Illicit Diamond Activity and Outright Appropriation
The strategic actions that carried the highest levels of risk for mine workers were diamond theft, illegal diamond mining, and selling. In rationalizing these widespread activities, an African laborer on trial in Kimberley for diamond theft at the end of the nineteenth century had framed his theft as follows: “Of course I stole that diamond. Did you think I was going down in that dangerous mine for a morsel . . . or perhaps to lose my soul?”[100]Decades later, African mine workers throughout the continent were still tapping the wealth that illicit diamonds could provide in order to augment their salaries and/or generate revenue outside of formal employment. In both cases, these actions partially addressed inequities within the industry by effectively redistributing a portion of Africa’s mineral wealth back to its rightful owners—those individuals who daily risked “losing their souls.”
Although Africans engaged in this array of illicit endeavors throughout the continent, these activities were most prevalent on Sierra Leone’s diamond mines, which date back to the discovery of deposits in Kono in 1930. In order to (inexpensively) maintain political stability in the colony, Great Britain had earlier introduced a policy of “indirect rule,” which utilized regional paramount chiefs for administrative purposes. The colonial government also instituted a compensatory system whereby miners received a share of any diamonds (or gold) that they discovered in lieu of formal wages. These seemingly pragmatic measures, however, ultimately undermined the state’s control by precluding the development of strong governmental institutions that could have curbed escalating corruption and extralegal activity. In their absence, a diamond-fueled “shadow state” steadily gathered.
Ironically, CAST’s promise to address security issues in the colony had been a key factor in the government’s decision to grant the company exclusive diamond rights in Sierra Leone. In retrospect, both parties had acted naïvely. Indeed, even directly under CAST’s nose, on its own mines, theft was rampant, prompting corporate officials to press for legislative action. Simultaneously, thousands of outsiders were streaming into the Kono area, engaging in illegal diamond mining, buying, and selling. In response, in 1935, SLST, the successor to CAST, reached an agreement with the regional Kono chiefs, paying them £50 each to withhold their consent from any outsiders who wished to settle in the mining areas. The following year, the colonial state enacted the Diamond Industry Protection Ordinance, which required outsiders to obtain a state-issued license in order to reside or settle in the newly designated Diamond Protection Areas. The time for licenses, protocols, and formalities, however, had already passed.
Africans continued to participate unabatedly in illicit activities in the region, with the 1950s witnessing a significant spike in illegal mining, selling, and buying. As the parallel, informal mining industry steadily eroded SLST’s control over the diamond-bearing regions in the 1950s, even more African diggers were emboldened to converge on the area. In 1955, a group of local miners finally brought the situation to a head by storming a station used by SLST’s security and police forces.[101]In an attempt to regain control of the situation, Sierra Leone’s government reduced the company’s concessionary territory, expelled some 40,000 foreigners from Kono, and granted local miners the right to organize small-scale operations. By licensing these diggers, the state was reactively bestowing legal status on previously illegal activities. However, the train of illicit diamond chaos had long since left the station.
Indeed, by the mid-1950s, the colonial government was virtually powerless to contain the illicit activities of the tens of thousands of individuals—many of whom hailed from beyond Sierra Leone or even Africa—who had descended on the region as part of this West African “Diamond Rush.” Beyond a standard case of “diamond fever,” the motivations to join this latest mineral-driven throng included a rise in global diamond prices; available funding for illegal digging and smuggling, particularly from local Lebanese merchants; a growing belief that “Africa’s diamonds belonged to Africans”; a series of poor harvests and attendant high levels of rural poverty; and the recognition that local authorities’ loss of control meant that fortunes could be made literally overnight.[102]By now, many of these contributing factors should sound familiar. Even the arrival of political independence—a process that started in the early 1950s—failed to calm this new, diamond-fueled “Wild West.”
Sierra Leone’s mighty struggles with clandestine digging, buying, and selling notwithstanding, perhaps the most blatant example of Africans tapping the continent’s diamond wealth in the colonial era comes from Basutoland (Lesotho) during the 1960s. In this case, local diggers had for some time been excavating deposits at Kao, located in the northeast region of this British colony, before these mines attracted the interest of officials from Basutoland Diamonds, a joint venture between De Beers and the General and Mining Finance Corporation. Subsequently forced off the deposits and denied hospitality by the local community on government orders, the diggers took refuge in nearby hills and caves from which they descended at night to steal the company’s unprocessed ore.[103]Because of their modus operandi—living in caves and operating stealthily—they called themselves Liphokojoe, a Sesotho word meaning “foxes” or “jackals.” Without requiring too much imagination, theses “jackals” could also be considered “Mineral Robin Hoods,” as they craftily “stole from the rich” (though it’s not clear that they were as interested in “giving to the poor”—beyond themselves, that is). Regardless of what they were called, by the mid-1960s, they had succeeded in chasing out Basutoland Diamonds and taking control of the mine. In the ensuing years, they began to engage in kidnapping, arson, and even murder in an attempt to preserve their hard-fought gains. Only in 1970 was the government finally able to dismantle this troublesome-cum-violent outfit, a group that had brazenly succeeded in capturing a small but symbolically significant portion of the continent’s mineral wealth.
After the Whistle Blew: Evening Activities
Following demanding workdays, African diamond mine employees faced additional challenges each evening, including securing food and preparing meals. In order to improve these aspects of their mine lives, workers forged a series of interpersonal relationships with fellow mine encampment residents. Often these social interactions occurred within or were clustered around “brotherhoods,” or similar support groups. These and other relationships were both initiated and deepened in the encampments via a wide range of recreational activities in which residents engaged during their time away from the worksites. Unlike the factious personal interaction that characterized the South African compounds, the employee camaraderie that marked most other diamond-mining settings often crossed ethnic and other potential fault lines, even if these social boundaries were, at other times, both acknowledged and respected.
Cultivating Relationships
Workers’ relationships with diamond-company officials, African overseers, and fellow employees played significant roles in shaping their post-shift lives. At Diamang, for example, men, women, and children actively cultivated a range of relationships that enhanced their overall mining experiences. In practice, the uncrowded conditions and stabilizing presence of women in the company’s encampments were instrumental in fostering a social atmosphere that was highly conducive to this type of camaraderie. Indeed, even when Diamang’s encampments featured considerable human diversity, most African employees perceived this miscellany as an opportunity rather than a barrier.
In single-sex encampment settings, such as in South West Africa, male employees turned to each other, rather than spouses or children, for support. In many cases, these men formed “brotherhoods,” sometimes but not exclusively delineated by ethnic identity, which emphasized respect, trust, reciprocity, and dignity, and provided a moral framework from which “nonbrothers” could be excluded. In the mining compounds, brotherhoods addressed issues associated with the cramped living conditions, lack of privacy, and threat of theft and assault. Ultimately,
whether a particular mine featured brotherhoods, families, wider social networks, or some combination thereof, these relational formations were crucial to workers as they attempted to survive the daily grind of mine life, especially after the whistle blew.
Recreational Activities
Workers and, where permitted, family members developed and expanded their assortment of interpersonal relationships on diamond mines via a range of recreational activities. Because mining companies’ extracurricular offerings were often limited, or simply unattractive, employees often engaged in their own pastimes, including drinking, dancing, singing, and drumming—at times, even all at once. In addition to encouraging and deepening social relations, these diversionary pursuits also helped mine workers relieve the tension that built up during intense workweeks. Consequently, mining enterprises largely tolerated these activities.
Encampment residents on mines throughout Africa initiated and cultivated friendships each day after work, but especially on Saturday nights, as this was typically a time specifically reserved for socialization. In addition to drumming, dancing, and drinking, singing was an integral component of these gatherings, providing laborers with opportunities to both reinforce connections to their now-distant home villages and forge new friendships by learning songs from one another. One can only imagine the cacophony produced by the multiplicity of languages and dialects that were present in most diamond-mining encampments. Workers also used evening song sessions to disparage mine managers and their colonial overlords, just as they did during the workday.
In some settings, laborers generated a much wider variety of entertainment. For example, within the male-only compounds on the Kleinzee mine in South Africa, employees boxed, played rugby, and strummed an assortment of stringed instruments. They also danced, with male and female roles variously assigned to participants. Still others played cards, sewed, read books from the company’s library, and even organized the Workers’ Dramatic Society. These mine workers also sang, but in a much more assertive and organized fashion than on other mines. Employees often sang in a large ensemble, while at other times they arranged themselves into smaller choirs, each with its own repertoire, alternating between hymns learned on mission stations in Ovamboland and work songs. Remarkably, some African singing groups at Kleinzee even asked and received permission to go Christmas caroling within the mining installation. In general, diamond companies in colonial Africa were reluctant to allocate money for workers’ recreation, thereby compelling employees, like Kleinzee’s courageous crooners, to devise and initiate their own post-shift activities.
In response to the challenging conditions that prevailed on colonial-era diamond mines, African workers engaged in an array of strategic activities, ranging from no-risk to high-risk, in order to improve their lives. Via each undertaking, from migrating in order to secure employment to partaking in a range of recreational endeavors “after the whistle blew,” laborers succeeded in generating positive outcomes within their broader mining experiences despite a host of formidable obstacles, demands, and pressures.
As the political “winds of change” began to blow across the continent in the 1950s, these mine workers began to envision the end of the oppressive structures that the colonial powers had engineered and their employers had readily upheld. Political independence ushered in a multitude of professional and personal freedoms that African laborers of all types had never previously enjoyed. Yet security in many mining settings rapidly deteriorated; mine workers, as well as other citizens, were newly exposed to a type of mayhem that the former colonial and apartheid states had kept in check, albeit through institutionalized violence and repression. Rather than providing economic stability for newly independent African states, diamond deposits were instead tapped to facilitate violent power grabs or for rapacious financial ends. It is to these chaotic, post-independence settings that we turn in the next chapter.
7: A Resource Curse
“Blood Diamonds,” State Oppression, and Violence
Diamonds are a nuisance to the country and I would like nothing better than to see every diamond mined out of the ground as soon as possible.
—Milton Margai, future prime minister of Sierra Leone, 1958
It [the conflict in Sierra Leone] is largely a war over control of diamonds and a terrible manifestation of man’s worst greed.
—Testimony given before a US Congressional Committee on September 26, 2000 by Mucta Jalloh, whose forearm and ear were amputated by RUF rebels in Sierra Leone on April 19, 1998
Just about everyone I meet has seen the film Blood Diamond, a reflection of its significant entertainment value and attendant box office success. But for those readers who aren’t familiar with the movie, it depicts the chaos generated by blood diamonds in Sierra Leone during the 1990s and the immediate aftermath of this violence in the new millennium. Given the film’s action-packed sequencing, there’s precious little time to explore the complex origins of the mayhem or to provide much historical context for audiences. Fair enough. But how then did we arrive at this particular form of diamond-related violence that has so fascinated global film audiences and jewelry consumers alike? To begin to answer that question, we must go back to the wave of African political independence that began in Ghana in 1957, which was supposed to herald a new beginning for the continent.
Underwritten by the continent’s abundant natural resources, including diamond deposits, the first generation of African leaders was supposed to lead the newly independent states forward. Unfortunately, these resources all too often became targets for both government and dissident leaders, who were keen to use the wealth that these mineral assets generated to either prop up oppressive regimes or, conversely, attempt to topple them. By the 1990s, the term “blood diamonds” had emerged as shorthand to describe the use of these stones by African rebels to wage war against sitting governments. The expression also, however, captured the significant toll that these conflicts were taking on innocent civilians caught in the crossfire or violently pressed into mining service. Although brutal civil conflicts in Angola and Sierra Leone in the 1980s and ’90s provided the original impetus for coining the term “blood diamonds,” other scenarios in which diamond wealth continues to facilitate violence remain outside the narrow, internationally recognized definition of this expression. Millions of citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zimbabwe, for example, would deem stones currently mined in their countries no less “bloody” than were the diamonds from Angola or Sierra Leone.
This chapter examines the diamond-fueled violence in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Zimbabwe to demonstrate the ways in which African rulers and militants have used this mineral wealth to sow displacement and death. Although the DRC also fits squarely into a discussion of this nature, the ongoing chaos in that beleaguered nation, the remarkably wide, and continually shifting, array of formal and informal entities involved in the looting, and the constant developments render the contemporary situation difficult to accurately assess. In the various settings that the chapter does examine, the important international dimensions of the continent’s “conflict diamonds,” which the sensational diamond-fueled violence within Africa tends to overshadow, are also highlighted. The remarkable ensemble of global characters and entities involved includes shadowy industry figures, private arms dealers, Cold War superpowers, and even al-Qaeda terrorists. The chapter also considers why “blood diamonds” have been a strictly African phenomenon, and how these stones work their way into legitimate channels and eventually onto the fingers of brides on their “special days.” I also incorporate, however, a more optimistic section on the development of new industry regulations known as the Kimberley Process (KP), which was implemented in 2003 by a consortium of NGOs, diamond companies, and major producing, exporting, and importing countries in order to halt the sale of “blood diamonds.” Unfortunately, the indifference that prevailed within both the diamond industry and the international community prior to the adoption of the KP meant that Africa’s
“bloody” diamonds had already affected, often fatally, millions of the continent’s residents.
Why Africa? Conducive Conditions
Since independence, Africans’ political designs have often been reflected in their divergent approaches to the continent’s natural resources. And diamonds have proven no exception to this pattern. Individuals determined to assume and retain power at any cost have used diamond revenues to accomplish this objective, whereas others have applied the wealth in a more equitable manner. Unfortunately, the ease of accessing the continent’s numerous alluvial deposits has greatly assisted the personal ambitions of the power-hungry sorts. The violent political upheaval that has destabilized many African countries since independence has further facilitated access; this turmoil has prevented governments from organizing and maintaining orderly admission to their deposits. Finally, buyers of these diamonds seemingly always materialize, irrespective of the seller’s repute. In sum, the combination of: alluvial diamonds’ accessibility; their utility in seizing and preserving power; and Africa’s weak and volatile political institutions, generally engenders domestic chaos for those nations (un)lucky enough to be endowed with these dazzling, deadly stones. In a nutshell, that’s “Why Africa?”
Stones of Contention Page 18