Sensing the danger, Anglo American representatives had earlier met in Zambia with the ANC’s exiled leaders to try to soften the movement’s stance and determine how the entities might productively work together in a post-apartheid South Africa. In fact, this secret gathering was not as improbable as it might initially appear. Harry Oppenheimer, who served as Anglo chairman from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s and was also a South African parliamentarian, had long used these seats of power to criticize the apartheid system. Perhaps as a result of both Oppenheimer’s personal politics and the meetings in Zambia, Mandela’s ANC ultimately pursued a much less radical path than it might have on assuming power of the “New South Africa,” leaving intact privately held mining operations. Alternatively, it instituted an economic empowerment program by which South African firms—including De Beers—were required to reserve jobs for “historically disadvantaged” groups, sell off portions of their assets and place Africans in higher-level positions within their organizations. Shortly thereafter, President Mandela publicly praised Harry Oppenheimer’s significant contributions to the nation.
A New Chapter, a New Model
Following the ANC’s change of heart, De Beers administrators could breathe a collective sigh of relief. By this time, however, South African diamonds made up only about 14 percent of the world’s rough production, and even the company’s vast array of mines elsewhere was collectively generating only about 45 percent of overall global output. In response to these discouraging trends, the company, now under the direction of Harry Oppenheimer’s son, Nicky, made sweeping changes to De Beers’s operational model. In the 1990s, it had become increasingly evident that the enterprise’s supply-controlled approach was no longer viable, especially with the emergence of major Canadian and Australian mines whose owners were unwilling to participate in the cartel, but also owing to shifting consumer tastes and concerns. In response, De Beers conducted a strategic review of its operations and subsequently adopted a demand-driven business model. It also implemented new marketing strategies, as both a wholesaler and, for the first time in 2002, a retailer. Meanwhile, in 2001, De Beers had reprivatized, buying up all of its shares in order to reassume control of the company, causing it to disappear from the South African and London stock exchanges. Finally, in 2012, the Oppenheimer family famously disengaged from the venerable mining giant by selling its 40 percent share to Anglo American, thereby marking the end of a remarkable era.[67]Even though De Beers emerged from this series of radical developments with a greatly reduced market share, it is widely believed that it is now an even more profitable company than it once was.
By buying up new mines, convincing other operators to participate in the CSO, and severely punishing those producers who attempted to stray from the single channel, De Beers enjoyed a remarkable run. However, the proliferation of alluvial mining operations in Africa, from which it was impossible to purchase each and every stone pulled from a stream or riverbed, and prodigious finds in other parts of the world irreparably shattered De Beers’s monopoly and eventually prompted the major, strategic changes in the company’s approach to business operations outlined above. Today, lucrative, ongoing contractual agreements with a number of African producers continue to undergird the more streamlined version of De Beers that emerged from these setbacks. Although the bold move into retail would likely have been unthinkable to Rhodes and other early company executives, those same administrators would have been proud of the tradition of innovation and adaptation that their corporate successors have upheld.
Out of the initial chaos of Kimberley emerged one of the most storied companies in the history of global business and commerce. Whereas it had taken India some two thousand years to produce twenty million carats and Brazil roughly two centuries, South Africa achieved this milestone in just fifteen years. In great part due to De Beers, the South African mines shattered the historical perspective of diamond production.[68]For all of Cecil Rhodes’s entrepreneurial vision and the Oppenheimers’ business acumen, though, the company continued to depend on African laborers to shovel, cart, wash, and sort the earth in which these precious stones were embedded. While these vital workers were being coercively harnessed for South African production as early as the 1880s, African laborers throughout the continent endured similar fates following the contemporaneous onset of European imperial rule and the subsequent consolidation of colonial projects. Exploitative mining operations were key components of these broader historical processes. The following chapter examines the series of racially oppressive structures that the various colonial regimes contrived and that the diamond-mining companies readily reinforced.
5: Creating “New Kimberleys” Elsewhere in Africa
The Government of Angola will support, morally and materially, the Diamond Company of Angola (Diamang) and will take the necessary measures to, in the interest of the colony, assure the company of the free and easy exercise of its industry.
—Article II of the 1921 landmark state-company agreement that facilitated Diamang’s commercial success in the Portuguese colony of Angola
Akwatia was properly planned from the beginning and the result is what we see today—the Bournville of the Gold Coast.
—J. R. Dickinson, Gold Coast Labor Department director, comparing the British colony’s diamond mining center to the Cadbury Company’s “model village” in England, 1939
From November 1884 to February 1885, representatives from an array of European countries, including England, France, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Italy, assembled in Berlin to carve up Africa into a series of colonial domains. Conspicuously absent were any African leaders, nor were any invited. Among the many political, social, and economic motivations for this conclave was the mineral wealth of the continent. The Kimberley mines, as well as subsequent discoveries of gold deposits in South Africa, were at the center of this latest round of “mineral fever.” Spurred on by these lucrative discoveries, these imperial states were eager to experience “mineral revolutions” of their own within the borders of their newly claimed African territories. And with the steady discovery of new diamond deposits across the continent, many of these hopes were realized. To facilitate the generation of this mineral wealth, the colonial regimes actively courted mining capital, the vast majority of which was associated either partially or fully with De Beers/Anglo American. The colonial powers also instituted manipulative labor schemes and applied a host of pressures on rural Africans to push them onto the mines. The first quote that appears above, a declaration made by Angola’s colonial government, is indicative of the staunch commitment to mining ventures that prompted these types of harsh measures. The social and economic structures that the new colonial states devised mimicked South Africa’s exploitative environment, even as these regimes identified a multitude of supposedly model communities, or “African Bournvilles,” within their respective territories. With the expansion of mining during the colonial era, members of African communities across the continent suddenly became essential entities in extractive operations that denuded the continent of a significant portion of its mineral wealth and appropriated vital manpower. In the decades that followed the departure of the European delegates from the Berlin Congress, the imperial powers created a host of exploitative, new “Kimberleys,” none of which resembled the model village of Bournville, a world away to the north.
Each of these newly established mining environments featured challenging living and working conditions, as well as insufficient compensation for African laborers—hardly the stuff of a model village. The individual sites differed according to the location of the diamonds, which resided either in superficial alluvial deposits or deep in “the belly of earth” in kimberlite pipes, and according to the particular colonial master. African headmen also played a role in workers’ experiences by pushing them to engage with mining companies, typically in exchange for some type of corporate or governmental compensation. Consistent with the Griqua chief, Waterboer, whose plight was considered in chapter 3, t
hese headmen probably deserve equal amounts of empathy and criticism in any assessment of their actions. Only in the British Gold Coast colony did African authorities do more than just supply laborers: in that setting, traditional rulers retained control of diamondiferous soils. By renting access to foreign mining companies, these indigenous leaders played a central role in the development of the industry in West Africa.
This chapter explores a range of the exploitative environments that colonial states, mining companies, and various African headmen combined to forge. The examination begins with the series of early twentieth-century discoveries of diamond deposits and continues through the heady process of African political independence, which extended from the 1950s all the way until the early 1990s.
Facilitating Flows: From Rural Locations to Mining Locations
Africans’ journeys to colonial-era mines differed according to a number of factors, including the proximity of the deposits and the particular colonial context, but generally became less arduous with each ensuing decade owing to upgrades in transportation. In certain settings, sizable populations already existed adjacent to, or literally on top of, diamond deposits. For these communities, this geographical happenstance was often a mixed blessing: they quickly became “wed” to the mines, experiencing all of the ups and downs that these “marriages” delivered. At other times, laborers were further removed from the mines, necessitating long(er)-distance relocations, via foot, truck, or train. Colonial states facilitated labor migration in various ways, including by instituting forced labor schemes; establishing “labor boards” that recruited and then relocated voluntary workers; and constructing roads and/or laying track, which reduced the time it took prospective laborers to reach mine sites and begin working. Mining companies also shaped recruits’ migratory experiences and patterns by, for example, arranging for mechanized transport or offering incentives for accompanying wives and children. Finally, African traditional authorities often encouraged their young male subjects to venture out from their home villages to seek work on the mines. Over the course of the colonial period, this powerful combination of pressures and allurements prompted millions of Africans to relocate to one of the continent’s myriad diamond mining sites.
The Colonial State as Labor Recruiter
Colonial states pushed indigenous residents to the mines by imposing taxes payable exclusively in colonial currencies and by implementing labor schemes that obligated Africans to work in order to earn the wages necessary to satisfy these levies. These measures were, in practice, ruthlessly effective and rendered colonial governments handmaidens to the array of diamond-mining companies active on the continent. Yet these measures were anything but simple expressions of statal goodwill. In return, colonial administrations derived significant revenues from mining enterprises in the form of corporate taxes, profit-sharing arrangements, concessionary rents, and formal loans—a mutually profitable collaboration, to be sure.
Colonial states also played key roles in the physical relocation of recruits to the mines. Perhaps the most egregious case of governmental involvement in procuring African labor comes from Angola, a former Portuguese colony. As the quotation that led off this chapter suggests, in 1921 the colonial state granted Diamang, the monopolistic diamond enterprise, exclusive access to African labor in its operational area. In return, the company surrendered roughly half its profits and granted a series of loans to the state featuring very favorable repayment terms. Meanwhile, for the roughly 40 percent of Diamang’s African labor force that was forcibly contracted, the trip to the mines began when African police in the state’s employ arrived in villages to gather a predetermined number of workers. These enforcers would then march the conscripts to administrative posts, from which they would set out for Diamang’s mines. This process could take months and span hundreds of miles. Only in 1947 did Diamang phase in truck transport. And, only in the early 1960s would Portugal finally dismantle these types of forced labor schemes in its colonial empire in Africa.
Further up the West African coast, the colonial government in French Guinea struggled in its efforts to help staff the diamond mines following their establishment in 1937. Although the French were every bit as aggressive as the Portuguese had been, the inability to populate the Guinean mines was attributable to their remoteness, the sparse proximate population, and the allure of gold panning, which had expanded rapidly during the 1930s. To redress this shortage, the colonial regime instituted a forced labor system, similar to the one in place in Angola, known as prestation, which compelled adult males to work unless they could buy their way out of this obligation. Yet even after this labor scheme was introduced, the factors outlined above, as well as strong competition from agricultural employers, continued to hamper recruitment for the diamond operations. As a result, Guinean mines typically ran at only two-thirds capacity.
Into the 1940s, prestateurs continued to make up roughly two-thirds of the workforce of SOGUINEX, the dominant mining enterprise. Owing to the company’s reliance on these laborers, the abandonment of the scheme in 1946 resulted in the debilitating loss of almost half of the overall workforce. In response, the enterprise began offering yearly bonuses, paid leave, rewards for sustained service, improved accommodations, and subsidized food for its indigenous employees. However, by this time, few Africans were listening. Formidable commercial competition for potential local recruits remained, forcing the diamond company to try to identify alternative sources of labor further afield, an endeavor that met with only partial success.
In other colonial settings, governments typically took a much less active role in securing laborers for diamond enterprises. Yet even a reduced level of involvement produced virtually the same result: reluctant, if resigned, African laborers who generally satisfied mining companies’ staffing requirements. In South West Africa (Namibia), for example, male laborers were initially recruited by the Southern Recruiting Organisation and from 1943 until the early 1970s by the South West African Native Labour Association. Under the recruitment schemes of these organizations, the government served as a type of placement agency through which employers of all sorts obtained African workers. However, these recruiting entities ensured that the labor needs of diamond and other mining interests were satisfied first, privileging them over, for example, agricultural employers. In short, mining trumped food production. As a result of this prioritization, South West Africa’s lucrative mining industries were guaranteed an ample supply of the strongest and healthiest laborers.
Creating a Healthy Environment: Screening Recruits to Maximize Profits
In every colonial diamond-mining setting, African workers typically underwent some form of medical evaluation either at the point of recruitment or once they reached the mines, or both. Mining company medical personnel typically inspected recruits en masse and individually, assessing arrivals for obvious contagious diseases and frailty, both of which could compromise productivity. Many operations, including in Angola, the Belgian Congo, and South Africa, employed the pseudoscientific Pignet index, which generated a number that supposedly measured a recruit’s ability to meet the daily demands of mine labor.[69]When labor shortages existed, however, mine managers regularly ordered medical staff to ignore Pignet numbers and send along any recruit who was not carrying an infectious disease. In these situations, frailty could be overlooked, since, unlike disease, it did not directly threaten the health of the white mining staff. This type of imperfect, and often demeaning, approach to African employees’ health and well-being was also employed in South West Africa, where company agents employed the “Standard of Fitness of Natives for Mine Works” to assess incoming recruits. The manual recommended that health personnel:
Line up all the natives entirely stripped (they must not be allowed merely to drop their trousers and retain them about their ankles). Stand them in line about 20 feet away. . . . Make each boy walk towards the examiner, observing his gait and whether he is lame, etc. When about five feet away, cause him to rise on tiptoe the
n squat, then rise again, then extend both arms above his head, extend the arms at right angles to the body laterally, then forward, then flex the elbow joints. When in this position, cause him to clench and open his hands, and then rotate each arm parallel to the long axis of the body. Turn him round and look at his spine. These motions, which take less than a minute, will enable the examiner to judge whether all the joints resound in function. Ask the native a simple question in an ordinary voice to ascert in [sic] whether he is deaf. Look at his ears, his gums and teeth. Cover each eye separately, and ask him to count the fingers of your hand to test for blindness. Look at the skin, noting the presence of any large scars or varicose veins, or herniae, or flabbiness of muscles or skin.[70]
Based on these cursory, highly suspect evaluations of “natives,” it’s obvious that the threshold for employment suitability was extremely low. Nor does it appear that these medical agents required much in the way of health training or knowledge to conduct these assessments.
Diamond-Mining Companies and the Recruitment of African Labor
Diamond-mining operations in colonial Africa owed their very existence to the governments that granted them access, often in the form of concessions, to diamond-bearing soils. Colonial states also instituted recruitment schemes to help generate African employees, without which these enterprises would never have gotten off the ground, much less expand. For their part, mining companies also managed to pull Africans to their operations, primarily by providing higher wages and more substantive benefits than other employers. In so doing, these paternalistic enterprises were offering African laborers a degree of security in the otherwise unsettling contexts that colonial rule engendered. These companies were often inspired by fellow diamond operators to institute “generous” compensation and remuneration policies. These corporations adopted these imitative measures not to compete against one another, as most enjoyed monopolies within their respective colonies. Rather, they were implemented to compete against rival industries for prospective employees. In many cases, high-ranking corporate officials encouraged this type of strategic replication across a series of mines over which they enjoyed managerial control. For example, Anglo American held significant stakes in a number of diamond-mining companies scattered throughout West and Central Africa. In this manner, over time the industry experienced a degree of operational homogenization.
Stones of Contention Page 13