How the African Diamond Trade Works

Diamond were first found in Africa sometime in the 1860s, and have troubled the continent ever since. Check out this podcast from HowStuffWorks to learn more about the De Beers monopoly, blood diamonds and the African conflicts resulting from these gems.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Key and This Gibson, joined by staff writer
Jane McGrath. Hey, there can Jane. How many girls do
you think are hoping to get a diamond ring for Christmas? Oh?

(00:22):
I know a few, dude, they're expecting it. Yeah. I
think it's kind of sad to propose at Christmas time
because then you know, it's it's not really its own occasion,
and if anything you could go wrong, God forbid, you know,
you would always associate that with Christmas, and the guys
will always remember that way, it makes it easier for them.
Or you know what sports is when people propose with
puppies and they put the diamond on the puppies collar.
Oh yeah, you don't like that it's coming. Yeah, I

(00:45):
guess I'm really sorry. If any of you were planning
on doing it that way, I would recommend a horse
drawn carriage sort of proposal. I think that'd be sweet,
a little interest sleigh ride. But all that aside. Um,
when you get past the glitz and glamour and the
excitement of diamonds, it's actually a pretty sortid business, or
at least it has a has a pretty sortied history.

(01:06):
And not just the diamond but gold mines and platinum minds.
And you think about the destruction of the environment and
then the manual labor that goes into it, it's sort
of a sad story. So we're here today to burst
everyone's bubble about diamonds. And I'm sorry we have to
do this because they are beautiful, but um, it's interesting
to go back about the history of diamonds, especially in Africa.

(01:27):
If you look like a map of where diamond minds are,
they're mostly centered in Africa, and that's where the bulk
of these minds are. And they first found these, uh,
these diamonds in Africa about the eighteen sixties, and it's
really been causing problems for Africa ever since. Like all
of a sudden, uh. The British Empire was pretty interested
in them and really wanted control, and it caused a
lot of strife. Thing called the Bower Wars were partly

(01:50):
fueled by a diamond control. But as far flung as
diamonds maybe across Africa and other parts of the world too.
There's one company in particular that holds a monopoly on them,
that's right. And that's two Beers, which you probably heard
about because they um launched this massive advertising campaign that
is forever, that's right, and it's really done wonders for

(02:10):
diamonds in general. It's made them seem so precious and
so desirable UM and De Beers has actually started by
UM one guy really involved in the British Empire named
Cecil Rhodes if you've ever heard of him in history
UM and since then the Beers has had sort of
a monopoly on on the industry. And De Beers actually
controls about six of the diamonds today. And like we

(02:34):
were saying, they have this really strong marking campaign about
diamonds being forever and the idea that diamonds are precious
and rare. And while it's certainly true that they may
be precious gems, they're not the only precious gems out there.
It's just that they've craft at this idea that diamonds
are at the gem that connote eternity and true love

(02:55):
and lasting love. And so it's appropriate for someone to
give someone else a die amend as a token of
a promise. And that's why diamonds can be so expensive
and so valuable because we're under the impression that they're
very hard to get, you know, you have to sacrifice
cut or color, clarity or carrot, and that much at

(03:16):
least just true. You know, it's very hard to find
a perfect diamond. But the idea that there's so few
in the market is completely untrue. It's just that de
Beer's release as a certain amount per year, and then
you know, they circulate and those get bought out again.
So it's sort of the cycle of diamonds being constantly
traded and bought and repurposed and reset. That's right, and
their value and this desirability that has created this value

(03:39):
has actually fueled some kind of nasty things that have
gone on in Africa ever since that it was that
they were found there. Um and mostly throughout the twentieth century,
there were violent uprisings that came about in certain African
areas and countries where rebels very violent considering uh, well
you and at least considers them uh, challenging governments that

(04:03):
are very legitimate and should not be violently overthrown. And
so these revolutionaries, particularly in Sierra Leone in the early nineties,
actually these revolutionaries UH started terrorizing villagers and UH they
took control of the Diamond minds during this time so
that they could fuel their their uprisings. And they did
this very systematically, moving from Diamond village to Diamond village,

(04:26):
and they would force everyone to work for them and
to relinquish control of the mind to their rebel groups.
And they did this at the expense of of killing
people or of cutting off their limbs. And some people
are so frightened that they simply abandoned their towns. So
by the time this was all over, we had about
twenty thousand bodily mutilations that took place, about seventy five

(04:48):
thousand murders, and nearly two million people who had fled
and were displaced. And we shouldn't mention that in two
thousand two the violence in Sierra Leone came to an end.
That's right, and not all play have been completely eradicated
of this this so called blood diamond stuff going on UM.
And we should also note that overall, they think this

(05:08):
blood diamond controversy caused the death of about four million
people in all. It's unbelievable. And again it's not just
Sierra Leone, but nations like Angola and Liberia, the Ivory
Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Right, and then
last one you mentioned is still having problems for days.
It certainly is. And essentially, when these rebel groups have

(05:29):
the money to fund their wars and their uprisings, almost
anything is possible. And that's the scary thing about blood
diamonds or conflict diamonds is that the end result is
so scintillating and so precious a gift that a lot
of people don't think about the origins of the stone.
And it's really really important that if you're giving or

(05:50):
receiving a diamond, you question its origins. And the United
Nations is making us a little bit easier on us
today because they developed an two thousand two, the Kimberley
Process Certification Scheme, and this is a way of regulating
diamonds to make sure that they're not conflict diamonds. That's right,
And this was a really good solution because maybe if

(06:10):
after hearing this, you could think, oh, well, I don't
want to buy diamonds anymore. I'm gonna tell my fiance
or I'm not gonna buy my fiance a diamond because
this might have been the origin of it, and that
actually causes problems in itself. If we just boycotted diamonds
and cut them off, um Cold Turkey, this would actually
cripple a lot of African economies that that really rely

(06:31):
on it, and it would cause the loss of jobs
and everything like that. And some some countries, I should say,
like Botswana for instance, in the past years or so,
has actually been been able to flip its economy around
and and prosper from the one of the poorest to
one of the more rich countries, all from legitimate diamond trade.
And you should know too that there's about ten million

(06:52):
people worldwide who is subsessed off revenue created by diamonds,
legal diamonds, and also a lot of the money that
comes from legitimate diamond trade goes to combat HIV and eight.
So again, like Jane was saying, that's a really important point.
We don't want to stop Cold Turkey supporting the diamond industry,
and there are people out there who are working really
hard to make sure that they are legitimate. And there's

(07:14):
a couple of things that you can do too, even
if you're not assured by the percentage point eight, which
is the magic number of diamonds that are now conflict
free in the market. What you should do when you're
buying one is asked the purveyor what's your policy on
blood diamonds? Or where did yours get imported from? And
you can even ask for a certificate from a diamond supplier.

(07:34):
And if that still has you a little bit nervous,
consider buying a diamond from Australian Canada. That's true, that
would be pretty sure fire that it's that's not a
blood diamond. There there are loopholes in the Kimberly processes
you mentioned earlier, the process that helps secure that you're
not buying a blood diamond. Um Sometimes critics that we
say that uh smugglers can launder the diamonds through legitimate

(07:57):
Kimberly process abiding countries and pass them all his legitimate
from then on, and so those cause some problems, but overall,
at least the diamond industry wants you to believe that
that mostly the problem has been solved. So despite the
bloody history of diamonds, and despite the United Nations and
de Beers coming out and saying that dimeons are safe now,
there's still plenty of stuff in the media that you

(08:18):
may have seen lately or not so long ago about
blood diamonds. And I think one of the most famous
pieces of cinema relating to the problem was Blood Diamonds.
That's right, and that's a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. If you
remember that coming out so pretty much, if you're a humanitarian, environmentalist,
or um, a fourteen year old girl, you probably saw this.
And it portrays the fighting and the conflict and Sierra

(08:41):
Leone and um the revolutionary United Front that was responsible
for so many deaths, and it's following the path of
this one incredibly priceless diamonds. It goes through certain channels.
And I actually didn't see the movie. I'm basing this
on what I've read about it. But when it came out,
you know, obviously it was sort of a historical film
because we know that the fighting in Sierra Leone how subsided.

(09:03):
But I think people saw it as a really present
and contemporary concern, like they were seeing it for the
first time, so they thought it was it was still
a problem, right, and uh, the jewelry industry got very outset,
or the diamond industry, i should say, and they were
trying to you know, markt to death. The idea that
ninety nine point eight percent of the diamonds today or
conflict free, and whether or not you choose to believe

(09:25):
that or whether or not it's actually true, we do
know that is recently, it's two thousand six, about twenty
three million dollars worth of diamonds were smuggled into the
legitimate diamond trade. So yeah, the stud actually stuck with
me a little bit. I'm just you know, I'm still
on edge because I think that they can do all
the right things, but until they implement new parts of
the Kimberly uh, the Kimberly process, it's not ever going

(09:49):
to be safe. And they're talking about having laser engravings
and laser signatures on the stone so that you know
it's been certified, and then also having all the diamonds
produced from start to finish within this same country. And
that's something else that we should mention too, is you know,
you can find a rough diamond in Africa, you can
have it certified. All can be well and good, and
you know it gets its Chinberly certificate, etcetera, etcetera. But

(10:11):
then when it's time to you know, shape it and
put the facets in it. A lot of these companies
are saying it off to India. Of the world's diamonds
go to India, and that's where small children have to
carve the facets because they have the most nimble fingers
and the clearest eyesight. So it's like a sweatshops sort
of situations because you know, they're carving these tiny facets
all day long, they get repetitive motion injury, they strain

(10:33):
their eyes, and where is they inhaled diamond dust. It's
just sort of a mass that is terrifying. Yeah, And
also another alternative that they've been kind of tweaking with
or trying to perfect, the idea of manufactured diamonds, like
the idea of making a diamond in a laboratory basically,
and um, they haven't. I mean, they've been able to
create diamonds, but they don't. They're not really up to

(10:53):
par with the if you've ever heard of the four
seas of diamonds, which happen to be clarity, color, cut,
and carrot, they're not quite jewel standard the ones that
they make in the web. So, um, maybe we'll see
if they ever perfect that and if that ever helps
the industry maybe eradicates the process of blood diamonds and
they're getting closer. I think that now it's really hard

(11:14):
for a jeweler to tell the difference between a lawed
manufactured diamond and a natural one. I know that lab
manufactured ones typically don't come in sizes over one carrot.
But it's so funny because now since there's such difficulty
and telling the difference between natural and manufactured ones, there
are machines that jewelers can buy that help them identify

(11:37):
which are natural, which are fake, and guests who created
the machine the machine. So again, a lot of these
are going to be um used in industries that need
really hard tipped cutting tools and um or even for
the military or army or whoever needs you know, because
obviously diamond real the hardest material on earth to man,

(11:59):
and and if that's not going to work for you
can always go with cubics, raconia, or one of my
favorite things, the life jem I think, because it's so wild,
you can take carbon from someone's cremated remains here and
they can make a diamond out of your loved one
or even your deceased about beloved pats you would want
to do that. I'm not saying I would love to

(12:20):
do I think it's a really cool idea, cool ideas
or I think in the neighborhood of like three dollars,
they can make a diamond for you. But it has
no history. So if you're a person who loves history
and loves knowing that your ring started, as you know,
a mineral somewhere in the earth and always dug up
and polished and spun and created, then there you go. Now,

(12:41):
if you want to learn more about diamonds and the
African diamond trade, be sure to check out the articles
on how stuff works dot com for more on this
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