Diamond fields emptied in Sierra Leone

IT HAS been weeks since miner Sembo Sesay found a diamond in this eastern Sierra Leone town, whose soil was once littered with the stones that fuelled one of Africa’s bloodiest wars.

“Diamond not there,” he laughs, his voice tinged with disappointment as he examines the “shaker” after plunging the sieve repeatedly into a muddy pool.

Every day just after sunrise, men carrying shovels and sieves set out for the gruelling task of digging, lifting and sifting waste sand for only 3 000 leones ($0,69) a day in Koidu. But the diamonds are few and far between these days.

“We are really worried if we don’t see anything, there is no other job. We need the diamonds to survive,” Mr Sesay says.

On the other side of town, Koidu Holdings, a mining company owned by Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz, is testing a new plant built to process the diamonds from its two vertical kimberlite mines as part of a $150m expansion plan.

Small-scale artisanal mining has sustained the area since diamonds were discovered in 1930, and it was here that the 968,9-carat Star of Sierra Leone, the largest alluvial diamond known, was found in 1972. But surface diamonds are nearly depleted and only capital-intensive mining can now uncover the gems.

Koidu suffered some of the worst ravages of Sierra Leone’s war in the 1990s as rebels forced citizens to mine at gunpoint. Residents describe how streets were dug up and houses demolished at even a hint that they were sitting on diamonds. These gems were smuggled to Liberia — whose former president, Charles Taylor, was last month convicted of aiding and abetting Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for diamonds — and Guinea, making their way onto ring fingers across the globe while rebels used the weapons they bought to sow their horrific strain of terrorism.

Prosecutors have sought an 80year sentence for Taylor in the first judgment against a former head of state by a world court since the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.

Once one of the most powerful men in West Africa, Taylor will be sentenced on Wednesday by a court based in The Hague.

Since a ban on the sale of Sierra Leonean diamonds was lifted in 2003, the country has taken pains to clear its image as a provider of socalled conflict diamonds and erase memories of the civil war in which several thousands were killed or had their limbs amputated.

Koidu now supplies US jewellery icon Tiffany & Company, and Mr Steinmetz is planning to float the mine on the Hong Kong stock exchange later this year, according to the Financial Times.

However 10 years after the war, Koidu has little to show for its diamond wealth.

Dusty and desolate, it is reminiscent of an 1800s mining town, lined with diamond trading offices — mostly Lebanese-owned — and clapped-out shops selling shovels and sieves for those still hoping to try their luck.

Koidu is a seven-hour journey from the capital, Freetown, the last half of which is on a bone-rattling track with potholes so large that ducks come from mud-hut villages to swim in them after a downpour.

Amid the obstinate poverty, much hope rests on Koidu Holdings’ presence in the town, but many are unhappy with the lack of visible development, while the resettlement of communities close to the plant has caused friction.

In 2007, the government shut the plant for a year after riots left two people dead. Now, hundreds of houses, schools and a free health clinic opened last year by the vicepresident of Tiffany have sprung up for the resettled households.

Patrick Tongu of the local Network Movement for Justice and Development says frustrations are still high. “These communities where diamond mining is done are the most deprived areas. You see poverty in the air,” Mr Tongu says. “There is nothing to show.”

As part of a law passed in 2010, all mining companies working in Sierra Leone have to give 1% of their annual turnover to community development projects, but no company has yet done so.

Diamond revenue makes its way back to the community through the traditional paramount chief, who is elected for life. “It is left with the chief if he has a good heart to do some projects, some of them are doing that, but very few. So the monies are largely not used for the intended purpose,” says Tongu.

Alpha Kpetewama, development adviser for the Tankoro chiefdom and economist, says the presence of Koidu Holdings is the only way to lift this community out of poverty.

But he admits: “We have not been very successful in managing the high expectations of the community.” More than 90% of staff are locals, but one company cannot employ an entire town.

“Many of the ordinary citizens, uneducated, will not begin to understand or appreciate until they begin to see tangible development on the ground … this has yet to happen,” says Mr Kpetewama.

At another artisanal mine, called Number 11, scores of men rhythmically dip their sieves into muddy pools. They are mostly former fighters who were given old tailings to sift through after the war to “distract them from evil deeds”, says Musa Sawaneh, who is overseeing them. “Sometimes you go one month without finding a diamond,” he says.

Former enemies from different factions in the war now labour side by side. “We are happy, but we are hungry … just surviving,” says a former combatant. SAPA-AFP