The Marange debacle
In 1896, De Beers was given a monopoly over any discoveries of diamond deposits in Rhodesia. Over the following 100 years they did little to justify this right and all that the country had to show for this concession to the largest diamond mining company in the World, was a small, rather marginal diamond pipe discovery on the banks of the Limpopo River near Beitbridge. Even that deposit was not exploited by De Beers who were forced to forfeit their rights and allow another company to take over this discovery and start mining.
In 2002, De Beers, who maintained a small exploration operation in Zimbabwe, deployed a geologist to the Marange Communal Area in the Eastern Districts. The geologist established a camp on the Save River and spent 6 years exploring the area for diamonds, trenching in promising areas and sending truck loads of sample material to South Africa for analysis. The results led the De Beers management to allow their rights to lapse in 2006 and the geologist was withdrawn.
In London, the Management of a small quoted mining company called African Consolidated Resources (ACR), watched these developments with interest and when De Beers abandoned the field, they moved to take over the exploration rights. They transported a small team onto the field and in weeks had found gem quality diamonds. They registered claims over several thousand hectares and placed an advert in the London press to the effect that the discovery could affect the price of their shares.
The Ministry of Mines in Harare was also watching developments and no sooner had the discovery become public knowledge than they took steps to take over the claims of the ACR which was achieved by the end of the year. The measures adopted to achieve this were illegal and everything that followed this decision will eventually be affected by the latent rights of ACR for compensation for the unlawful revocation of their mining rights.
The Ministry then allowed the field to be occupied by small scale informal sector miners and within months, over 40 000 miners had established themselves on the site, exploiting the alluvial deposits scattered over some 60 000 hectares of land. By 2008, the site could be seen from satellites with thousands of shallow pits dug and many thousands of tonnes soil removed and processed by hand. Diamonds were carried over the border and sold to traders and merchants who quickly established themselves in Mozambique.