Gemstone finds in the country's wild east have brought spies and paranoia and turned Mutare into frontier town
Gamba has just bought big. This week he paid $22,000 (£14,300) for a single diamond. Judging by the big wad of folded US dollar bills in his pocket, it will not be his last.
In three years Gamba estimates he has made more than $200,000 from black market diamond dealing, enough to buy his family a house and three cars. He is a crucial link in a chain said to connect Zimbabwe's "blood diamonds" with Mozambique, South Africa, Dubai, Belgium and, ultimately, Bond Street in London and Fifth Avenue in New York.
"I've lost count of how many diamonds I've bought - but it has made me rich," said the 34-year-old, previously an accountant for a car hire firm. "You can make $1,000 every week, but the diamonds are different quality. If you buy the right things, you score. If you buy the wrong things, you sink".
Mutare, a nest of spies and paranoia in Zimbabwe's wild east, is the latest corner of Africa to discover the corrupting power of diamonds. The nearby Marange fields contain deposits claimed to be worth billions of dollars, potentially making the crisis-torn country one of the world's top diamond producers.
Some glimpse the promise of economic salvation and the prospect that Zimbabwe could be transformed from sick of man of Africa into a new Botswana. So far, however, the gemstones have been more curse than blessing, seducing desperate and avaricious Zimbabweans and foreign mercenaries with horrific consequences. This has been described as the biggest test yet of the Kimberley process certification scheme, created a decade ago to stamp out the use of diamonds to fund conflicts.
The trail from forced labour camp to high street store will be in the spotlight again next month when supermodel Naomi Campbell gives evidence in the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Taylor stands accused at The Hague of using blood diamonds to fuel an insurgency in Sierra Leone that cost tens of thousands of lives in the 1990s. Prosecutors say Campbell is a potentially crucial witness because Taylor allegedly presented her with a diamond gift after a 1997 dinner hosted by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
A diamond rush got under way in Marange fields after their discovery in June 2006. With a hyperinflation-crippled economy offering few alternatives, about 35,000 people, including women and children, were mining and buying there by November 2008. The once-quiet Mutare took on the aspect of a frontier town and the social impact is still being reckoned today.
Witnesses tell how children as young as 10 dropped out of school to hunt for gemstones and never went back. Teachers and other professionals quit their jobs to join the craze. Young men who got rich quick bought luxury cars they did not know how to drive, leading to numerous fatal accidents.
Diggers and buyers poured in from South Africa, Botswana, DR Congo, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Lebanon, Pakistan, UAE, Belgium and India, according to a report last year by Human Rights Watch. Prices shot up, rents increased and hotels, the scene of most transactions, were always full.
Prostitution, teenage pregnancies and shotgun marriages soared. Clashes between diamond kingpins resulted in deadly shootouts in suburban houses. Dozens of people died when poorly built mines collapsed and buried them alive.
The Guardian
