Posts by Charles Rukuni

President Robert Mugabe is more clever and more ruthless than any other politician in Zimbabwe. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is brave, committed but is also flawed, indecisive, not readily open to advice and has questionable judgment in selecting those around him. Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara is young and ambitious but he has spent too much time reading US campaign messaging manuals and too little thinking about real issues.

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President Robert Mugabe’s repeated claims that the United States, and in particular Christopher Dell, its Ambassador to Zimbabwe from July 2004 to July 2007, wanted regime change in the country have been proven right according to documents released by Wikileaks through the New York Times. “Having said my piece repeatedly over the last three years, I won’t offer a lengthy prescription for our Zimbabwe policy,” Dell wrote before his departure to another trouble spot, Afghanistan. “My views can be stated very simply as stay the course and prepare for change. Our policy is working and it’s helping to drive change here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation”. Below are Dell’s dispatches in full.

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Zimbabwe should speed up the promulgation of the Diamond Act because diamonds can make a decisive difference for the country.  This can be a positive difference where the country’s gross domestic product will increase as a result of greater transparency and accountability of diamond resources to the State. Or it can be negative because the history of alluvial diamonds in Africa has been a sad one.  But Zimbabwe cannot afford to be another Sierra Leone.

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Agriculture will drive Zimbabwe’s economy which will be in its third year of growth next year. The economy is expected to grow by 9.3 percent up from this year’s estimated 8.1 percent. The economy grew by 5.7 percent last year.

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The forced buying of items and goods like $1 for 10 bananas when one only wanted one or two or $1 for 20 mice, as per joke that was going around recently, could now be a thing of the past as the government is planning to bring in US dollar coins.

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Mines Minister Obert Mpofu says Zimbabwe is now going to sell its diamonds produced after the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme Plenary in Jerusalem this month without any supervision because its mines have been declared KP compliant. It will, however, continue to work with the KP Monitor to Zimbabwe, Abbey Chikane, to certify all diamonds produced before the plenary. He said this in a letter to outgoing chairman Boaz Hirsch of Israel. Hirsch had sent out a notice saying Zimbabwe was not allowed to sell any diamonds from Marange because it had not been cleared by the Kimberley Process. Mpofu said Hirsch’s notice was unlawful and said Zimbabwe could take legal action against him and Israel. This view is supported by the African Diamond Producers Association. Below is Mpofu’s letter to the KP chair.

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