Why diamonds can't be Robert Mugabe's best friend

In earlier days in the saga of Mugabe’s decline, I shared the hope with some others that a “humanitarian” coup could be engineered, perhaps even by the Bush administration, that would rid Mugabe from the political scene. Certainly if there is any military meaning to the term “humanitarian intervention,” then Mugabe ought to be its embodiment. The odds now seem slim for any forced removal of Mugabe, who somehow managed to craft a clever power-sharing agreement with the high-minded but inept Morgan Tsvangirai. The power-sharing agreement is nonsense; Mugabe retains both the public trappings of power and the behind-the-scenes control of the police, the army, and the economy.

This last preserve of Mugabe’s – the economy – has for some years been the subject of cruel merriment chiefly because Zimbabwe’s economy is wrecked and its currency nearly worthless. Yet commodities around the world are booming and from gold to cocoa, these hard goods are more valuable than any paper currency. In its new diamond mine, Zimbabwe has renewed wealth, and Mugabe hopes to tap it.

“No one should doubt our resolve to sell our diamonds,” he said on July 12. Activists want to stop him, though their conceptualization,“conflict diamonds,” applies most directly to nation-states in civil war, not sovereign countries controlled by forces of immorality or incompetence or both. The Otawa-based advocacy group,Partnership Africa Canada, in June released a detailed, timely and significant report on diamonds and Zimbabwe; the report, “Diamonds and Clubs: Militarized of Diamonds and Power in Zimbabwe,” is the best single source about events on the ground.

One asnwer to Mugabe’s persistent flouting of fair play and responsible governance is to ban Zimbabwean diamonds from international commerce. A ban, while well-intended and warranted, will be difficult to impose, if not impossible to enforce, because diamonds are among ultimate in fungible commodities, easier to move, easier to sell, and the origins of them are impossible to identify quickly.

That Mugabe will thus inevitably sell diamonds and reap monetary rewards (potentially substantial since the Zimbabwean government claims to hold $1.7 billion worth of stones, and the country is believed to possess stones more in the ground worth billions more), will neither strengthen nor weaken his hold on power.

Mugabe’s survival arises from dysfunctions within the wider region; African governance fails repeatedly to manage pathologies that cut across national borders. The answer is not a Pan-African government. Neither is the African Union up to the task of ejecting Mugabe and leading a transition to a better Zimbabwe.

The one hope for this benighted country – so rich in human talent, so rich in history and geography – is for Jacob Zuma of South Africa to engineer Mugabe’s exit. Then South Africa should oversee a trusteeship in Zimbabwe for a period of years during which time the economy cab be stabilized, the police and army reformed, the process of reconciliation can be started and local and national elections held. An immediate Liberian-style transition is not possible. The opposition in Zimbabwe is too weak, disorganized, and compromised. The physical infrastructure too ruined. Only South Africa has the moral authority and the physical capabilities to oversee a genuine transition in Zimbabwe. Neither the United Nations nor an alliance of Britain and the US can be trusted to do the job well.

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