Thursday 4 December 2008

Eerie Silence at Zimbabwe Diamond Mine

An eerie yet pregnant silence permeates the scrub region locating the remote Chiadzwa diamond fields, apart from occasional bouts of gunfire, an odd anti-personnel mine explosion and the ensuing screams.

Mr. Muti Fruiti was one of the first ‘get rich quick’ cretins to descend on Chiadzwa when word spread that diamonds had been discovered in the arid and impoverished part of Zimbabwe’s Maniacland Province.

Muti Fruiti, 31, an unemployed nit-picker and father-of-nine, was wallowing in the aura of perfect peace and freedom that only absolute poverty can provide.
He was a mere six years in arrears with the sub-prime mortgage he had taken out on a two bedroom cardboard box where he lodged with his family in the old township of Shitcreek on the outskirts of Harare.

When word reached him about the discovery of diamonds, Mr. Muti joined thousands of other desperate paupers and unemployed beggars in the rush to Chiadzwa, then an unknown and desolate place up the arsehole of beyond. A few months later his life had been transformed.
Suddenly he was living on Hovel Street in the middle-class suburb of Slumville, the proud owner of a Corgi pedal car and a number of buy-to-rent sheds on Skid Row that had previously been beyond his wildest dreams.

Once Mr. Muti dug up the shiny pebbles from the dried-out river creeks he could immediately sell them to buyers who had entrenched themselves around the diamond fields.
Dealers flocked from countries all over the world, including Iceland, Tierra del Fuego, the Cameroons, the Macaroons and the Festoons, Antarctica, St. Helena, the Norfolk Broads, Belgium-on-Sea, Guinea Bissan, New Guinea, Old Guinea, Gold Guinea and Guinea Pig.

The dealers were prepared to part with as much as four tins of corned beef and a carton of Polo mints per carat - a handsome price considering diggers could sell stones up to 15 carats in weight each day.
Mr Muti's only problem was the police and their dogs that would constantly chase him and his fellow miners from the fields.
But Muti and his illegal cohorts soon found a way round that obstacle - they formed syndicates with the police officers and dogs manning the fields.
Suddenly, poor plods earning less than $5 a year were wearing shoes and underpants and riding new bicycles, with their dogs chewing on prime cut Aberdeen Angus beef shin bones.

The Zimbabwe authorities launched several operations to rid Chiadzwa of illegal miners but the avaricious hunt for precious gems, combined with the collusion of bent coppers, allowed the mining operations to continue unabated.
Then two weeks ago Mr Muti was surprised to see sinister dark helicopters hovering over the diamond fields. The heavily-armed Black and White Mercenary Show had arrived in town.

That heralded the beginning of a brutal campaign to remove illegal miners and the illicit diamond-dealers once and for all. It was dubbed the Hakudzokwi Kumunda, a Matabele phrase meaning “Get your bollocks blown off if you come back here.”

An excess of 20,000 illegal diggers, who had come from all over Zimbabwe to make the diamond fields their permanent homes, shit a mix of kittens and bricks, then fled in all directions like a business of lemmings on amphetamines.
Within a week of the operation starting there wasn’t a single live miner left in the diamonds fields.

The ‘Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition’ is now calling for the alleged violations to be documented so the perpetrators can be brought to justice once normality returns to the country: sometime in the next hundred years.

Zimbabwe’s ‘Lawyers for Human Rights and Wrongs’ accused the private army of the De Queers Grabbitall Diamond Consortium gemstone monopoly for the helicopter gunship attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of illegal miners in the area, creating heaps of insta-meals for the region’s unemployed vultures.

The actual mineral exploration and mining concession rights for the Chiadzwa diamond fields were originally registered to celebrity turd-burglar Cecil Rhodes’ ‘British We-Own-Everything Company’ in 1890.

Mr. Scabby Oppenschemer, a former Tel Aviv toucan impersonator, and current chairman of the De Queers Grabbitall Diamond Consortium, informed reporters “These goyim with the Brillo haircuts and sun-tans digging up our diamonds are all scrotes and thieves. This is our country, bought and paid for. God bless Lord Carrington.”

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Robert Rhubarbi has recently made several public statements concerning mining, informing the press, as he pointed his nailed-gnawed fingers at a wall-mounted map, “This is mine, and that’s mine and that bit over there is mine too.”

Mr. Rupert Rhubarbi, (no relation), Zimbabwe’s Minister of Nepotism, told the media “Our Prime Minister and De Queers have a private agreement concerning the Chiadzwa diamond fields and anyone criticising it or asking nosy questions might get their legs broken.”

The now-famous Chiadzwa-mined Smegmadale Diamond, a flawless white, slightly larger than an Irish brickie’s teapot, and weighing in at over four thousand carats, will be the centre-piece of Prime Minister Rhubarbie’s crown when he is invested as King of Zimbabwe in the New Year.

The name of our Chiadzwa-based undercover reporter (Swalazi O’Dinga of Fleapit Lane, Harare) has been changed for his own protection.

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