Rough diamonds - proxies, secrecy and control

"Diamonds attracted a mixed crowd" and "De Beers diamonds untainted" –So went the most critical reports in all the local media carried on the 8th February 2007 by the Namibian Economist, in Windhoek, Namibia, when reporting on the occasion of the signing of an extended billion dollar agreement between Oppenheimer-De Beers and the Namibian government on the 31st January 2007. The mystery and secrecy surrounding this diamond deal, not surprisingly "arousing a feeling of sensing something deeper than what meets the eye". And the audience to the signing of the agreement are businessmen without declared interests in diamond business and others proxies from Angola and Congo who represent the very people expected to benefit from this new agreement. This is about as far as the general media venture into publishing the true implications of the deal and the facts surrounding its dubious history.So who are these people ? And lets shed a bit of light on the subject in the public interest and for the benefit of the many victims dead and alive.From 1923 to 1990 Oppenheimer-DeBeers , through CDM, were vested with the exclusive rights to exploit this rich diamond deposit in South West Africa – Namibia, for at “least” 50 years in terms of the Halbscheid agreement, signed between the Administrator of South West Africa/Namibia and CDM in January 1923.  In 1941, twenty years before the expiry date, the agreement was extended to 1990 and then in 1953 the agreement was extended again to 2010. After 1923 South Africa was authorised by the League of Nations to run South West Africa – Namibia, until the United Nations declared South Africa’s occupation illegal in 1966. For obvious reasons Oppenheimer-De Beers-Anglo-American Corporation for the most part, together with the South African “Apartheid” government had no tangible evidence to show what they were doing to further the interests of the people of the country. From this point on, Oppenheimer-De Beers-Anglo American Corporation, stood firm with the illegal occupiers (South African government), blatantly ignoring UN laws concerning the stripping of the countries natural resources. Jointly they accelerated the theft of minerals and decimated the rich herring-sardine-rock lobster resources with out any concern other than their own interest. The Justice Therion Commission 1983-5 produced the first major evidence exposing the extent of these activities, this was acutely presented in a video documentary produced by BBC-Granada called – the case of the missing diamonds. To this day De Beers continues the exploitation of Namibian rough diamonds on terms contrary to EU and American legislation governing the behaviour of multi-national corporations doing business in America and Europe. So, in whose interest is this confidentiality when transacting the exclusive exploitation rights of the countries diamonds ? Is it in the Namibian Government's interest - the institution that acts for and on behalf of the citizens of the country, who actually own the diamonds - or Oppenheimer-De Beers who insist on this secret method of concluding business, together with their “well-groom” selected government civil servants, as a means of never disclosing who is getting what ? That is what this secrecy entails.This secrecy “business” is simply not in the Namibian governments' interest, as long as they continue to “engineer” the failure to test the open-market rough diamond prices, where tangible proof would emerge as to how much this country is being robbed of its diamond wealth. A Namibian Government civil servant publicly chased away the international buyers in a recent front-page article carried in The Namibian newspaper. In 2002/3, De Beers’s agent in New York simply overturned a Namibian government decision after it had concluded to test the international diamond price by selling 10% of the annual production in terms of the Diamond Act. It took threats bribery and price manipulation to defend off the offers made for the diamonds but the government was unable to execute the sale despite a Presidential Cabinet resolution and subsequent Action letter authorizing the Minister to do so. So the “well-groomed” are the weak.  The people of Namibia still do not know how they are being robbed.   To continue........