By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

DURING Zimbabwe’s mass mobilisation against illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions in 2010 and 2011, Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth and minerals policy seemed to occupy the centre-piece and motivation of that mass mobilisation.
This was because at that time, the Anglo-Saxon forces which kept a sanctions regime against this country went further to instigate the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) to try to ban Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds as ‘blood diamonds’.
Significantly, when the battle for full certification was finally won on August 11 2010, President Robert Mugabe was in China, which was at the time seen as poised to overtake the US as the biggest world economy.
Zimbabwe’s victory at the KPCS therefore came to be associated with our claim that we would now ‘Look East’ and re-orient our economic policies toward China, India, Indonesia and South Korea as a way of reducing Western hegemony over our economic affairs.
In 1899, Cecil John Rhodes felt so generous about these African diamonds that he set up the Rhodes Scholarships for Anglo-Saxon males only.
So generous was Rhodes that he willed two scholarships per year for each state of the 48 states of the US at the time.
The white settlers in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) had nine scholarships reserved per year, while Cape Colony and Natal were given a total of 15.
Rhodes’ racially exclusive will was not changed to consider Africans, other racial groups and women until 1977, that is 76 years after the first will.
The result was that by 1983, more than 2 035 US citizens had been able to study at Oxford University, fully paid for through stolen African gold and diamonds.
By the same date, 1983, only 102 South Africans had received Rhodes Scholarships.
Of the 102 South Africans who had received the scholarships by 1983, only two were non-Caucasian.
At that time, more than 45 percent of African children in South Africa did not attend school.
Africans and other non-Caucasian groups were not included in Rhodes’ scholarship will.
The British Parliament had to legislate to change Rhodes’ will in order to save the white race the embarrassment which became palpable, especially in the 1970s, because of the increasing influence of African liberation movements in the southern African region.
Way forward
Citizens need correct and timely information on our minerals status and strategy; especially on diamonds.
One small step in that direction is to empower, re-organise and re-orient the Committee of Parliament responsible for overseeing the mining sector.
First, the strategic purpose of a portfolio committee of Parliament is not media ventilation; it is to create a solid base of thorough knowledge about the subject or field under the portfolio and to channel that knowledge and information to the relevant strategic agencies and leaders who must make critical decisions.
The portfolio committee therefore should invite and sponsor as many experts and professionals as possible to appear before it, many of them, when need be, behind closed doors, and help to create three records: a prepared professional paper; an oral presentation highlighting or expanding the written paper; and a third record of the question and answer session with members of the committee or with other invited experts.
The records would be printed and distributed to relevant institutions and Parliament would become the biggest publisher of strategic reports on the national economy.
By now, Zimbabwe’s key decision makers would have a three-part record from several local, regional and foreign experts on the following aspects of mining: the latest geological surveys of minerals in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region in general and in Zimbabwe in particular; a history of the global diamond markets; history of the Kimberley Process; history of global struggles for alternatives to the Kimberley Process; diamonds and the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone; diamonds and other minerals in the Congo Crisis since 1960; diamonds and the Angolan civil war and the struggle for Namibia; diamonds and the origins and legacy of apartheid; diamonds and the Look East Policy; and similar studies of all the most important minerals in Zimbabwe, especially platinum, gold and chrome.
The committee, in setting up this agenda, would be pursuing depth and thoroughness of institutional knowledge, not media publicity and ventilation per se.
And it would fight against sanctions and go out of its way to correct any story in its name which seeks to advance the cause for sanctions.
Second, most countries have developed tight, portfolio-specific rules for their Parliamentary committees.
A committee responsible for intelligence or military technology development will have rules starkly unlike those for a committee handling primary education.
Newly discovered precious minerals in a country under illegal sanctions in the 21st Century would be treated in the context of what Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) in 1997 called the ‘New scramble for Africa in 1997’.
According to EIR:
“Driving the British actions, this time, is another Great Scramble.
The international financier oligarchy, grouped around the House of Windsor, knows that the world financial bubble (the ‘casino economy’ of neo-liberal reform) which they themselves have created – cannot be sustained, and will burst.
They are getting out of paper financial instruments and into hard commodities, precious metals, such as gold; strategic metals such as cobalt and tantalum; base metals, such as copper and zinc; energy supplies; and increasingly scarce food supplies.
They want either to own the physical assets, or, better still, own the mine production facility for these assets.”
Here we must note that this passage was written 10 years before the global financial tsunami which began in 2007.
In Remilitarising Africa for Profit, John Peck showed the North Atlantic powers had upgraded Africa’s strategic importance in the wake of the massive failure of structural adjustment programmes to stabilise the world economy; in the wake of mounting violence in the oil-rich Middle East; and now in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
What this means is that the oath which all MP’s take when assuming office is a general one and does not specifically cover all the fields and special issues which they may handle, once they are placed on specialised committees.
For fields which are classified, MPs joining the specialised committees have to be vetted for suitability.
They are required to pass clearance tests and to sign secrecy contracts which give them access to sensitive information and classified facilities.
This also means many of the experts they invite from Zimbabwe and from outside will also be sworn to secrecy and when necessary agree to give their presentations in camera and not in front of journalists.
The resulting documents from those testimonies would also be categorised.
What needs to be classified will remain classified and given to appropriate agencies and officials who must also swear to receive and keep classified information.
Above all, it must be clear what Zimbabwe’s overall minerals policy is in light of current global developments.