Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, calls on Kimberley Process to allow Zimbabwe to sell the Marange diamonds for the good on the poor.
If people like Tendai Biti, Morgan Tsvangirai and all the other clowns in MDC had not sort to appease Mugabe by entering into the power sharing agreement which has turned to anything but; Zimbabwe will have a democratic and accountable government today. Instead we are still in this ridiculous mess. Here we go again, MDC playing its usual role of appeasing the dictator.
"The Kimberley Process must allow us to sell our diamonds, but must then come to Zimbabwe to help resolve these issues," said Minister Biti.
Well the Minister at least acknowledged that there are problems relating to the mining of these bloody diamonds which is exactly why the KP would not allow Zimbabwe to sell the diamonds in the first place. There are four issues here:
1) The mining concessions were illegally taken away from recognised mining operators and awarded to unusual operators like the Army, Police and those with Zanu PF connections. The Army and Police have moved into the area and are denying independent monitors to investigate what is going on.
2) There are reports that civilians are being forced to mine the diamonds.
3) Minister Biti acknowledged that the Zanu PF authorities “will still sell diamonds outside the KP at the expense of the poor." The sad reality is even if the diamonds are sold with a KP certificate it is naïve to even think the poor will benefit. The main reason why millions of Zimbabweans are living in abject poverty today is because Mugabe and his cronies have commandeered the nation’s wealth and resources for their own selfish use. They have been looting and the people have been totally helpless to stop them.
4) Since 2008 the pickings have been thin for Mugabe and his cronies to loot and some the Marange diamonds have been “God-sent!” as far as they are concerned. Mugabe is facing an election next year and he needs a war-chest for that. Mugabe has pointed refused to normalise the mining of the Marange diamonds because he and his cronies are looting the diamonds.
Next year Mugabe will use his war-chest from the Marange diamonds to fund another campaign of violence and murder. Please Minister Biti, educate me: how will that help the poor?
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@John Berry“Those that control the economy of a society control the politics of a society. Those that control the politics of a society control the education of a society--thus, controlling the thinking of a society”. You were stating the obvious but coming from you that was a bolt of inspiration. But true to form you quickly returned to your usual nonsense. Mugabe declared war on the people of Zimbabwe in 2008 and murdered over 200 to ensure he retained political power and control over the economy, the politics, etc. How you can claim that it is the West who control Zimbabwe’s economy beggared belief!
4 comments:
@Dora Makute
You are not William Shakespeare and will never like him; not with the nonsense you write!
“Those in most need of freedom are the least wanting it. They hardly recognise it” you say? What is this: William Shakespeare paraphrasing Mugabe’s “It is the West who want regime change in Zimbabwe not our people”?
The people of Zimbabwe played an active role in the struggle for independence not as prominent as Robert Mugabe and all the other war heroes, still a important part nonetheless, because they wanted freedom, liberty, wanted a fair share of the nation wealth and a life in dignity. The people know what Zimbabwe has become in these last thirty years is not the Zimbabwe they had hoped for in 1980.Zimbabweans are certainly among the most oppressed and abused people on earth today. Yes they are “in most need of freedom”. You are totally wrong to think they “are the least wanting it.”
In March 2008, Zimbabweans voted for MDC in droves knowing fully well Mugabe and Zanu PF would punish them harshly, which the dictator did in operation “Where did you put your vote?” The people voted for MDC knowing fully well they were a party led by some of the most incompetent leaders in human history. Frankly they would have voted for a monkey rather for vote for Mugabe, such was the level of their desperation for regime change. What else did you want them to do to prove they want their freedom and human dignity denied them by this oppressive regime?
Mugabe keeps harping on about the West are the ones pushing for regime change in Zimbabwe. The truth is it is the Zimbabwe people themselves who are dying literally for it.
Mugabe knows next year the people will once again vote him out of power if they can. He desperately need the money from selling the diamonds to pay the hundreds of thousands of thugs and killers he will have to deploy to intimidate, rape, destroy property and murder just to force the electorate to vote for him.
Mugabe is desperate for the war-chest, he will sell the diamonds with or without the KP certificate; we all accept that. The KP has done the right thing in refusing the regime a certificate to sell what they know to be blood diamonds. They can not stop Mugabe building his war-chest but at least he should not do so with KP blessing!
Dora nonsense wrap in a pathetic imitation of Shakespearian prose is one of the worst things ever written. You Dora are a Mugabe acolyte but above all you are an idiot – just be yourself!
@Fungayi
I am please to hear that you too are acknowledging there are “problems with the diamonds, even Chikane alluded to that”. That is a very important first step. I also acknowledge that there are problems mining diamonds in Botswana etc. What you have to do now is distinguish the difference between the problems in Marange and those in Botswana that would lead you to one conclusion Marange diamonds are blood diamonds and Botswana diamonds are clean. Even a ten year old can see that, it is not a quantum leap; you are pretending not to see it only because you are paid to pretend.
@ Dora, Fungayi and Dread Dread6
You speak with the patronising arrogance of the privileged oppressor; first you deny your victim the right to speak for himself and then tenacity to belittle the misery he is enduring at your hands making it into a great favour you are doing him.
“Blacks are very strong, they do not even feel the hardships of slavery. They actually enjoy the hard work,” those fighting to perpetuate slavery claimed.
“Our blacks are the happiest in Africa,” the white colonialists insisted right up to independence.
“And you do not splash naked lies that its Zimbabweans wanting regime change. That’s nonsense, itself, not edifying at all.” Mugabe, his cronies and all those who have benefited from the thirty years of corruption and oppression tell us. Times may have changed the self righteous of the oppressors never change.
Answer me this; is it true that Mugabe used violence to denying the people of Zimbabwe a free vote in 2008?
Mugabe denies the people a meaningful say, the free vote is the ultimate say, in the governance of the country and then he claims it is only the West who want him out of power. How does he know the people do not want regime change?
Abraham Lincoln, the US President who went on to abolish slavery, once asked the pro-slavery white supremacists “If slavery is such a wonderful institution, how come none of you have ever volunteered and be a slave yourself?”
The truth of the matter is Mugabe and his cronies have shown they will do anything including commit mass murder just to keep their privileged life style because the lives of the ordinary citizens, the alternative, in Zimbabwe has become hell-on-earth!
Minister Didymus Mutasa’s son had a taste of what being in prison was like. Being the son of one of the Zanu PF long serving Ministers Martin Mutasa will have lived a privileged life, a certified member of the “nose brigade”. So privileged he has never done a honest day’s work in his life – he was arrested when he tried to muscle in a white owned factory, the same got the farm(s). Martin was arrested not out of love for law and order but because Police Commissioners Chihuri had his beady eyes on the factory too!
Martin Mutasa did not exactly volunteer to spend some “quality time” in Mugabe’s many prisons. Still he must have squalled like a pig forcing his father to break rank and admit Zimbabwe prisons were “filth!”
Slavery demines both the slave master and the slave; the later by denying his/her their human dignity and the former by raising the question – what kind of person would treat a fellow human being as if they were an animal? But the worst criticism has to be level against the blacks who sold their own kith and kin as slaves. There is something self demining in a man who will sell his own mother for a price and will even boost that he had a mother to sell. Sadly we still have many blacks who have shown the same indifference to the suffering and death of their fellow blacks as those who sold fellow blacks for beads and a piece of calico!
Sadly for Zimbabwe power is firmly in the hands of men and women whose hearts are as cold as arctic ice! Fortunately their days are numbered, they are a spent force.
@Dread Dread6
“Mukori must be an asylum applicant who claims his whole family was wiped out in Zimbabwe! (snigger, snigger)”.
I am one of the few Zimbabweans who are wandering from country to country begging for food. I consider myself lucky since there are millions who would give anything to get out of Zimbabwe but can not. There are others who are being forced out of their new found home. It is a great tragedy that a country like Zimbabwe with so much to offer should have millions of its children living in abject poverty or wandering like lost sheep.
You find this funny? Well I do not.
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