Who Owns Namibia’s Diamonds?

Ndumba Jonnah KamwanyahREMEMBER the freedom song “Ouyamba womevi lyetu tau tutwamo, ngaashi okawe nongopolo momina yaShomeya “?

The deal between our government and De Beers, announced a few weeks ago, brought up that nostalgic feeling with a tinge of sadness of the good old days when Namibians made a defiant stand against the plundering and exploitation of Namibia’s natural resources.

Apparently, we must be proud of this 10 year agreement, signed by mines minister Obeth Kandjoze on behalf of the Namibian people for the sorting, valuing and sales of Namdeb Holdings’ diamonds reached by the two parties.

I am sorry to disappoint. The significance of this deal is lost on me. And the continuing partnership between our government and De Beers, a company which heavily dealt in, supported and embraced colonialism in this country in its exploitation of our natural resources and the Namibian workers, is also unsettling.

I don’t quite get it. But something about the power relations between the government and De Beers’ negotiations makes me cringe. One does not have to be a negotiation scholar to figure out who actually holds the sway between the government and De Beers.

That our minister and the attorney general had to toast (I wonder who provided the wine) after the agreement was reached is not a quotidian event, but shows how little influence our government has over the Namibian diamonds.

It seems the government is the one negotiating – actually, the government is begging for a concession from De Beers – over our resource.

That prompted me to ask: What happened to the revolutionary feistiness we expressed through freedom songs such as “Ouyamba womevi lyetu… “?

The first time I heard about that song was through my dad and my mom singing in their room.

On many occasions, my uncle YishaAdam – the father of Adam – would also mesmerise me with freedom songs which he learned as a migrant worker at Walvis Bay, or during cattle herding duties in the beautiful swamps of the Mpungu Valley, including “Hatulili okawe ketu, ” which literary means we are crying over our diamond.

Like Uncle YishaAdam, my father might have learned about the ouyamba (our wealth) song during his contract work in places like Outjo, Gobabis, Johannesburg, Windhoek, Walvis Bay and later Oranjemund at the Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM), now the Namdeb partnership of Namibia and De Beers.

My father’s retirement package from CDM in the late 1980s was a meagre R7 777 in a brown envelope, plus a token of a fake diamond.

It turned out, as I came to learn later in my years of activism, that freedom songs such as Ouyamba and Hatulili were very common among migrant workers, especially those in the mining industry at CDM, Tsumeb, Kombat, Rosh Pinah and Otjihase.

Through the notorious colonial labour system, native men from tribal lands got six months, one year, 18 months and two year contracts away from their families to work in white people’s houses, commercial farms, municipalities and mines across Namibia and South Africa.

They travelled hundreds of miles to reach their work. They were housed in deplorable conditions and paid starvation wages, yet produced lucrative profits for companies such as De Beers’ CDM.

Let us not forget who De Beers actually is. De Beers is a corporation with deep colonial and apartheid roots. It was set up by none other than Cecil John Rhodes, a colonialist who ruthlessly traversed Southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe. Yes, Rhodes University and the prestigious Rhodes scholarship are also named after him.

Until recently, the company was also known for questionable conduct in monopolising and manipulating the international diamond market.

De Beers is a case of a Wes shy;tern multinational company extracting poor countries’ resources for the West, leaving the workers and the host country very poor.

That was the essence of Professor Joseph Stigliz’s seminars earlier this month in Namibia.

Namibians are the owners of their diamond resource. Therefore, if anything, De Beers is the one that should toast for increasing their stake in Namibian diamond shareholding after an agreement is reached.

Namibia owns the resource which De Beers needs. So, let them negotiate on Namibian terms, not theirs.

Government, next time you negotiate with De Beers, negotiate from a 100% shareholding advantage position, not 50%.

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