adminKudzanai Gerede
ONE of the key questions in relation to the future of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme is how it is going to effectively deal with issues without being overwhelmed by member states bilateral tensions and play its mandate as the custodian of conflicts-free diamonds when conflict and conspiracy has suddenly become mundane within its own setup.
In what has become synonymous with the Western powers where they dominate proceedings at major global forums, the USA, Australia and Canada among other “powers”, seek to extend their dominance into the KP, plotting all kinds of accusations to discredit weaker countries that they may deem as obstructs to their interests hence some countries are now alive to these machinations. The Kimberly process plenary meeting which took place from June 22 to 26 in Luanda, Angola, drew interesting conclusions to note in as far as business perceptions between Africa and its erstwhile colonial masters is concerned. Sadly, in recent times, the tension has spilt on to this noble grouping’s plenary meetings especially ever since Zimbabwe defied the odds by meeting KP standards to enter the grouping despite rogue elements having been paid to do the “hatchet job” in discrediting the country’s diamonds on grounds of purported human rights abuses allegations.
The chief anchor to this latest meeting was the election of the KP vice-chairmanship which consequently proffer into the chairmanship a year later, and it was hotly contested by Australia and Dubai and Australia pulled out of the race.
The other was to do with Central African Republic rejoining the KP after the Seleka insurgency in 2012 had forced them out and the country was now at peace and Zimbabwe by virtue of being the African chair showed leadership by partially suspending the ban despite some Western countries seemingly irate with the idea.
“It (Australia) withdrew because Australia was causing a hung situation and it knew Zimbabwe had powers to veto and they knew where Zimbabwe said No, there was no going back. Australia had serious bilateral issues with Zimbabwe which it needed to settle,” said director of Resource Exploitation Watch Consultancy, Mr Tafadzwa Musarara who was part of the Zimbabwean team to the KP.
“The issue of sanctions by Australia against Zimbabwe which restricts the travel of senior Government officials into their country was a very big issue because they did not give us commitment that should they maybe chair KP, which comes with automatic right to host plenary meetings of that particular year, they would allow everyone who will have been identified by the Zimbabwean Government including President Mugabe who is on their sanctions list”.
KP’s Civil Society Coalition and Partnership Africa Canada, civic organisations mandated to carry oversight on the member countries is even causing acrimony within the KP as it has proved to be an instrument bent on ascertaining Western dominance in the grouping.
“They are funded by DFI, USAID, Australian and Canadian governments, so they claim to carry oversight but naturally their oversight cannot be seen to be fair when they look at Zimbabwe and when they look at countries that fund them.
So far all the reports they have churned out are only to do with African countries which don’t give them money, they are simply mercenaries.
“I will give an example, in 2012 in Brussels, diamonds worth $US500 million went missing at the airport, and they (PAC) did not even make a report on them, up to now we don’t even know where they put them,” he added.
Another example of this Western conspiracy is the advocacy by Australia for KP members to allow unregistered diamonds miners “makorokozas” to sell their diamonds directly at Antwerp which meant that African governments would not realise royalties from these diamonds making their way into Europe. This would give an increase in diamonds leakages currently robbed of Africa considering that Africa does not have the expertise in technology and its porous borders cannot account for these leakages. Furthermore, it is widely regarded that the US government contracted a third party to do the KP work in its country and the review mission’s initial and undistorted report showed that the US was exporting more diamonds than it was importing, despite not having diamond mining activities but the PAC/CSC looked the other side.
It is thus certain that the KP house is not in order as its civic society coalition continues to seek ways to discredit genuine players like Zimbabwe in the KP whilst promulgating Western dominion, a situation analysts deem retrogressive for diamond business.
While it was noble to have the formation of KP as a means to alienate conflict diamonds which were finding its way into the financing of terror groups with the intent of over throwing legitimate governments, selective treatment by Civic Society Coalition in trying to keep legitimate governments from selling its diamonds is tantamount to the old order of western oppression hence the need for reforms.
Online Reporter