Involvement of Zimbabwe Government Officials
Although the official plan was for the government to mine at Marange, in practice mining has been carried out to the benefit of senior government and Zanu-PF officials and those close to them, with little income returned to the government. Speaking anonymously, a Harare-based diplomat said
A lot of leaders of the political regime are involved in trading. They have their own diggers and traders. But it's all to their personal account. They've all got a vested interest in chaos.By late 2008, mining was being carried out by soldiers, using local villagers for forced labour. The soldiers occasionally pay the villagers with diamonds and surrender much of the produce to their senior officers. According to one soldier interviewed by IRIN:
As a soldier, just like most people in this country, I am poorly paid and my salary can hardly see me through three days of a month... Our superiors back in the barracks are fully aware of what we are doing, and they let us continue because they benefit from this illegal mining of the diamonds. Every week, we surrender a substantial amount of the mineral to them.Read more about this topic: Marange Diamond Fields
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