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When precious minerals are discovered in a troubled country, as Alex Magaisa has noted, they can easily become a curse rather than a means of alleviating the suffering of its people (Magaisa 2008). While steeped in all these problems, it is therefore ironic that Zimbabwe should be experiencing a diamond boom in the wake of the discovery of deposits in the rural Chiadzwa area under the control of Chief Marange in Manicaland in the eastern highlands. Mugabe and ZANU–PF, however, argue that they are being punished with sanctions and harsh criticism for redistributing formerly white-owned farms among black Zimbabweans, the historically marginalised majority who lost their land to colonial settlers. In light of its myriad social, economic, political, and humanitarian problems, Zimbabwe has been touted in some quarters as a failed state, often mentioned in the same breath as disaster areas such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Sudan’s Darfur region.
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This debacle offers further evidence of Mugabe’s dictatorial rule, his intolerance, and his abuse of human rights, all of which have become particularly glaring in the wake of the violent takeover of white-owned farms since 2000. Mugabe’s so-called re-election has been vigorously rejected by many, among them longstanding detractors such as the USA, Canada, Britain and the EU, Australia and several African countries. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC’s presidential candidate, won 47% of the presidential votes against Mugabe’s 43%, but during a violent run-off Mugabe controversially “regained” power in alliance with army generals. The legitimacy of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) government led by President Robert Mugabe, which has been in power since the end of colonial rule in 1980, is now being seriously contested, and in the general elections of 29 March 2008 the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a parliamentary majority. The film returns to the public domain as contemporary Zimbabwe goes through arguably the worst political and humanitarian crisis in its history. This melodramatic story about the theft of an “unusually large rose diamond” (Intertitle 23) is interspersed with subplots of romantic love, a brewing African uprising against European imperialism, interracial friendship, and an uncanny prophesy about future black African leadership of the country. The restoration and circulation of the silent-era film The Rose of Rhodesia (1918) comes at a remarkable time for Zimbabwe, the country which bore the name Rhodesia for nearly ninety years. The rediscovery of The Rose of Rhodesia at this convulsive moment, this paper argues, invites us to tease out the symbolic connections between the film and the current situation in the Zimbabwe mining sector, the role of the state in protecting national wealth, and the Mugabe regime and its treatment of citizens. And yet, in an irony of history, Zimbabwe is currently undergoing possibly the worst political and humanitarian crisis in its history at the same time as it experiences a diamond boom following the discovery of deposits in Manicaland in the eastern highlands. This melodramatic film about an “unusually large rose diamond” makes an uncanny prophesy about future black African leadership of the country. The return of The Rose of Rhodesia to the public domain comes at a remarkable time for Zimbabwe.