Reasserting authority in the wild, wild East

Reasserting authority in the wild, wild East

• The killing fields of Chiadzwa

• Alex Magaisa: Marange's silent war of stones

• Mine faces closure after failing to settle power bill

• Mutare's diamond trail

• Mugabe to netionalise mines, banks

• Mugabe accuses foreign mining firms of economic sabotage

• Zimbabwe seeks 25 percent stake in foreign-owned mines

• Mugabe cancels nephew's uranium mining deal

• Diamond deposits found in Tsholotsho

• Macmillan escapes jail, fined

• RBZ hikes gold prices 757 percent

• Defence lawyer spars with prosecutor in Macmillan trial

• 'Diamond Geezer' Nhara dies

• Zimbabwe gold deliveries lowest in 90 years

• Zimbabwe sets up diamond whistle blowers fund

• Diamond geezer Nhara refused bail

• Nhara arrested after airport diamond find

• Magistrate to appear in court for illegal gold panning

• RBZ bars journalists from illegal mining hearing

• Top official outed as illegal gold dealer

• 25 000 small scale miners lose claims since November

Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru, outed as President Robert Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba, last Saturday lifted the lid on a brutal army crackdown on illegal diamond mining in the Chiadzwa area of Manicaland.

Human rights groups accuse the government of mass murder, Charamba says the operation is "shock therapy" for a "once-peaceful earth which got turned upside down, all to appease vapid greed". He insists the government is seeking to "reassert its authority in this wild, wild East":

Posted to the web: 24/11/2008 16:45:14
Operation Hakudzokwi

I do not think diamond hunters will descend on Chiadzwa ever again.

KuChiadzwa hakuna mai. Hakudzokwi. Many have many tales to tell, sob tales I can assure you.

I know Chiadzwa very well, having stayed there briefly as a young, footloose teacher in the mid-eighties. It is dry; it is rocky, inclement, yes, a haven of peaceful languor until now.

In the classroom, you struggled to rouse its youth, supposedly the sum total of its vigour.

Marange, within which Chiadzwa falls, was both provincial and calm, its eternal calmness gently and seasonally disturbed by the serrated singing of the sect of the Prophet Johanne Marange, all draped in "sinless" white.

Until someone stumbled on some refulgent stone that turned out to be lined and precious.

Chiadzwa’s peace of generations got shattered in an instant.

The world descended on the once tranquil Chiadzwa, in the process dashing its innocence.

The age of innocence vanished and in came the season of hard experience.

Like a powerful vortex, Chiadzwa began sucking the young and able, and with them all manner of vices and viruses.

Overnight, humans became single-minded earth-moving monsters, vigorously boring beneath stout baobab trees which soon gave way, embarrassingly showing the world their undersides.

A myth had circulated to say diamonds favoured the tangled and twisted veins of the giant baobab.

Thus, the raping of Chiadzwa extended beyond its once-virtuous women; it reached its once-peaceful earth which got turned upside down, all to appease vapid greed.

Today Chiadzwa lies prostrate, badly wounded, copiously bleeding from countless assaults.

Who will suture it? Who will bandage its suppurating wounds? Above all, who shall repair her collapsed morality, treat her cankered lungs?

The day of the Untouchables

But something happened in the past two weeks. It continues to this day.

A shock therapy.

The Leviathan has stirred and, hey, the seemingly giant boats that mistook its back for an island have been sent tumbling. Government has had to reassert its authority in this wild, wild East.

The Untouchables of Chiadzwa are either slaving, wounded or dead.

Gullied Chiadzwa needs to be reclaimed, declared the authorities. Reclaimed by those who wounded it in the first place.

And there is a twist to it.

Those accused of damaging it may not use shovels, hoes or some such implements.

They shall use their fingers, and accomplish the job in record time, these gwejas and gwejesses.

It is a season of tears as man become beast to get beastly men and women to repair the heinous damage they have wrought on innocence.

It is painful payback time. The deep gullies are being refilled with bare hands.

Fingers are sore and finishing, well before a quarter of the job is done.

Chiadzwa, once a place for dashing fortune-seekers, has become Chiadzwa the place of unrelieved pain.

United Nations in sin

I walk past a row of once greedy diamond panners, now completely subdued and contrite.

I am shocked by the human miscellany before my very eyes. There are white figures, brown figures, black figures, big and wiry thin, all made equal, initially by greed, now by captivity.

There are whites from Belgium. There are Lebanese. There are Indians.

There are Sierra Leoneans, Liberians, Mozambicans, Angolans, South Africans: a mini United Nations in sin and greed.

How did they come this far?

How did they know about this obscure place called Chiadzwa, hardly known by many indigenes of this country?

Could this explain the growing boldness in the panners, evidenced by gun crimes, including firing at law-enforcement agents?

If left unchecked, what would Chiadzwa have been tomorrow? A place of diamonds? A place of blood?

Or bloody diamonds, as Zimbabwe’s enemies wished? Why is the American Embassy so interested in the goings-on at Chiadzwa?

Whichever way, the uninvited patrons of Chiadzwa will not come back.

And the prophet shall descend on this land, happy and fulfilled once more.
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com