Conflict Diamonds and Bushmen
Kimberly Process Loophole for Gope Diamonds on Bushmen Land
The forcible and illegal removal of Bushmen from their homelands is conflict in anybody's language. But under the Kimberly Process, these diamonds are clean.
In the Central Kalahari, there is a place called Ghagho, which non-native people know as Gope. In the region there are three language groups, the Tsila, Gana and Gwi. The Tsila are often called the Gope Bushmen, a tribe made up of approximately 200 individuals, who were evicted from their traditional homelands in 2002.
Unfortunately their lands are situated on a large diamond deposit that was discovered by Falconbridge and DeBeers in the 1980's. Ghagho is an important site for the Tsila, as it has an ancestral orchard of monkey oranges and other fruits. There are also significant ancestral burial grounds on the site, as well as precious water sources, some of which have been poisoned by diamond miners. That mine has been temporarily closed down, but De Beers retains the license and asserts that it will resume mining "when the economic conditions are right." Other diamond companies are also doing exploratory drilling in the area.
The Kimberly Process guarantees that their diamonds are not "conflict diamonds," meaning diamonds that are associated with civil wars and conflict. However, this leaves out the criteria of human rights abuses and contravention of international law regarding the consultation of traditional landowners by mining companies. The Bushmen have been evicted illegally and forcibly from their land to make room for this mining activity. By any definition, this could be described as "conflict." Therefore, despite the assurances of the Kimberly Process, these are in fact conflict diamonds. By extension, any company involved with this illegal process of dispossession is part of the conflict diamond industry.
The government and mining companies have backpedalled on this issue in recent years, claiming that the Bushmen were removed for their welfare, not because of mining interests. This contradicts what they initially told the Tsila when they were evicted in 1985, when the Bushmen were told explicitly that they were being moved to sedentary settlements because of the diamond deposit.
These "relocation camps" are referred to by the Tsila as "places of death." De Beers backed their removal to these concentration camps with bogus research claiming that Gope has only recently been inhabited by Bushmen, and that they have no ancestral claim to the territory.
In a bizarre and ironic turnaround, moves to protect the rights of the Bushmen have been dismissed by De Beers on the grounds that such laws "lead to apartheid."
It is interesting that we say "conflict diamonds," but nobody seems to label other resources that produce conflict and dispossession in the same way. Arguably, the world might be equally concerned about "conflict oil" and "conflict uranium" and "conflict bauxite," all of which are mined on the lands of indigenous people, forcibly annexed by colonial states.
