De Beers statement on Chiadzwa diamonds smacks of sour grapes

A recent statement from De Beers through its diamond retail, Forevermark, that it will not be selling diamonds from Chiadzwa alluvial fields in Zimbabwe because of their low quality, is rather patronising but unsurprising and smacks of sour grapes.

Ironically, De Beers was shipping out Chiadzwa diamonds for many years until recently when government realised the fraud.

From the onset, it should be noted that we are here dealing with a company that is the flagship of colonial escapades into Africa and an indisputable extension of western imperialism.

De Beers was formed in 1897 by a colonialist par excellence called Cecil John Rhodes.

It represents the white man's domination over black people and stands as a conspicuous image of how the colonialist expropriated mineral resources from Africa.

Its founding proprietor, Rhodes, epitomised undiluted western imperialism as he dreamt of the day when the whole of Africa from the Cape to Cairo would be under the foothold of the Queen of England.

He was the embodiment of the imperial dream of expansionism and world domination.

A cursory look at the company's business history also reveals that its vision is aptly shaped by Rhodes' imperial dream of singularly owning the world diamond industry and thus simultaneously opposes any efforts to empower black people or indigenise the diamond industry.

Current ownership structures in Chiadzwa, where local people through their government owns the majority of shares in the diamond companies, becomes abominable to De Beers and should thus be denigrated.

More so, its well documented monopolistic history betrays it as an avaricious company that had singularly force throated the diamond industry to pander to its self serving whims with direct benefits to its western parentage.

This is also a company that is publicly known for financially sponsoring civic organisations that were rabidly opposed to the trade in Marange diamonds.

Organisations such as Farai Maguwu's Centre for Research and Development directly benefited from De Beers' bottomless financial resources in their treacherous and unjustified bid to scuttle trade in Marange diamonds. Its relentless denigration of Zimbabwean gems should be understood as a deliberate ploy to block indigenously controlled diamond entities from entering the lucrative diamond industry.

It is, however, baffling to see De Beers trying to smear Zimbabwean gems yet it is presently spearheading inhumane and racist attempts, in cahoots with the Botswana government, to spiritedly and forcefully relocate the Kalahari Bushmen tribe of Botswana from their ancestral lands.

The Kalahari Khoi-San, who have lived in Southern Africa for more than 20 000 years, are now being starved off their land to make way for lucrative diamond extraction by De Beers.

In past years, the Khoi-San have relied on water from a borehole in one of the Kalahari communities. The government provided a tanker that distributed water around the region once a month but since the discovery of diamond deposits worth up to US$3,3 billion in one community, the government has halted the operation, removing the storage tanks and the pump that made water extraction possible.

The Khoi-San are banned from re-opening the borehole. These are some of the heinous and inhumane activities being spearheaded by De Beers in Botswana in its bid to arbitrarily expropriate diamonds from their rightful Kalahari owners.

Such human rights abuses should have attracted the full wrath of the Kimberly Process, but it is common knowledge that Botswana is a faithful Western ally and as such is immune to such an international reproach.

It can therefore be pointed out that the hands of De Beers are manifestly dirty and as such consequently erode its moral latitude to ostracise Zimbabwe for non existent smuggling and human rights abuse in Chiadzwa.

Before the inception of the Kimberly Process in 2002, De Beers was renowned for surreptitiously dealing with the Angolan UNITA rebels with whom they exchanged uncut diamonds for weaponry despite the existence of international economic and diplomatic sanctions introduced through the United Nations Council Resolution 1173.

It should also be noted that De Beers' views are jaundiced by its disproved belief that it holds the monopoly to the world diamond trade.

The truth of the mater is that the company no longer holds the industrial clout it once possessed. Now there are a medley of renowned diamond companies in India and other corners of the world that can fittingly challenge De Beers for a piece of the world diamond cake.

This dispensation will make De Beers bark worse than its bite. Its monopolistic influence has been timely diluted by the emergence of equally powerful diamond companies in India and in other corners of the world. In this away, Zimbabwe is free to turn its back on De Beers and open its hands towards other world diamond companies like those domiciled in the diamond processing region of Surat in India.

Above all, we would have not acquiesced to the idea of further enriching De Beers, a company that is the last vestige of colonialism, and also an epitome of black exploitation and disempowerment. De Beers is emblematic of imperial domination, emasculation of other races and wholesale expropriation of other people's natural resources.

While the black people of South Africa are writhing under inimitable poverty in the unsanitary sprawling shacks of Soweto, De Beers is busy siphoning their abundant wealth to international destinations for the benefit of the imperial juggernaut. As such, we cannot imagine ourselves trading with De Beers as our diamonds are too sacrosanct to feed this neo-colonial monster.

Its statement on Zimbabwe gems could also be viewed as spiteful and vindictive in light of recent revelations by the Government that in its exploratory escapades in Chiadzwa, De Beers had stolen tonnes of diamonds from the area after which it claimed that there where no viable diamond reserves.

It should be noted therefore that De Beers stands as a citadel of the white men's opposition to black empowerment and indigenisation efforts. It serves to scuttle these programmes as their ripple effects in the rest of the continent will threaten all imperial establishments. It is simply an opposition to the black man's participation in the economy.

In view of the foregoing arguments, it is instructive to note that De Beers' threats are just empty and without substance. We remain unnerved by such racist shenanigans and aptly view them as cheap and ineffective threats from a time tainted colonial remnant trying to give itself the moral latitude to vainly shape the diamond market's perception of the Zimbabwe gems.

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The writer is a social commentator.