Blood Diamonds: A Hard Love for the South African Town of Kimberley

Blood Diamonds: A Hard Love for the South African Town of Kimberley

"Blood Diamond"—the phrase conjures a constellation of associations with illicit traffic, bloody civil wars, and secretive global cartels. It is imagery brutal enough to harm the reputation of even the most sought-after commodity. De Beers, the corporation whose name is synonymous with the global diamond trade, has taken the tarnishing of its public image very seriously. They introduced a proprietary branding technique, which claims to verify its diamonds come from 'conflict-free' regions. It is called the "Kimberley process," named for the South African town that functioned as the 19th century headquarters of De Beers. Even a cursory investigation of the global diamond trade however, indicates that it is difficult to confirm the origins of diamonds, particularly given the secrecy with which they are bought and sold.

The shadow of violence continues to cloud the beauty and elegance of the diamond, and yet there is an even more difficult aspect of its production to consider. In the late 19th century, there was a global depression of diamond prices due to an increase in illicit diamond smuggling. The public outrage over dropping prices led to schemes like that of monopolists Cecil Rhodes (the founder of De Beers), who in order to combat illegal buying, instituted closed housing compounds in 1886 for their African workers. DeBeers housed White workers in an open tree-lined suburb named Kenilworth. Black workers, in contrast, were housed in an arrangement based on slave barracks in Brazil. This was one of the most historically important manifestations of apartheid's urban segregation in South Africa. It transformed the social landscape of Kimberley forever.

These historical facts are well known and yet, there is a presentist quality to how we think about the politics of the diamond trade. It is as though we hold industry to a different moral standard than political powers. And yet in the past, it was often the corporations that helped forge the foundations of the colonial and imperial practices that we find so morally reprehensible today.

Consider the plight of the present-day residents of the town of Kimberley, South Africa. Kimberley is a city founded on the site of the Diamond Fields and has been the central site of De Beers's mining operations since 1888. It continues to be listed as one of its headquarters, along with offices in Johannesburg, England and Switzerland. The town encircles what has been termed the 'big hole'-the hollowed out remnants of an enormous volcanic pipe that produced billions of dollars of diamonds and allowed De Beers to secure its grip on the global diamond trade.

My field research in Kimberley began a few years after De Beers unveiled its extraordinary 203-carat 'Millennium Star' diamond, as part of the De Beers 2000 Millennium Jewels Exhibition. In Kimberley, a few years later, hundreds of families in the town were experiencing the final waves of layoffs since active mining operations by De Beers had all but ceased. Former employees that I spoke with expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of their severance and an almost palpable bitterness had settled on the town. There was a reluctance to accept the corporate terms of withdrawal-perhaps best symbolized by the remaining residents of the De Beers main worker hostel (a euphemism for the compound), who were at the time of my stay in Kimberley, refusing to move out until appropriate housing could be arranged for them. It was a broadly shared bitterness, a sentiment that seemed to fill in the void of the paternalistic rhetoric that had served to sustain De Beers's claims to the town. As the E. Oppenheimer & Sons (the bankroller for De Beers) diamond empire today effortlessly multiplies and moves its shadow companies to countries with lower taxes or exemptions for the sake of privacy (for instance, it was registered in Liberia until 2002, though operating from Johannesburg (Roberts 2003: 214)), there would seem to be little of interest left in Kimberley, or other impoverished towns left in De Beers's corporate shadow.

These days, Kimberly is one of the brittle towns and landscapes left behind that speaks to the true legacy of the diamond: chronic lung illnesses, paltry pensions, dispersed families, economically depleted townships, and record-high suicide rates. Former employees tell fanciful tales of how wilily diamond traders surmounted the walls of the compounds using carrier pigeons, kites and other ruses to ferry diamonds to traders on the other side. Among the residents of Kimberly, there is less willingness to discuss the process that each and every miner endured upon completion of their contract and immediately before being released from the compound. As part of their contract, they were fed purgatives, subjected to intrusive cavity searches, and placed within physical constraints preventing the use of their hands. The workers who had experienced such indignities, even today, tell their personal stories only with great emotional difficulty.

The Oppenheimer family has publicized its efforts to redress the enormous profits earned on the backs of the families of Kimberley. De Beers promises, to make the 'big hole' a tourist attraction, and share what they have delicately termed the 'multifaceted' history of the Diamond Fields. It seems that the anguish, suffering, and social stigmatization that went into the labor control policies of the company, will now become fodder for a new manufactured heritage -one that will be palatable for the tourist.

Despite the fact these corporate modes of diamond production participated in the same sorts of bloody violence, forced labor, and illicit market operations, as African 'warlords' and dictators, these monopolistic practices and secretive cartels are perceived as less repressive. Diamonds today only become 'blood diamonds' in their connection to the political upheavals and civil wars in countries such as Sierra Leone, Angola or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why is it only in the political context that they come to be senseless and 'bloody'? Beyond the question of whether or not De Beers indirectly funds these projects through their purchasing practices, it remains to be fully examined what manufacturers and industry clean and 'sensible' while government leaders engaging in the same practices are viewed as less so.

The story of Kimberley is part of the corporate legacy of De Beers. It reminds us to link past repression by corporations to the same practices that are so explicitly repudiated today. CEOs, 'warlords' and imperial administrators, when managing the extraction and marketing of diamonds, have all participated in similar techniques of power and have all-with varying degrees of secrecy- practiced profound disregard for human life. Such a history would be impossible to tell without tracing the routes of the diamond itself, both illicit and sanctioned.