“We are not afraid”, he said on Thursday evening, during a two-hour interview on state television.
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Zimbabwe was the world’s eighth largest diamond exporter in 2014. At the time it denied it was seizing the mines.
Critics blame Mugabe for numerous Zimbabwe’s problems.
In his first public reaction to the opposition party set up by former vice president Joice Mujuru, Mugabe said: “They will live in the wilderness, where little ants and other biting insects are destined to live”.
What Zimbabweans know about Mujuru is that since 1980, she was in government holding different ministerial posts until she was appointed Vice-President of Zimbabwe in 2004, making her second-in-command in both the government and the ruling party, Zanu PF. With that influential position being in government, Mujuru got into the comfort zone of being the Vice-President to amass great wealth using State machinery.
He spoke glowingly of Botswana President Ian Khama and said that he had fared much better than Zimbabwe in ensuring that Botswana’s diamond income contributed to socio-economic development.
The country stood to earn upwards of US$2-billion per year, government officials claimed, yet in 2012, the then Finance Minister Tendai Biti complained that only a measly US$19-million actually reached the state treasury.
Zimbabwe is the sixth largest producer of diamonds, according to global diamond expert Ehud Arye Laniado last year, but in recent years the country’s significance in the industry has been greatly diminished.
“Lots of smuggling and swindling has taken place”, Mugabe said. Chinese ambassador to the southern African state, Huang Ping, said that Zimbabwean law needed to be respected and the current impasse would not affect deals struck between the Asian superpower and the diamond producing country.
“I don’t think it has affected any of our relations at all”, Mugabe told ZBC. Mbada Diamonds and Anjin Investments have taken the government to court over the seizures.
In the interim judgment seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the ministry of mines was ordered to let Mbada’s security personnel have access to the company’s mining site in Marange.
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However, the diamond industry is changing and Zimbabwe’s diamond mines may now be in steady decline. Following the order, the government announced the formation of the Zimbabwe Diamond Consolidated Company (ZDCC) which it says will now oversee mining in the area.
