Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s wife is suing a private weekly newspaper for $15 million over leaked US classified diplomatic cables that alleged she was one of those who benefited from the illegal trade of diamonds.
The November 2008 cable is one of the classified US State Department documents posted online by the whistleblower website Wikileaks and was published by The Standard newspaper last Sunday.
It provides details of information gleaned by US diplomats from industry and government officials who say President Mugabe’s associates and military leaders were looting recently discovered diamonds in the eastern parts of the country.
But Mrs Grace Mugabe, who is renowned for her extravagant shopping habits, said the publication of the cable had lowered the respect with which she is held as “the mother of the nation”.
Human rights violations
“The said words, in the context of the article, being false, scandalous and malicious, are wrongful and defamatory of plaintiff, in that they were intended and were understood by readers of the newspaper and online publication readers to convey the scandalous aspersion that plaintiff, (the First Lady, wife of the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe), engaged in criminal and unsavoury activities,” she said in papers filed at the High Court on Wednesday.
She also took issue with the paper for mentioning her name only when the cable implicated many other influential Zimbabweans in the alleged diamond scandal.
Zimbabwe is currently barred from selling diamonds from the fields because of allegations of human rights violations by soldiers deployed in 2008.
The fields are said to be among the richest in the world and if fully exploited, will see Zimbabwe becoming the third biggest exporter of the precious mineral globally.
Last year, human rights groups alleged that Zimbabwe’s military deployed to secure the alluvial diamond fields that had been invaded by illegal miners, had killed more than 200 people.
By KITSEPILE NYATHI in Harare (Africa Review)
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