be dwarfed by the mighty wild, wild west.
It is puzzling to note that human rights abuses in Marange have been noted by Maguwu and not by the MDC formations. In fact, Minister Biti is looking forward to receive receipts coming from these two companies which USA and EU claim are violating human rights. If the Marange fields human rights violations and the killings that are being reported were real definitely the GPA should have mentioned them and we would have seen Jomic working on that.
- Tafadzwa Musarara is the secretary general of the Affirmative Action Group. He writes in his personal capacity.
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