My near future looks as though it will be steering me toward Africa if all works as planned, so I’ve been reading a lot about Africa lately… News, reports, journals, travels… etc. Just to see… what people are up to, what other people experienced, what the people who live there experience… etc and I’ve come across a few stories that are definitely worth linking to and are definitely something all of you should read because you live on this planet, not just in this country, city, town, campus or house.

First an essay about the untapped resource of Africa, that resource? Of course, it’s oil. What made me shake my head real hard while I was reading this one was something that an African man says in the movie Blood Diamond …something along the lines of “We’ll be in real trouble if they ever find oil here…” as if what was happening during the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 90’s wasn’t already a hell on earth for so many people. Then what made me shake my head even harder:

None of this was a problem for ExxonMobil staff, of course, because the company had its own airport and chartered a fleet of planes making regular flights between N’Djaména and Doba.

That’s a point when you realize, these aren’t poverty stricken men and women going in to crack open some oil pipes and make a decent living - its filthy rich bastards who already make a living decent enough for 900 people, and ruin lives to get to that point. Bitter.

Next, news about drought in South Africa. As we saw from the IPCC report, this sort of news will only become more constant, and more extreme. Crops ruined. Families dying. People starving. This isn’t just some commercial on TV to make you feel bad and send some money - it’s what is actually happening, and will continue to happen without a) a massive change in life style from all of us living here in the “developed” world and b) more attention from us accompanied with some actual compassion. I don’t remember where you can go to get the numbers - but the fact of the matter is - if you life in Canada, and have a bank account with like $30 just sitting there, you’re one of the richest people in the world. Literally.

And of course, us richest people in the world have to have our diamonds. Lesotho has been sucked into the diamond mining economy. Companies are building and searching. Employing children, undoubtedly and corrupting anything that gets in its way. Keep our fingers crossed that APEC gets implemented. But of course, its not only in Lesotho that there is horrible child labour in Africa, but also in western African cocoa productions.

My mother’s a long way from here. I haven’t seen her for 10 years - since I was two years old.”

All this should have stopped by now.

In 2001, under pressure from the US Congress, the chocolate manufacturers promised to start eradicating forced child labour. They failed to meet an initial deadline of 2005, were given until 2008, and now patience is running out.

…You know, if they fail to meet their deadline, there should be a little bit more than “okay, well here is a new deadline”… Seriously, the wests inability to interfere internationally in developing nations where they actually SHOULD be interfering is competely baffling to me.

After watching the movie Blood Diamond I was a little shaken up. I got talking about it with a friend of mine, who kept reminding me that it was fictional, so I shouldn’t get so worked up. The story was fictional. “Van De Kapp doesn’t even exist”… she said to me. “The RUF is now a political group, not a rebel group like in the movie. But it was SO GOOD because Leo is SO HOT!” Right. Well… it’s not fictional, and Leo with his fake environmental efforts and girlfriend with big shiny rocks can kiss my ass.

Africa is the largest producer of diamonds in the world, producing up to 50% of all global production. Africa has produced about 75% of the world’s diamonds value at 1.9 billion carats or $158 billion USD. The diamonds are mined in the kimberlite mines in South Africa, Angola, DRC, Chana, Tanzania, Lesotho and Botswana, off shore mining in South Africa and Namibia and alluvial dredging operations in Angola, CAR, Namibia and South Africa.

The Movie

Blood Diamond is set in Sierra Leone in the late 1990’s as the hard hearted diamond smuggling Leo attempts to find a rare pink diamond that the soft hearted by strong willed fisherman has hid in the diamond pits. Along for some of the ride is the lovely and forceful journalist Maddy, otherwise known as Sarah from the Labyrinth.

Although these characters are fiction and the plot stays true to Hollywood ideals the basis is fact. The rebels of Sierra Leone and Liberia were being financed by extracting diamonds from rivers and trading these in for weapons. This war reulted in over 50 000 deaths, and countless hands being chopped off by the rebels. The company in the film, Van De Kapp, although fake, is a spin of De Beers. De Beers, btw, is the source of 40% of all the worlds diamonds and all of their diamonds come from Africa.

The movie, before even being released, was the focus of a lot of attention as it was marketed by Warner Brothers and $15 million from the World Diamond Council. The Council is a part of a full frontal campaign to end illegal diamond trading, almost entirely financed by De Beers.

Blood Diamond makes it clear at the end that the war in Sierra Leone and Liberia is over (thank goodness, it actually is) but that there are still blood diamonds on the market. What people like my friend seem to miss is that we have the power for there to be zero blood diamonds on the market. It’s not as if we need a diamond to live, our lives are not dependent upon the production of diamonds. Unlike oil, we’re not dependent.

The problem is people in Africa are dependent. Botswana’s economy is almost entirely based on the production and extraction of diamonds. The diamond revenues enable children to attend school for free up to the age of 13. Diamond exports account for 40% of Namibia’s income. It is most definitely a bit of a tricky situation.

Well, our conscious is clear

Different efforts have been implemented to “ensure” that the diamonds are conflict free, most popular is the Kimberly Process. This is an international system crated to prevent diamonds from fueling wars and rebel networks. However, this doesn’t clean up a lot of other things.

In Sierra Leone diamond mining is still a business that gives the government way too little revenue for the incredibly poor country. Instead the Kimberley Process has been put into place to clear our righteous and status craving souls… we can all sleep easy with the big rock on our finger because of the Kimberley Process.

The degenerated foreign mine owners have simply been replaced by elites from the country who have a more firm grip on the finance and profits behind the operations. The semifeudal relationships make it nearly impossible for the 150 000 workers hoping to find that diamond that will bring them out of poverty, that will feed their family, that will save their life, but it is probable that this will never happen. The people in the Districts work for little to no pay, and only see money when they find a diamond.

Most of the miners have been working in this field since the rebels forced them into it… many find stones once every 7 to 8 months. They may find one $60 stone that will be sold and split between three people. The conditions that they’re living in haven’t changed much since the war either.

There is still no electricity, the streets have yet to be repaved since the 70’s, people live in the exploded buildings left in shambles from the war and the government has not easily been uncorrupted from the greed of diamonds. Unlike most natural resources the diamonds in Sierra Leone can’t be easily monitored, managed and controlled, they don’t sit in mines waiting to be found they float around in rivers and wash up.

If they find oil, we’ll have real problems

The mines in Sierra Leone consist of about 2 500 smaller operations, and diamonds are easily transported and stolen. If the regulations to get across the boarders, the taxes are too hefty or people get getting screwed around a little too much it’s easy to turn to smuggling. What is good news is that in 2005 Sierra Leone exported $141 million dollars in diamonds “legally” up from $24 million legally exported in 2001.

The country has a populations of about 6 005 250 people. The government brings in about 3% of the diamond export revenues. In 2006, that mean $3.7 million. $3.7 million… it rebuild a country of 6 million torn by a long and extreme civil war. Something tells me that isn’t quite enough money.

The workers in the mines are supposed to get a minimum wage, but this isn’t enforced. Nor is the law that the workers must be a citizen of Sierre Leone. Foreign workers from the Middle East and West African countries often come to work in the mines. The mines are divided up into sections, each section is overlooked by a license holder so the workers don’t steal (too many) diamonds.

These license holders are paid around $0.75 a day but also given food and shelter in exchange fro 30% of what the backers “claim” the value of their diamonds to be… the financiers are sure to deduct expenses from the remains. The miners get around $2 a day.
Since the RUF had control of the mines in comparison to now, there has been little change in the conditions of work. Some of the workers are paid daily and then a percentage of their stones, other can keep the stones and attempt to sell it themselves who are then ripped off because of their ignorance - thus the workers are entirely dependent on their advisor to get a “fair” price for their stone.

The fact of the matter is the poverty rates in the mining districts are the highest. Kono’s poverty rate is 20% higher than the nearby Pujehun district which relies almost entirely on agricultural production. The government sends a quarter of its diamond revenue back to the community where the stones originated, this gave Kono $377 900 in 2005, for their populations of 475 000 people.

The people who dig by hand do not get paid for what they find. There is no way for people to find out what any particular miner is paid, to see if he was compensated properly for the stone he may have found. This leads to an illusion that the problems observed during the civil war have now been solved.

More numbers

• • blood diamonds account for just under 1% of the worlds diamond supply - but they’re mixed in with the conflict free diamonds. Good luck.
  • Venezuela exports zero diamonds, despite its mines
  • 300 000 more carats were exported than were imported to the U.S
  • Sierra Leone exports are expected to drop by 10% in the next year
  • Diamond experts in Sierra Leone say at least 1/3 of all diamonds exported from Sierra Leone are still smuggled
  • Liberia has been banned by Kimberley - but there are only 3/36 boarder crossing manned and guarded
  • When a boy friends a $11 stone, he can go to school for a year. Leaving only 999 999 other workers looking for their dream.

The Underground Run - (extracted from this article)

The action is the area’s major entertainment, drawing a crowd of curious men and children. In a dirt clearing between the small wooden storefronts, Abdollai Koroma runs his business from a chair under a shade tree, clutching a yellow calculator and a jeweler’s loupe in a weathered pouch. During just one hour eight men arrive with their wares wrapped in scraps of paper stuffed in their pockets. Koroma takes each stone and swirls it in his mouth before examining it briefly under the loupe. “This is 1.20 carats,” he says after spitting out a glittering stone the size of a shirt button.Koroma, who started trading diamonds at age 17, taps on his calculator, peels off a wad of banknotes, and makes his biggest purchase of the day: 200,000 leones, about $66. The previous day the neighborhood trade was equally brisk, as men gathered to sell diamonds to Komba Fillefaboa, a 47-year-old trader who began digging when he was 12. Fillefaboa says he buys dozens of stones on an average afternoon.

“We buy piece by piece and then gather them into a parcel to sell to dealers,” he says. Once the parcel of diamonds is sold to a licensed dealer, illegally mined diamonds are easily mixed in.

Fillefaboa says he has no problem finding buyers, despite Sierra Leone’s strict licensing laws, which ban illegal diamond dealing. Licenses are regarded as too costly and laws too cumbersome. “We are all illegal here,” boasts the neighborhood’s chief, Sahr Sam. “If the monitors come, we scatter.”

Child Labour

The day Blood Diamond was released over a million children were risking their lives and severe injuries while missing school by working in the diamond mines. Sierra Leone is just one of over 50 countries that exploit children in mines. About 200 000 children in Niger and Burkina Faso work in gold and mineral mines making up 1/3 of the industries workforce. In DRC about 40 000 children work underground mining diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt, the same is true for 18 000 children in the Philippines.

Children as young as five years old will work long hours, underground in horrible conditions and in areas that are at risk of collapsing. They will be instructed to dive underwater and crawl into small places to access areas. There is severe air, soil and water contamination in almost all mining operations because of the heavy metal mixtures.

This isn’t just for the shiny engagement rings either. About 70% of the world’s cocoa is grown in Western Africa. This cocoa subsidizes political instability on the Ivory Coast and a complete magnet for child labor and slavery. Parents must resort, sometimes, to selling their children. Children as young as 9, in this case, are taken from their homes to work in cocoa fields again with no hope of education, contact with family but fully accompanied by whips and abuse.

The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture reported in 2002 that 284 000 children were in labor in the cocoa industry, 70% of them being on the Ivory Coast.

Solutions

..Shit, I dunno.

There is plenty Fair Trade Chocolate

And the option for Ethical Jewlery

…Really, we know the solution - give people the money they need to live. Stop being selfish consumeristic jerks and hand over the means for a decent standard of living instead of sitting over here pretending to give a shit. But good luck convincing the bigwigs to do such a thing.