The Fear

by Peter Godwin

  Before Wengezi, at the spot we encountered it when we last came here on our way to the Chimanimani music festival, we arrive at the roadblock that marks the entrance to the diamond district, the first of five roadblocks we will encounter. This time, though, it is manned not by policemen, but by soldiers. Lynette leans across me to do the talking to the soldier sweating at my window.

  “I am visiting my constituency,” she tells him. “And these ones are my guests.”

  This seems to do the trick. As he jots down the vehicle details, I ask him, “Why don’t you guys erect some kind of shelter from the sun?”

  He shakes his head. “Ah, it is a shortage.”

  “A shortage of what?”

  “A shortage of initiative,” he says, without missing a beat, and waves us through.

  As we head south, the land is parched and goat-wrenched, stony and thorn-treed. It’s too dry here for maize, and sorghum, the ancient grain, is still grown. Many people here are only alive because of emergency feeding by Christian Care, says Lynette, though Mugabe interrupted that during the elections.

  “How is the irrigation scheme?” I ask. The nearby village of Nyanyadzi used to have an ambitious project for black farmers, growing back-to-back crops. “It is no longer functioning,” she says. “All is diamonds now.”

  We start to pass trading stores that service the diamond diggers. Babylon Investments, Luckyfields Enterprises, New Gift Store. But many seem in ruins. “During the run-off elections shop-owners in Nyanyadzi had vehicles burned, and houses,” says Lynette. “The Nyanyadzi Training Center was turned into a ZANU torture base.”

  The way Lynette tells it, in 2006, a diamond-miner made his way home to Chiadzwa from the massive alluvial diamond fields of Namibia, known as the Sperrgebiet, “the Forbidden Territory.” It’s an area stretching more than two hundred miles along the Skeleton Coast (so called because it is strewn with the ribs of ships, wrecked in the lethal fog band caused when the cold Atlantic current laps the desert shore) and up to sixty miles inland that is off-limits to all but NamDeb, the Namibia De Beers Diamond Corp. Even carrier pigeons were banned as they’ve been used to smuggle out diamonds.

  This returning worker saw something shining on the ground in Chiadzwa, recognized it as a diamond, and started looking for more. “Nobody believed that what he had found were really diamonds, there were no buyers and people were just throwing them away,” she recalls. “But after six months, West Africans and Lebanese and Israelis came to buy them. Initially anyone could come and dig, then the syndicates started. The police would allow digging in return for half of the diamonds found.”

  Legally, the diamond rights belonged to African Consolidated Resources (who took them over from De Beers), but in 2006, once the rush began, the police chased them away, and they haven’t got back since, despite High Court orders. Mugabe’s ministers moved in and were soon making personal fortunes through the digging syndicates. Estimates put the potential haul as high as U.S.$1.2 billion a year. So it was unsurprising that people swarmed here from all over this paupered country, to try their luck. As many as thirty thousand miners were digging at any one time, working the main hundred-and-seventy-acre diamond fields. Conditions were appalling, with women and children digging too, often for a pittance. “There were lots of deaths from malaria,” says Lynette. “No sanitation, no water supply—the diggers would buy water with diamonds!”

  Alluvial diamonds, like the ones at Chiadzwa, have been eroded from their original kimberlite pipes and scattered close to the surface by rivers. In Africa, such deposits almost always result in conflict (hence the term “blood diamonds”), from the diamond fields of Kimberley itself, which helped cause the Anglo-Boer War, to the protracted war in Namibia, before South Africa would relinquish control, to Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. Zimbabwe has proved to be no exception.

  In October 2008, just after his blood-soaked election, Mugabe decided to end the free-for-all in Chiadzwa and to control the diamond revenue more tightly. He ordered the army in, and they launched Operation Hakudzokwi, “No Return.” Hundreds of soldiers, some on horseback, descended on the diggers at Chiadzwa, backed by helicopter gunships. Even by Zimbabwe’s appalling standards, it was a scene of egregious brutality. They fired tear gas into the shallow diggings and when the miners emerged choking, they gunned them down, or released attack dogs to tear them apart.

  In charge of the operation? Air Marshal Perence Shiri, the butcher of Matabeleland, ably assisted by General Constantine Chiwenga. In a fit of nostalgia, perhaps, Shiri even shipped in some soldiers from the notorious Fifth Brigade, to reprize their main skill set: how bravely they can kill civilians. Human Rights Watch confirmed at least two hundred deaths, but the real toll is probably more than twice that number. Most were buried in mass graves in Chiadzwa and in Mutare. Thousands more were injured. Twenty-two thousand people were arrested, not just miners, but dealers and middle-men and smugglers too—anyone who was found with foreign currency or a nice car.

  Now the army has taken control of the main Chiadzwa diamond fields, rotating new units through every two months, to keep them happy. They still use civilians to do the actual burrowing, including children, many of whom are used as forced labor—diamond slaves. The soldiers have cordoned off the entry points, and sealed the area to outsiders.

  But Lynette knows of a new, subsidiary field, east of Chiadzwa, in a wild corner of her constituency where the army has not penetrated yet. To get to it, we turn down a very rough dirt road toward Mhakwe, past Chikwizi School, and after ten miles or so, we pull over at a kraal. Women are bent over, hoeing in the fields, babies bound to their backs. Lynette hails them, and they squeal with delight at seeing her. “This is my area,” she says proudly.

  Here we pick up a young man, who introduces himself as Ediclozi. It is only much, much later, when I ask him how it’s spelled, that he says, “It is my nickname. Because my friends say I am clever, they call me after Ediclozi, who is too clever.” I continue to look perplexed, so he spells it out for me: “Eddie Cross.”

  “Oh, of course!” I say, defeated once more by the Shona aversion for Rs. Eddie Cross is an MDC senator, and one of their chief strategists.

  Ediclozi is eighteen, and has been mining, off and on, for more than a year now. In that time, he has found sixteen industrial diamonds. But his friend found a big gem-quality stone, what they call here a maglass, and got U.S.$2,000 for it. Four years’ pay at the average annual income. “On this side,” he says, “there are only police, but we bribe them.”

  We drive another few miles, past the rock they call Buwere Vasikana, “The Stone for Girls,” where six girls were killed by lightning, and park at the bottom of a steep, conical mountain. Ediclozi points to the summit, where the ground is broken and piled with loose rock, the main diamond diggings. You can see ant-like figures up there. Georgina and Lynette take one look at the ascent, and decline to accompany us, so Ediclozi and I set off alone.

  “The digging syndicates are usually three to six men strong, and we must trust each other because we share whatever we find,” explains Ediclozi, as we clamber up in the pulsing heat. He has just finished a session up there, and has rotated out of his syndicate, but others have substituted for him, so the syndicate doesn’t lose its digging place.

  Once we gain height the view opens out onto a primordial topography of jagged mountains, furrowed with ridges like mastiff brows, thickly vegetated with gurugushi bird bush and mupangara thorn trees, and, in the Nyadokwe River valley, wide-girthed baobabs, silvered in the sun. From across the coulee, baboons bark. “There are too many animals here,” says Ediclozi. “Leopard and kudu, mambas and puff adders.”

  We climb on, passing exploratory, zigzag trenches, about the depth of a man. These are called hambakachana—“the path you travel finding nothing.”

  As we climb we start to hear the magweja—the working diamond-diggers. The violent chime of pickaxes and sledge hammers as they strike rock. And behind that I can
hear snatches of song. I squint upward into the sun, but I can’t see anyone, nothing but wisps of smoke rising from the summit. When the diggers reach a boulder too big to break, Ediclozi explains, they light fires on it to crack it.

  Not long ago, says Ediclozi, there was an attempt to flush the diggers from here too. A convoy of police paramilitaries arrived with guns and tear gas, he says. They started up the mountain, just as we are now. At that time, he estimates, there were four to five hundred diggers working up here. When the alarm call went up that the police were on their way up, the diggers, like defenders of a medieval castle, came to their ramparts and began hurling rocks down. The police fired back but the topography was against them. The diggers levered boulders that bounced lethally down the hill, and set off landslides. They taunted the policemen, shouting down, “Muri imbwa dzaMugabe” [“You’re just Mugabe’s dogs”] “voetsak.” The policemen took fright, “and they ran away,” says Ediclozi.

  On the ridge across from us, we now see the first syndicates, standing on the rim of their workings, silhouetted against the sun. They shout over to us. “They think you are a mabhaya,” a diamond-buyer, says Ediclozi. Word goes from group to group up the mountain. Finally we reach the summit—which opens out into two extensive digs. As we arrive, men run over.

  “You wanna buy diamond, mister?” they call out. They are rough, wild-looking. Their hands horned with carapaces of callus from swinging their smooth-shafted sledgehammers and picks. Many are dreadlocked, shirtless, reeking of ganja.

  Soon we are surrounded. Ediclozi shadows his eyes with his hand against the sun, scanning the scree mounds for his syndicate. “My friends are not here,” he says quietly. “These are new ones, makorokoza—gold-panners from Mberengwa. They are dangerous, these ones.”

  One of the men, his already considerable height augmented by a medusa’s nest of fat dreads, comes to the front. He is the boss of one of the syndicates, he says, and his name is Dread. He snaps his fingers and calls Jealous, who is improbably wearing a houndstooth jacket and little else. From somewhere inside the shiny, sweat-infused lining, Jealous produces a tiny package, which he slowly unwraps. It’s a billion Zimbabwe dollar note. He indicates that I should open my hand, and from the crumpled note, he drops into my palm a translucent stone. Jagged and irregular, it reflects the sharp Manica sun. The diggers’ ranks draw closer.

  “This is maglass, three, maybe four carat,” says Dread, “the biggest stone we find here. The best opportunity you ever get—better even than Kimberley.” He smiles brilliantly, though his eyes remain hard.

  I admire the stone. It seems only polite to do so.

  “How much do you think it is worth?” asks Dread.

  “Well…” I glance over at Ediclozi, who is looking nervously at his feet. I can’t decide which is more dangerous, to talk money, only to have to break it to them later that I don’t actually have the money on me. Or to tell them up front that I don’t have cash, that I’m not here to buy.

  “I’m, I’m on a recce, just looking. I don’t have money. I’m not buying today,” I say.

  “How much you think this one, it is worth?” insists Dread, his eyes narrowing. It’s as though I haven’t spoken. I’ve heard the going rate is about $2,000 a carat, but this doesn’t look like three carats to me—two, maybe.

  “Well, I think it’s probably worth about U.S.$2,000,” I say. There is wild jeering and shrill whistles of derision at my estimate, and the diggers’ ranks contract again.

  “Maybe $3,000?” I venture, uncertainly.

  Dread looms. “A big one like this is worth at least 6,000 USAhs,” he says. His tone is openly menacing now. “There are many of us and we have been digging a long time, and it is dangerous here. The army and the police, they shoot us and rob us.”

  “I understand. Then maybe it is worth $6,000, as you say.” I reach out to hand the diamond back to Jealous, but he shrinks from me, and won’t take it. Murmurs of confusion circulate through the crowd, and quickly congeal into outright hostility.

  “It is your diamond now, so you give us the money. $6,000. As you agreed,” Dread declares, with an air of finality.

  “Look, I don’t have any money on me,” I say, and pat my empty pockets. “I’m not here to buy.” I look over at Ediclozi again, for a cue. He looks ashen, and suddenly much younger than his eighteen years. The diggers are all shouting now. They surround Ediclozi, jostling him. I sense they are about to beat him. I raise my voice. “Look, I’m really not a mabhaya. I have come to see how you are doing here. I heard about the problems you had here, with the police and army, so I came with the MDC MP, Lynette Kore-Karenyi, to see how things are here.”

  They look thunderstruck. Not a mabhaya? Ediclozi and I are talking at the same time, placating, explaining that I mean no harm. But I can hear some of the men now suggesting that it is risky to let me leave this place alive. That I will tell others, cause trouble for them, inform on them to the police, not their local complicit ones, but the bosses in Harare. That maybe I even work for the police, or the CIO. They have used whites before.

  I now realize how stupid I’ve been. Of course these men don’t want any publicity; they don’t want outsiders nosing around. They’re outlaws, pirates, living this rough, violent life. Somehow, through a series of small, stupid decisions, I’ve ended up high on this mountain among these desperados. Ediclozi’s mates were supposed to be here; I was coming with an insider, backed by the local MP. But up here, on top of this mountain, these men are now discussing whether to kill me.

  If they kill me, will it draw more attention than if they let me go? That is now their debate. There are two schools of thought. Syndicates led by Dread, Abisha, and Jealous seem to favor killing me, because I will only bring them trouble. Obvious and Madhuku, on the other hand, think that killing a white man might bring even more police attention. No one is physically holding me, but diggers have moved behind me now, cutting off the path back. All digging has now stopped, and the men lean on their shovels and picks, lobbing over debating points. Several start rolling joints.

  Baboons bark again in the distance, and kestrels wheel on the thermals, and I think of my boys. They will be just getting up in New York. Putting on their school uniforms, their blue-and-yellow-striped ties. Hugo drowsily trying to slick back his bed head, Thomas full of morning energy ready to wrestle the day to the mat. I think of them waiting for the M5 bus on Riverside Drive, playing tag around the triangular flower bed, doing their time trials to the Joan of Arc statue and back. What was I thinking, coming up here?

  They are now discussing whether to hold Ediclozi hostage while I go down to get money, but quickly decide I’ll just do a runner, and won’t bother to return to bail him out, or worse, I’ll return with the police or army. As Ediclozi might, if they did it the other way around, and held me hostage. It’s clear that part of the problem is that they can’t understand why I’ve come all the way up here, if not to buy diamonds? I don’t want to tell them I’m a writer, or even some sort of human-rights monitor—and risk boosting the murder school of thought among these publicity-averse men. I try reminding them that Lynette is at the bottom of the mountain, waiting for me. But that has no impact on their calculations at all. Then I wonder if Bennett’s writ can possibly stretch this far, into this wild world way off the grid. “I have been visiting Roy Bennett…” I start, and they all pipe down at the mention of his name.

  “Pachedu, how is Pachedu?” call several men.

  “I have been visiting him,” I continue, “in prison.”

  In prison? They are aghast. They have no access to current affairs up here, relying on fresh diggers for second-hand news. They have no idea that Roy’s been arrested. I launch into a detailed description of how he was picked up, and why. A blow-by-blow account of his court case, his conditions in Mutare jail, and speculation about what may happen next. They are rapt. I feel like an African Scheherazade, trading stories for my life.

  They bombard me with questions about
Roy’s situation, and our relationship begins to change. Some of them sit down on the boulders. I sit too, and start inventing details, embellishing. Pachedu, I tell them, has actually tasked me to come up here to see how they were getting on. And this seems to make sense to them.

  Finally, Ediclozi catches my eye and gestures that maybe we should try to leave. I look at my watch. “Well, we need to go now. I have to get back to Mutare in time for prison visiting hours, so I can take food to Pachedu.”

  I unfurl my hand from around the diamond, and offer it back to Dread. There is blood on my palm from gripping the jagged stone so tight. This time he accepts it. “It’s a lovely diamond,” I say. “Maybe next time.”

  “Okay, next time,” he agrees, though we both know there will be no next time. They make no move to stop us from leaving. Many raise their hands in farewell, asking me to take their greetings to Roy. I follow Ediclozi over the top of the rocky parapet into the steep scree field, not bothering with the path this time, just scrambling down in a shower of loose gravel as fast as we can.

  thirty

  Witchwood

  THE NEXT NIGHT we spend in the Bvumba Mountains above Mutare. I used to come up here from school in Mutare every week for riding lessons. At the time, it still had that feel of a sanctuary suspended far above the turmoil of Africa. Dr. Mostert’s Jumbo Guide to Rhodesia 1972 says the Vumba (as it was still spelled) transports you “back to the England of Constable; lush fields and quietly ruminating cows, a country scene softened by the vaguest hint of mist.”