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Mungo Soggot
De Beers survived its maiden presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee on mineral and energy virtually unscathed last week. It all went very smoothly until question time when Inkatha Freedom Party MP Dr Kisten Rajoo lashed out at the diamond giant for exploiting child labour in India, where there is a massive, cheap, cutting industry.
“You are perpetuating child labour,” Rajoo shouted. “De Beers is a large, monopolistic exploitative company which has made a hell of a lot of money. You had better watch out you don’t exploit our labour here,” he warned the company’s representatives, adding that De Beers had done nothing for South Africa.
De Beers’s Garath Penny stepped in gently. “I would be delighted to answer the question,” he said. “If we find a cutter is using child labour we do not use them.”
Penny added that many of the Indian cutters were supplied by Argyle, the Australian diamond operation that broke away from the Central Selling Organisation (CSO) last year.
There was also a quiet pitch to anyone in the government concerned about De Beers’s contribution to South Africa. Penny said the company paid R2-million in tax every day of the week – including Sundays. And he said it paid about four times to charity what the average British company did.
It was the first time De Beers had spoken to the committee, which is understood to have requested the presentation in anticipation of the findings of the commission of inquiry into the diamond business being chaired by Judge Dennis Levy.