Deep in Angola, men mine illegally — and dangerously — from diamond-rich riverbeds. John Liebenberg reports
`BEWARE the devil in the diamond,” smiles the Zairean, Flavia. He rolls the sparkling two-carat oval stone in his palm. He was a teacher for many years until a visit to his brother, also a miner, two years ago.
“Diamonds make people crazy. It’s a drug. It’s like gambling. It brings the devil out in nice people.”
He’s dressed in a tatty T-shirt and once-blue jeans, now stained red like the soil in the area. “No problem,” he says, “my brother and I, we have
$200 000 in a Brussels bank account. Soon we will … live in Europe forever.”
Flavia carefully folds the diamond back into an envelope and scrambles up the riverbank with me.
“All of us here, we are drawn together … We are all strangers to each other, sharing one dream: a stone that shines so bright, something that ends our hell here, something like a 35-carat fancy [a coloured diamond].”
We stand on a ridge, across a once-deep, green valley. Hundreds of men, long spades in their hands, dig in deep, square holes — that look ominously like graves — in search of the familiar gravel, from sunrise to sunset.
In the Luachimo river, wiry men work from flimsy, dugout canoes. They dive deep into turbulent waters, then, pushing the limits of their lungs, reappear, arms with buckets first, then heads. The muddy gravel is tipped into the canoes, where the men in the canoes fervently inspect it. The divers take a deep breath and plunge again.
On the riverbank, young men pan the day’s gravel with care. They dance in the river, now low, but soon swollen and dangerous with early spring rain.
Flavia waves his hand and says, “Over here we die – — many of us from the disease brought by the rain, from the mud which buries us alive, from the guns of the soldiers of FAA [Forcas Armadas Angolanas, the government’s army] and FALA [Forcas Armadas de Libertacao de Angola — Unita’s military wing]. One day we are left alone, the next, FAA arrives in helicopters asking no questions, just killing from the sky.”
Some men gather closer. One boasts: “I’ve been on Angolan TV — repenting my sins, admitting my guilt for being Zairean, for stealing Angolan diamonds. Do you understand the meaning of the word `garimpeiro’?” His friends laugh and sing out loudly, “garimpeiro!” The sound echoes through the valley. “Then I bought myself out of prison at Saurimo for $500. They nearly killed me, said I was supporting Unita [Uniaco Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola — the main opposition].”
“Do you know how many hundreds of men, Zairean, Malian, Senegalese, Angolan miners have been killed here by the government and Unita?” asks an old man who recently had all his possessions stolen by marauding Unita soldiers. “During the day the soldiers hang around their camp getting fed by the United Nations, and at night they become monsters … The United Nations feeds our killers.”
Flavia mumbles, “Here we don’t argue, we just move on. As soon as we hear the land we are mining belongs to someone — we get out and move on.”
Another garimpeiro says, “All the generals of FAA and FALA now have their own concessions. Soon there will be nowhere to go.”
The men excitedly agree. They pick up their long spades and leave. “Garimpeiro, garimpeiro” they sing.
Outside the town thousands of workers, legitimately employed by a decade-old mining operation, toil with antiquated earthmoving equipment.
The company, SML (Sociedade Mineira do Lucapa), is a story of resourcefulness and endurance. The initial concessionaire was a mythical German, “Hellinger”. In the eighties, with Angola facing isolation from the West, and heavily under Eastern bloc influence, Hellinger created the Lucapa mine, and managed simultaneously a Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA) government contract cleaning the streets of Luanda with Filipino workers.
The company has since changed hands. The mining operation has suffered heavily from the effects of the civil war. Fuel and food are flown in four times a day by jets which service the diamond fields under government control. The company has lost 11 expatriates due to conflict and landmines.
Andy Machim, the general manager of International Trading and Mining (ITM), which is contracted to SML, has lived and worked in Angola since 1982.
“Here in Lucapa it’s just hard work and slog. Every day is an endurance marathon. This is not South Africa. The people there must understand that all the odds here are stacked against you. There are no easy fortunes to be made.
“You need one helluva lot of capital, infrastructure; it’s high-risk mining. the security situation is incredibly fragile. We pay millions of dollars in tax to government and geological surveys and then find some young garimpeiros mining on the concession, cleaning the place out — damaging, beyond excavation, potential mining sites. They sell directly to diamond buyers: neither pay taxes nor contribute to the economy.”
Machim earlier in the year lost two friends in a landmine incident on the mine’s property, but refuses to comment on who could have caused their death.
“This is what happens here,” complains an FAA senior officer, waiting to get out of the army, but unofficially already employed by some South African miners in Dundo.
“As soon as you hit the jackpot and the bad debts are over for good, then you die; ambushed or from a landmine. … They see you on the road and wait for your return.
He continues: “The Lucapa diamonds are world-famous for their quality. We hear the Russians are filtering their cheap diamonds in to Lucapa in a bid to increase their price.”
Although fraught with danger, the dividends are now paying for South Africans who have worked in Angola for the past two years. Some operate joint ventures with Portuguese companies.
Brian Atwell and his 34 South African divers, many of them ex-navy, mine on the Luachimo river. According to locals, the company has struck it lucky more than once, having allegedly found a 35- to 40- carat “fancy”.
For other South African mining companies, mining in Angola has been a nightmare. Gert Potgieter, now back in White River, has little to show for his endeavours at Dundo.
His one-time partner, Cicero Combrink from Vereeniging, is now heading back with a convoy of mining material, across Namibia, to Ngiva and from there to Saurimo, via Russian aircraft.
Saurimo has been a pitstop, home and graveyard for many South Africans and Russians — pilots, mercenaries and diamond hunters. It is now the supply base for several South African air freighters and traders. The big frame of ex-spy Craig Williamson, who supplies a diamond group, is often seen in the dusty town. Tom Robberts of Ramoco Air, a Lanseria outfit allegedly run by ex-National Intelligence Agency agents, often asks for clearance at the airport.
“Why does Angola only lure the South African soldier, and white racist?” asks a cop in Saurimo, casually frisking our car. “Where are the ordinary farmers, plumbers and carpenters?” He asks for a bribe; “a coca-cola”. I decline. He shouts and swears at me, “you deserve no respect!”
“And what respect do the South Africans deserve?” asks another man with dark rings under his eyes. He says he sells his parcels in Johannesburg, for rands and commodities.
“I deal with respectable-looking people, decent and honest, until I arrive with a parcel, then they turn nasty, greedy and dangerous. Nowadays, I sell my diamonds one by one in Johannesburg.”