9 “On February 16, 2006, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono announced that the government had printed ZW$20.5 trillion in order to buy foreign currency to pay off International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrears,” wrote John Lee, a chartered financial analyst, in an article published in FinTrend. “In early May,” continued Lee, “the government announced that they would produce another ZW$60 trillion. “The additional currency was required to finance the recent 300% salary increase for soldiers and policemen and 200% increase for other civil servants. The money was not budgeted for in the current fiscal year, and the government did not say where it would come from.” 32 Then, in June, ACR reported to government that diamonds had been discovered at the Marange fields. For the beleaguered government, which was struggling to pay the increasingly disgruntled security forces, the timing could not have been better! Despite ACR’s appeals for assistance to control villagers who had started digging in the diamond fields, the government declared them open to anyone who wished to dig and the diamond rush began - an initiative which echoed the farm invasions of 2000. In the violent takeovers of the commercial farms, the so-called war vets, many of them unemployed youths who desperately needed the cash paid by the government to invaders, were the pawns in this elaborate game of political chess. The illegal panners were also convenient pawns, who would be used to overrun ACR‘s claims and who could be utilised and exploited by the army and police for self-enrichment, thus mollifying a constituency whose loyalty to ZANU PF, in the context of ongoing political strife, remained essential. “The deployment of the military in Marange also ensured access to mining revenue by senior members of ZANU PF and the army.” 33 Since then, communities living in the Chiadzwa district, either on or near the diamond fields, have been forcibly relocated, without being adequately consulted about the relocation site or the timing of the relocation; without receiving adequate compensation and without the relocation site having been adequately prepared. 34 32 Inflation.com, Zimbabwe hyperinflation and the US Dollar, February 2009: http://www.fintrend.com/inflation/Hyperinflation_Articles/Zimbabwe_Hyperinflation_and_US_Dollar.asp 33 Human Rights Watch, ‘Diamonds in the Rough’, June 2009, pg 3: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/06/26/diamonds-rough 34 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, ‘Evictions from mining areas (including Operation Chikorokoza Chapera and Operation Hakudzokwi)’, 1 July 2011: http://www.internaldisplacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/4E599256499D9B2BC12576E100639FE8?Open Document