Lesbian Billionaire

by Olivia Hampshire

  The schedule was set, the first stop would be Angola, then they would go to Botswana, and finally they would end in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  In Angola, Harriet got her first taste of the horrible secret life of diamonds. During the plane ride, Faith filled Harriet in on the background of the controversy. Problems had first emerged from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The Revolutionary United Front, a group of rebels led by former army corporal Foday Sankoh, began attacking some of the important border towns on the Sierra Leone border in 1991. They garnered international attention because they would target civilians and amputate their arms or legs.

  Always late, Western news had picked up on the gruesome images and brought attention to the conflict. Within three years, the Revolutionary United Front had taken over all the diamond mines in Sierra Leone and killed over 50,000 people. Almost 5 million had fled the country because of the conflict. Although the Revolutionary United Front was defeated and most of Sierra Leone was liberated in 1995, the violence continued for many years. In spite of a large U.N. peacekeeping force that was sent into the region in 1998, fighters from the Revolutionary United Front continue to carry out scattered attacks.

  Reacting to the violence, many countries, including the United States, had put a ban on diamonds coming from Sierra Leone, and then Liberia. However, the conflict diamonds continued to be smuggled in through other countries, and Faith suggested that diamonds that were "blood free" or clean, as the Kenyans liked to call them, were few and far between.

  The story in Angola was much the same. Although Angola had gained independence from Portugal in 1975, the country was wracked by civil war and infighting between several different military groups. One particularly powerful rebel group was the Union for the Total Independence of Angola or UNITA. Like the Revolutionary United Front, UNITA began targeting diamond mines, carrying out unspeakable atrocities against civilians in order to gain control of the precious diamonds. They sold the diamonds for many years between 1992 and 1998 in order to fund their war against the government of Angola. The war ended in 2002 with over 500,000 people killed. In an effort to follow the new trend towards clean diamonds, the government of Angola signed up with the Kimberly Process, a certification process meant to ensure that all the diamonds that left the country were clean and conflict free.

  However, as Harriet was about to see, just because the country was following international laws on conflict free diamonds did not make the diamonds conflict free. How could something like that work in countries so devastated by war and so corrupt? All it took was a small bribe to pay of an official and have a blood diamond validated as clean. Angola continued to sell conflict diamonds all around the world, mostly to London and Dubai. And the Debrews were the major purchaser of all the diamonds.

  Faith and Harriet toured two diamond mines in Angola, and they witnessed the horrible form that clean diamond mining took. All of the mines were heavily guarded by soldiers who worked the diamond miners brutally, beating them with blunt objects and rifle butts and cutting them with machetes until they bled to death. The people working the mines spent all their time their making pennies, Faith told Harriet that most of them did not even make two dollars a day despite laboring in the hot sun from sunrise to sundown. There were many children working in the minds instead of going to school. Everyone looked hungry and starving in the nearby communities that formed around the mining camps.

  Harriet was horrified by what she saw, and Faith told her it was just the tip of the ice berg. There was no way the guards would do anything too horrible while a white person was around, but she had heard a story where guards had buried 45 miners alive for refusing to pay the guards small bribes. It was shocking and it made Harriet sick. She had thought that the diamond business helped poor Africans earn a living, but she was seeing here something different.

  In a country where the average life expectancy is only 37 years, and mostly for the wealthy, the rest of the citizens were suffering from infectious diseases like malaria and typhoid, and the country was ravaged by HIV and AIDS. There was no education for the people in the mining towns, and most of them seemed to barely be able to afford clothing. There were mass graves outside of the towns, and the only people the looked well fed or even remotely happy were the guards.

  Faith wanted to show her a different side, so after they toured the mines, she took her to the house of a wealthy official. She introduced herself as a reporter working with an American jewelry manufacturer, and she asked if they could do an interview about the diamond trade. The man, who was living in a nice three story mansion, a shocking contrast to the humble shelters the miners lived in when they weren't working, agreed and welcomed them into his home. He had all sorts of ivory carvings and bejeweled sculptures, and he treated them to fine food and drink.

  When Faith asked him about the diamond mining industry, he told her everything was great. He explained how the U.N. had intervened when blood diamonds became an international issue, and now Angola followed the Kimberly Process and they only sold diamonds that were clean.

  "You see, the people now, they profit from the diamonds. The industry is boosting our people and giving them a good life. Before the money just went to more war," he said, not showing a hint of sarcasm.

  Harriet wondered if he was deluding himself or if he had ever seen a diamond mine recently. It looked like hell to her, and she surely didn't see any of the local people profiting.

  "So the diamond miners can afford to live well and eat well now because of the changes made to the diamond trade?" Harriet asked him.

  "Oh yes," the man nodded vigorously. "You see before these people would have just died very young and their bodies would have been left to dry up in the sun. Now, maybe they can live to be thirty. Maybe they can feed their children. You see, they live so poor here and their lives have been so damaged from the war, just being able to live, that is an improvement for them."

  It made Harriet's heart hurt to hear this.

  Harriet was also stung when Faith told her the story of Isabel dos Santos, the first female billionaire in Africa.

  "She is considered by Forbes to be the richest women not just in Angola, but in all of Africa," Faith told her. "Although she claims to have made her fortune as an investor, she got a lot of money from her father, who happens to be the president of the country. And you can guess that a lot of that money is tied up in dirty red diamonds."

  After Angola, they visited the country of Botswana. This was an interesting case. In Botsawana, the diamond industry contributes 35% to fiscal revenue and over 20% to GDP. The diamond industry, from mining to cutting, polishing, and sales, is the most important industry in the country. And the government is a joint owner of the largest diamond producer, Debswana. The other owner, none other than Debrews. Debrews has its hands deep in Botswana, operating their largest diamond trading company out of the country.

  Botswana is home to Jwaneng, "the prince of diamonds," the largest diamond mine in the whole world. It was there that Harriet and Faith took a tour. Jwaneng is 1.5 miles long and 400 meters deep. Miners get about 15 pounds of rough diamonds a day from Jwaneng. Once one of the poorest countries in Africa after declaring independence from Britain, the diamond trade had turned Botswana around.

  What Harriet witnessed in Botsawana was a lot more promising than what she had seen in Angola. There were cars on the road, there were schools. The population was smaller and more spread out, the people looked healthier. But Faith provided her with the behind the scenes of how things operated in Botswana. It was the same uneven distribution of wealth, but this time it was the foreign company, Debrews, that was taking away all the money. In exchange for housing their diamond exchange in the country of Botsawana, Debrews had extracted a ten year contract to operate at Jwaneng that could not be nullified. With the dip in demand for diamonds following worldwide recessions, Debrews had cracked down hard on the local miners, cutting their profits in half so that they could keep more money for themselves. They also
laid off thousands of diamond cutters who were forced to foreclose on their homes and lost everything. Harriet and Faith got to talk to one woman who used to work cutting diamonds in a large factory. She had been laid off two years ago and she went from being on top of the world to struggling to survive. She and her children had moved in with their mother, but she was suffering from lung problems related to the fumes given off from laser cutting diamonds. She was unable to pay her medical bills, so she spent her time on the street panhandling, hoping to make enough money just to see a doctor and get pain pills.

  "Meanwhile," she told them, "those men at Debrews get rich. But what do they care? I worked hard for them for fifteen years? But what do they care about a black woman like me?"

  Harriet wanted to help, and she donated a large sum to the woman so that she could receive medical treatment before they left the country for their final destination, the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as the DRC.

  In the DRC, a French speaking country and former colony of Belgium with a life expectancy of 57 years, far above Angola, a country which lies to its south, artisanal mining was the most popular form the diamond industry took. After declaring independence from Belgium in 1960, the country was quickly taken over by Joseph Mobutu, who renamed it Zaire. He was finally overthrown in 1997 during a civil war that took four million lives. Like Sierra Leone and Angola, the war was funded with diamonds. The country produced $400 million in diamonds in 1999, leading to massacres of civilians working the diamond mines but Rwandan and Ugandan troops looking to profit off the country.

  The mines resembled those of Angola, but on a smaller scale. They were heavily guarded, and although the troops were not beating or killing anyone, Faith informed Harriet that they stole from the miners, demanded bribes, and would often act cruelly. She had heard of officers forcing the miners to assemble into living steps that they then used to walk in and out of the mines. Sometimes they forced the miners into cruel punishments, like making them look at the sun for hours at a time or forcing them to lie on the ground with sand bags on their backs. She had also heard stories about women being attacked and mutilated because their body parts were used in superstitious rituals to cast spells of protection over the diamond mines.

  It was sad and terrifying. By the time the trip was over, Harriet was having nightmares about all the horrible things she had seen and all the stories that Faith had told her. She couldn't believe that her father had been importing diamonds, and she had followed in his footsteps, knowing so little about what was actually going on in Africa.

  "We trusted people like the U.N. to work it out," she told Faith, as if making an excuse for herself. "I thought we were doing something good for the poor people of Africa."

  Faith nodded her head. "It is a complicated situation, Harriet. These people are so poor, without the diamond trade, however dirty, they might not live at all. But I don't think this is a business that you want to have your hands in. Don't think that you can change anything. No one has the power to do that. There are bigger forces at play here, and they won't budge for anyone. If the U.N. can't get a hold of the situation, how do you expect one woman to do it? It doesn't make sense Harriet. You may be rich, but you don't have that kind of power."

  Harriet could not help but agree. She spent many sleepless nights thinking about what to do. She felt like she just wanted to get out of the jewelry business altogether. Maybe diamonds represented the worst aspect of the trade, but the more she thought about it she knew gold, gem stones, diamonds, all these highly sought after expensive things were the sort of goods that people died for. She had never realized life on a diamond mine could be so horrible. Could life on a sapphire mine or a gold mine be any better?

  Faith and Harriet spent their days in a small safari site far away from Nairobi, waiting to hear from Debbie and Tizz. Faith tried to encourage Harriet to just let her mind go, to stop torturing herself about what she had seen and focus.

  "Trust me, Harriet, I have seen even worse than we saw on this quick tour, but I keep my wits about me. I get out of bed every day and breathe the fresh air and thank God for being alive," she told the harried woman.

  Harriet took her advice, and they enjoyed some peaceful days watching the amazing animals of Africa and eating delicious ethnic foods.

  Finally, the call came from Tizz. Another cousin of hers worked for a large company that managed elderly homes in Kenya. She was also part of a large watch dog organization that looked to crack down on elder abuse. Tizz had let her know that she had gotten some tips that there was an older woman being locked in a basement of a mansion, possibly in very bad shape. She told her cousin that it was essential that the woman be removed from her confines, but no one could know about the tip off.

  Tizz told Faith to expect Sara to be freed within 48 hours.

  A sting operation was set with the Kenyan police and the mansion Jennifer was staying in was raided at 8 p.m. that evening. The police busted down the basement door and found a haggard woman in soiled clothing nearly starved to death, crumpled up in the corner of a large dog cage. They broke her out and took her to the emergency room. The police scanned the house for Jennifer, but they could not find her hiding anywhere in the home. She must have been tipped off or else she was just lucky enough to be out of town when the whole incident went down.

  When Harriet heard Sara was free she rushed to the hospital to see her lover, but she was completely and utterly devastated by what she saw. Sara was completely emaciated, all of the bones in her body were jutting out. Her eyes were glazed over and clumps of her hair had fallen out along with some teeth. Her skin was a sickly tone, and she was delusional from the hunger. The doctors told Harriet that she had severe kidney damage from dehydration as well as several intestinal adhesions. She was in such poor condition, she could not possibly tolerate an operation at this time. All the could do was pump her with fluids and nutrients and hope she pulled through.

  Sara pulled Harriet close to her and began rambling on about something called the Granite Papers. Harriet had no idea what she was talking about and thought she must be hallucinating and making things up from the torture. But Sara was insistent.

  "I didn't want to tell you Harriet, didn't want to burst your bubble, but it's all a scam. The diamond business is just a big scam. There are so many diamonds, they aren't worth more than any other rocks. They are just big hunks of granite." Harriet was confused. She had just seen all these diamond mines and how precious the products were. Sara was just tired and nuts.

  Diamonds were definitely more valuable than ordinary rocks. But Sara kept going. "In Russia. A meteor hit Northern Russia. The impact created millions and millions of diamonds, so many diamonds you could pass them out like candy to every boy and girl in the world. But the diamond industry regulates it. They trick people. They shot my plane down because they knew I had heard about the Granite Papers. Charles Debrew, he ordered the Russian government to shoot down the plane." As she kept talking, she was getting weaker and weaker. Harriet could tell from the beeps and pulses being emitted by the devices hooked up to measure her vital signals.

  "Stop talking," she urged Sara. "We will figure this all out later, just rest, please rest."

  As if following orders, there was a fast series of beeps and then the monitor flat lined. An alarm went off and nurses rushed into the room. They took out cardiac shock plates and tried to restart Sara's heart, but it had taken its final rest. Sara was gone.

  "Noooo," screamed Harriet, clenching tight to the limp, thin, worn down hand of her once vibrant lover. "Noo, please no," she screamed.

  But there was nothing she could do. The nurses gave Harriet some time alone with Sara's body, and then they took her to the hospital morgue. Harriet told Debbie that she wanted to fly the body back to San Francisco and hold an elaborate funeral, but Debbie told her that was impossible.

  "And why on earth is that?" Harriet snapped. "I have plenty of money, you don't think I can afford it?"

  Debbie shook
her head, feeling so bad for this billionaire woman who had hired her for this crazy mission.

  "No, it's not about the money," Debbie told her, "its about Jennifer. If the body is flown back to San Francisco she will know what is going on. The jig will be up, as they say. We have to leave the body here until we finish the investigation," Debbie instructed her.

  Harriet reluctantly agreed, and then she told Debbie about something called the Granite Report. Debbie told Harriet she had never heard of anything like that, but Harriet insisted that Sara would not lie.

  "That was why she was killed Debbie. She had access to something called the Granite Report. She found them while she was here in Kenya. I am sure Faith must know something about this. It exposes the secrets of the diamond industry."

  It all sounded pretty unbelievable to Debbie. "Are you serious? Millions of diamonds in Russia? That's the craziest thing I ever heard," Debbie told her.

  Then she stopped, remembering that she had seen a small delegate of Russians when she had attended the conference of the international gem association. "Then again…" Debbie said, "maybe there is some truth to this. We have to find a way to get our hands on these Granite Papers."

  Debbie conferred with Tizz and Faith, but neither of them had ever heard anything about a Granite Report. And Faith would have been the one to know.