Vice President Mujuru appeared to ignite a diplomatic storm Sunday after telling a church gathering that India had “built a whole town” from smuggled Marange diamonds.

Right now they are claiming that the Marange diamonds have been exhausted but no one here has any diamond rings or other jewels. No jobs were created locally in diamond polishing. All the diamonds were taken to India where they have built a town from Chiadzwa diamonds – it’s called Surat and yet Zimbabweans continue to struggle

via AllAfrica

Diamond mining company Alrosa is partnering a Zimbabwe-Russia joint venture company to prospect for diamonds in the southern African country, Russia’s trade and industry minister said on Monday.

Russia’s major investment in Zimbabwe is a joint-venture diamond and gold mining company in eastern Zimbabwe, DTZ-OZGEO, and Moscow is also planning a joint platinum mining operation outside the capital Harare.

Diamonds are mined in the south of the country by private company River Ranch, in central Zimbabwe by Rio Tinto and in the eastern Marange area, which caused controversy when 20,000 illegal miners were evicted by soldiers and police in 2008.

via Reuters

[Executive head of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Professor Arun Kulshreshtha] said Zimbabwe should take a leaf from countries that have developed vibrant economies from prioritising value addition and beneficiation.

“You should value add your diamonds and sell them at an auction that is located here. There is no reason of selling your diamonds in other countries.

“If you look at India, the city of Surat, they do not have the diamonds but look at Surat, it’s a diamond city with thousands of jobs.

Gem Diamonds Limited (GEMD) has seen media reports of army activity in Maseru, Lesotho but, at this stage, our management in Lesotho report that Maseru is calm and there is no disruption whatsoever at the company’s Letseng mine which is situated some 4 hours from Maseru in the mountains. It is not anticipated that there will be any impact upon operations at Letseng nor upon any of the company’s sales and marketing operations in respect of the Letseng production.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said his country is planning to partner a Chinese company, Chow Tai Fook, to polish locally produced diamonds…
“We have discovered diamonds in the country and we are at production level but at the same time we have been thinking of cutting and polishing of diamonds.
“And of course we knew that there was a famous company that does polishing and goes beyond that, and so we would want to partner (it).”

via Rough & Polished

Samson Elijah Manono was shot and killed two weeks ago, allegedly by security guards at the Marange Resources mine while his uncle Cleopas Mubuwa is battling for his life in the intensive care unit at Mutare Provincial Hospital.

The two were shot while looking for stray cattle at a nearby disused mine.

via The Standard: and Centre for Research and Development

The Rapaport Group announced that effective October 1, the RapNet diamond trading network will no longer accept EGL International or EGL USA diamond grading certificates across its members-only platform, which is the world’s largest online diamond trading network.

In addition, RapNet will ban all green tinted diamonds no matter where they originated. Rapaport stated that 95 percent of green tinted diamonds are from the Marange area of Zimbabwe and there is too great of a risk of those stones being mixed with the 5 percent from politically stable mining areas.

via Rapaport: