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South Africa’s post-apartheid leaders are simply unwilling to reverse a 120-year old structural relationship of exploitation, by which Johannesburg-based companies – such as those involved in eastern Zimbabwe’s bloody Marange diamond fields, controlled by Mugabe’s army – rip off the region’s resources. Marange is the world’s largest diamond find since Kimberley, South Africa in 1867.

In a hotel room in the eastern Zimbabwe city of Mutare on 25 May, Maguwu provided Chikane information about hundreds of murders at Marange since 2006, at the hands of Mugabe’s army. Instead of using the information to write a critique of Marange, Chikane turned out to be a narc, reporting Maguwu to the Zimbabwe police. When cops drove up at his modest house the next day, Maguwu went underground. During the search, the police beat and tortured family members, leading Maguwu to surrender. After a week in prison, he was hospitalised last Friday due to maltreatment, and then was denied bail on Wednesday by a pro-Mugabe judge.

Abbey Chikane has, in the process, wrecked the Kimberley Process’s reputation for monitoring blood diamonds in the same way that Mbeki-Zuma soiled Pretoria’s when it comes to justice and democracy for wretched Zimbabwe. The last decade has witnessed a variety of similar betrayals of their people by the SA and Zimbabwe elites.