Posted on 12/07/2006 7:04:19 PM PST by blam
Mugabe moves to seize British diamond field
By Peta Thornycroft in Marange
Last Updated: 2:10am GMT 08/12/2006
A British-listed mining company, the first to invest in bankrupt Zimbabwe since the political crisis began, was ordered off its valuable diamond claim yesterday.
Dirk Benade: watched diggers
While President Robert Mugabe has seized thousands of white-owned farms since 2000 he has, up until now, left mining property alone.
The claim, an extraordinary chunk of ancient tribal land in south eastern Zimbabwe, may be one of the richest diamond fields found in recent years.
And the Zimbabwe government wants it.
African Consolidated Resources plc, with about 1,000 claims in Zimbabwe, listed in London in June and says it was granted title by the Ministry of Mines.
The order to leave the dry, poverty-stricken Marange district, about 200 miles south east of Harare, comes after months of drama.
When rumours of diamonds spread during the summer, thousands flocked there from all over Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries in what may have been the largest diamond rush in Africa in the last 100 years.
Company officials estimate £120 million of diamonds were dug out by desperate people over the last few months. Dirk Benade, 57, an ACR geologist, saw it all. As the hordes massed, they dug deep holes within a metre of one another.
There were no toilet facilities, people were buying water with diamonds and sleeping in the holes which they also used as latrines. The air was thick with flies.
"Between 6,000 and 15,000 people moved one million tonnes of earth by hand in a 1.4 sq mile area in a month. World class machinery couldn't have moved what they did," said Mr Benade.
"One man was murdered for diamonds in the hills behind us. And a woman died after a huge Baobab tree fell on her after soil around its roots had been dug away," Sabo Sauke, 31, told The Daily Telegraph, the first Western newspaper to reach the area since the rush began.
Mr Sauke, like all the diggers, was pressed to sell his stones to the state's Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe at a fraction of their real value.
As the hygiene conditions continued to deteriorate, Tinos Rusere, the deputy mining minister, went to the site on September 25 and told swarms of diggers to carry on mining and sell their stones to the government.
Dealers from neighbouring South African also appeared, offering better prices.
ACR has built roads and refurbished dams for the local community and, when the diggers were finally moved out of the area by police last week, the company began sifting gravel to estimate how much had been looted.
But yesterday came the eviction order which the company is challenging in court. Andrew Cranswick, 44, ACR's chief executive, said: "I don't believe Zimbabwe would allow illegal seizure of claims without due process."
Mugabe listens to courts? Don't think so.
Can you spell "RENDITION"!
Why is Mugabe still breathing?
Incredulous marking for later...
Well, Lady Thatcher wouldn't roll over for this sick, syphillitic scumbag Mugabe any more than she rolled over when somebody tried to steal the Falklands. But that was then and this is now. Guess we'll see.
These are the real blood diamonds.
I think Laddy is spelled with two "dd's"
Know quite a bit about sticking things up bums do you?
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LOL! He's joking, of course.
I thought you knew alot about it because you're an arsehole yourself.
Yes......you must say it!
I am Shocked.....
I'm SHOCKED... SHOCKED I tell you!!!
that still doesn't change the fact that the British have lost their collective spine
Go tell that to the British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, see how you get on.
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