COLONIALIST, CONTRABAND & CONFLICT DIAMONDS

The History of Diamond Production: Colonialist, Contraband & Conflict Diamonds

Diamond is the most politicized gem in history—and never more so than in the last half of the 20th century when they were found mostly in colonial Africa. Around 1960, Harry Oppenheimer, son of and successor to CSO founder Ernest Oppenheimer, realized the need to distance De Beers from South Africa which, because of its apartheid policies, was becoming a political pariah among nations.

Diamond-rich European colonies such as the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola were on the brink of independence, and their fledgling governments were openly flirting with communist models of government. So the De Beers’ diamond monopoly had to create ingenious back-door mechanisms and camouflaging arrangements to preserve its close ties with socialist producers who were ideologically duty-bound to avoid dealing with a South African capitalist cartel.

De Beers managed, both by finesse and force, to forge working relationships with nearly every one of Africa’s newly independent diamond states—as well as the Soviet Union to whom these countries looked for aid and comfort. But as many African states became increasingly impoverished and unstable, and armed insurrections broke out, diamonds became the chief spoil of these civil wars as government forces battled rebel groups for control of mining areas. In Angola, for instance, the marauding UNITA rebel army seized control of at least 60% of the country’s rich diamond fields and raised an estimated $3.7 billion from sales of illicit diamonds between 1992 and 1998. That’s when the UN finally imposed an embargo on all sales of all non-government stones.

Until then, De Beers was caught between social conscience and market control, choosing, regrettably, to mop up the steady flow of what became known as “conflict diamonds.” As controversial De Beers reduced its allocation to customers and told them to make up for the shortfall by buying on the open market. “Open market” was an unsubtle euphemism for Angolan goods. De Beers obviously didn’t want to shoulder the complete burden of buying UNITA diamonds.

Since 1998, De Beers has veered sharply to the side of conscience. But it had to, in part, because groups like Amnesty International were condemning it for trafficking in blood diamonds. In 2000, De Beers formally pledged to stop buying conflict diamonds and to do all in its power to make its customers do the same. In 2003, it committed itself to the Kimberly Process, a treaty involving 71 countries, which has practically halted all traffic in conflict diamonds. In 2005, it instituted a set of “best-practice” ethical principles designed to reassure conscientious consumers that their diamonds were from responsible sources.