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Weekly Media Update 2010-31
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday August 9th - Sunday August 15th 2010
August 20, 2010

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The week's top stories

The eventual auction of the first batch of Zimbabwe's controversial Chiadzwa diamonds despite protests by global civic organizations hogged the limelight in all media this week.

President Mugabe's visit to China, during which China reportedly extended further financial assistance to Zimbabwe, came a close second in the government-controlled media. However, while the government media attached significance to the trip, the private media paid more attention to the SADC summit in Namibia, especially on whether it would finally resolve Zimbabwe's protracted power-sharing dispute. The ongoing public consultation phase of the constitutional making process also remained a generally popular subject of debate in all the media: the private media outlets emphasized problems plaguing it, especially reports of violence and intimidation, while the official media dismissed these as a plot to discredit the exercise.

Controversy dogs Chiadzwa diamonds auction proceeds

While all media publicized Zimbabwe's first official auction of its controversial Chiadzwa diamonds, confusion reigned over the exact revenue realized from the sale.

Although all the media initially reported the auction as having generated US$72 million (13/8), they later reported Finance Minister Tendai Biti revising the figure to US$45 million (Radio Zimbabwe, 13/8, 1pm & The Standard, 15/8). Studio 7 (13/8) added more confusion to the matter by reporting Biti as saying Zimbabwe "will be lucky" to get US$15 million from the sale, an amount that The Standard later indicated was government's share of the auction's proceeds.

No other informative updates on the matter were given.

Further, it remained unclear why the auction covered only 900 000 carats of gems extracted by Mbada Diamonds and Canadile Miners between May 28, 2010 and September 1 this year. Neither did The Herald (12/8) explain why the country still required more KP Certification to sell the other "three million carats" that the two companies had earlier mined and why this had not yet been given.

The government media restricted themselves to giving the impression that the sale of diamonds would bring immediate relief to the Zimbabwean economy and represented a decisive defeat for those who opposed it. As a result, they downplayed the fact that some Western buyers had boycotted the sale.

The private media debated the matter more widely.

Apart from highlighting global criticism of the auction, they quoted economists such as Eric Bloch arguing that the money generated from the sale was not sufficient to significantly boost Zimbabwe's cash-strapped fiscus (Studio 7, 12/8). The Zimbabwean On Sunday, ZimOnline and Studio 7 (13 & 15/8) reported that a US-based global network of diamond buyers, Rapaport Diamond Network, had banned its members from trading in the Chiadzwa diamonds. These media quoted Rapaport Diamond Network arguing that although trading in Chiadzwa diamonds was now legal following their certification by the KP, anyone involved in them risked expulsion from the network and could face sanctions by the US and EU. The network cited alleged human rights violations in Chiadzwa as the major reason for its action.

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