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The 2007 movie Blood Diamond must have been tough on DeBeers, right? Well I did some digging of my own…
In the diamond valleys of Angola’s remote north-east, guerrillas control many of the richest diamond deposits. There, illegal diamond diggers and army officers, buccaneers and foreign fortune-hunters compete for a patch, scraping at the ground with tin cans and fingernails, or plunging underwater from wooden canoes to dig out the gems from the gravel beds of the Cuango River. There are no rules here. Guns are rife, and for hire. Murders, ambushes and kidnappings are common. “It’s like the Wild West…”
This is not a tale of the Kimberley diamond rush of the 1870’s, but an extract from an Economist piece dated 1997. The year previously, De Beers spent some $15m each week mopping up Angolan diamonds, mostly in Antwerp, no questions asked.
The diamond industry has seen more activity in 100 years than most of those little stones have in a couple of billion. But to recount this tale without mention of De Beers would be more than remiss. Read the rest of this entry »
