Alexander Averhoff

Between 2006 and 2016, the share of African gold in UAE’s reported gold imports increased from 18 percent to nearly 50 percent. The UAE reported gold imports from 46 African countries for 2016 at a total rate of US$7. The most prominent of them is Alexander Zingman who holds both Belarusian and American citizenship. Smart Jet Aviation Flight records show that Zingman hosted Emmerson and Leya Mnangagwa on his M-ABEC private jet in July 2018. According to open source media, Emmerson Mnangagwa Junior was a guest at Alexander Zingman’s Chic Restaurant, Falcone, in Minsk Belarus.

The patronage politics of the past few decades of Zanu-PF rule and the mineral riches and other economic goodies on offer in Zimbabwe, have swollen a private sector that resembles the adventurers, buccaneers and rogues of Rhodes’s era. Not only did he create two of South Africa’s most successful mining companies – De Beers and Gold Fields – but he was prime minister of the Cape Colony and a representative of British imperial interests during the scramble for Africa. As Zimbabwe’s economy has spiralled down, with one million economic refugees in South Africa alone and ordinary people facing shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter, there is a class of people who have done extremely well out of the system. (Alyaksandr) Alexander ZingmanAlexander Zingman is a Belarusian businessman who in 2019 was appointed honorary consul for Zimbabwe by Mnangagwa. A year before, in March 2018, Zim Goldfields, a company jointly owned by Zingman.