In the week the SABC showed graphic footage of the carnage in Sierra Leone, a Port Elizabeth businessman has been accused of fuelling the civil war in that country. Peter Dickson reports
A Canadian probe into the diamond trade in Sierra Leone has accused a controversial Port Elizabeth businessman of peddling weapons and mercenaries in exchange for diamond concessions in the war-ravaged country.
The investigation, published by Canadian NGO Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), says Michau Huisamen’s mining company is one of three Canadian operations that has been “willing to go to almost any lengths, including the provision of arms and mercenary armies, to get diamonds”.
Huisamen, a 36-year-old Port Elizabeth millionaire, has been managing director of AmCan Minerals since 1997 when AmCan bought Huisamen’s ArmSec International (AI), a company involved in diamonds and security.
Huisamen appeared in the Port Elizabeth High Court last December on fraud and corruption charges related to a tender for the distribution of Western Cape pension pay-outs, and was released on R10E000 bail.
The PAC report says Sierra Leone’s diamond wealth is central to the conflict and has led to the creation of a “highly criminalised war economy”.
PAC, which has called for a United Nations clampdown on the illegal diamond trade, accuses diamond giant De Beers and Belgium’s Diamond High Council of profiting “wittingly or unwittingly” from diamond smuggling by buying from “dubious sources”.
It also says the three Canadian mining companies – DiamondWorks Limited, Rex Diamond Mining Corporation and AmCan – have fuelled Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war “by providing military supplies, acting as go- betweens with mercenaries and utilising security firms for dubious purposes in their lust for diamonds”.
The PAC report says the seven-year war, in which 75E000 civilians have been killed, two million people displaced and tens of thousands mutilated, has created a gangster economy based on the diamond trade. The report implicates neighbouring Cte d’Ivoire and Liberia in the trade, Sierra Leone diamonds often being sold through Liberia to disguise their origin.
PAC says that Toronto-based AmCan holds various exploration licences in Sierra Leone but has done little mining in the country “because of the security situation”. Its Sierra Leone lawyer, however, chairs that country’s government Gold and Diamond Office that oversees the valuation and taxation of the diamond industry.
Huisamen has denied that AmCan or AI were directly or indirectly involved in the conflict or provided support to the warring parties.
Huisamen is widely known in Port Elizabeth social and sporting circles – he once owned the short-lived National Soccer League side Michau Warriors. In 1997 he spent five months in a British jail awaiting trial for allegedly smuggling dagga into Britain in his jet. He was arrested with two associates, including former Directorate of Covert Collection spy Rich Verster. Huisamen was acquitted, but Verster told the court he managed Huisamen’s Sierra Leone mine and that he had a 25% stake in Huisamen’s AI. Huisamen, also found in possession of a false Liberian passport, told British customs officers after his arrest in January 1997 that he had met Verster through former Springbok rugby star Naas Botha, who worked in one of Huisamen’s companies.
l Sierra Leone this week announced a moratorium on diamond mining that takes immediate effect.The announcement was made by ex-rebel leader Foday Sankoh in his new capacity as chair of the government’s Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources, National Reconstruction and Development. Sankoh was given a government position in terms of a fragile peace deal.