During the country's long civil war the army and the African National Congress thrust back and forth across the region's borders, helping to spread economic mayhem throughout the southern part of the continent. The white government in Pretoria is reported to have authorized military intelligence to engage in the illicit diamond trade, further entrenching the activity. Although Unita has little choice but to part with some of its diamond concessions, it will not do so without haggling. The war was reignited late last year by a bloody series of rebel attacks, including one on a remote diamond mine owned by a Vancouver-based company, some of whose directors had clear ties to mercenaries who have acted against the rebels. The government reaps its share of diamonds too.
Ministers openly take positions in diamond-mining joint ventures.
The long-term effects of these shifts in power and allegiance remain to be seen. The specter rises of a medieval land, a dominion of barons perversely devoted to the sacking of their own domains. In this model the lonely monarch is De Beers, fighting an endless battle for order, at tremendous cost. O NE winter morning, in the hard sunlight of Namaqualand, I stood staring down into a pit whose dimensions were roughly those of a twenty-story building covering three football fields. It is hard to find better goods than these.