Towards the end of the year, these four crises finally converged in a large-scale regional conflict even while each of the individual civil wars continued to rage. Angola soon became embroiled in the conflict resulting in the overthrow of Zaire s premier Mobutu Sese Seko. The conflict diamonds thus figure prominently in these unrelenting cross-border wars. Corporations like De Beers have been at the heart of the controversy before now for not doing their part to strangulate the sinews of a war economy. Thus, while there is no love lost between these two parties, the former has cautiously welcomed De Beer s recent efforts to enforce an international embargo on the diamonds.
Transnational corporations prefer to deal directly with central governments.
They usually deplore a situation where the government of the day is threatened with instability and rebellion. De Beers, for example, already has official business links with the governments of two relatively stable countries in southern Africa where it conducts mining operations. In late 1997, a senior official of De Beers announced the building of a sorting office in Luanda, the capital of Angola, with a view to eventually establishing mining operations in that country. The convergence of interests between transnational corporations and central governments might just outflank armed conflict and push Africa into economic union. The regional stability derived from economic union could provide the market stabilisation that transnational corporations like De Beers typically seek.