Kwame Nkrumah 1965
THE diamond industry of South Africa brought in a revenue of £93 million in 1962. Two-thirds of this was from gem diamonds, whose carat price was recently raised by the industry’s controllers. Of such importance is the diamond industry to South Africa that there is no duty on the export of rough diamonds.
Diamonds are a major concern of Mr Harry Oppenheimer, and it is through De Beers and the Diamond Corporation, with their associated companies and alliances that the operations of his Anglo American Corporation stretch out from South Africa into South-West Africa, Angola, Congo, East and West Africa, to control until recently the production and sale of pretty well 85 per cent of the world’s diamonds. Even the distribution of the Soviet Union’s quite important production has been added, by the arrangement to dispose of ‘Red’ diamonds through De Beers’ selling organisation.
The De Beers’ group of companies, as we have seen, is controlled by Rand Selection Corporation Ltd. Tightly interwoven, it interlocks with the gem companies of Angola and Mozambique and the dominating complex that spreads across the Rhodesias and Congo. Rand Selection now dominates the administration of the group by reason of its recent acquisition of the total holdings of De Beers Investment Trust Ltd., now known as Randsel Investments Ltd.
Chief operating company is De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., and still on its board is a member of the family of Solly Joel, the East End Londoner with whom Rhodes adventured into diamonds along with Alfred Beit. Consolidation of the De Beers, Kimberley and Griqualand West Mines of South-West Africa was the original purpose of the company. A considerable number of allied and even different interests have since been added. Besides the mines in South Africa, De Beers operates open-cast workings along the southern coast and in Namaqualand, South-West Africa. A 50 per cent interest is held in the Williamson Mine in Tanganyika; the other holder is the Tanganyika Government.
Among its subsidiary companies, De Beers Consolidated includes Premier (Transvaal) Diamond Mining Co. Ltd., Consolidated Mines of South-West Africa Ltd., Diamond Corporation Ltd. and De Beers Industrial Corporation Ltd. Directly and indirectly, it holds something like 40 per cent of the capital of Diamond Purchasing & Trading Co. Ltd. and Diamond Trading Co. Ltd. and 31·5 per cent of Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd. All these purchasing and distributing companies are main avenues through which the gem and industrial diamond production of the world’s principal producers are distributed. De Beers Industrial has also interests in diamond production by its control of Griqualand West Diamond Mining Co., Dutoitspan Mine Ltd., New Jagersfontein Mining & Exploration Co. Ltd. and Consolidated Co. Bultfontein Mine Ltd.
What seems at first glance to be a rather curious interest for a company engaged in the diamond industry is De Beer Consolidated’s 50 per cent holding of the issued share capital of African Explosives & Chemical Industries Ltd. On closer examination it will not appear so odd. The company thought it expedient and profitable to have its own avenue for purchasing explosives used in opening up working areas on its own mines and those of associated companies. That was the original aim, but once in the explosive business it was a short road to their manufacture and expansion into serious production of chemicals, especially those allied to explosives manufacture.
The present-day operations of African Explosives is by no means so limited, nor is there anything innocent about them or the company’s composition. Through De Beers Industrial Corporation it is jointly owned by De Beers’ principal, Anglo American Corporation, and the South African branch of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. I.C.I.’s ramifications and its control of a number of chemicals, synthetics and manufacturing processes make it one of the most powerful monopolies in the world. It long ago reached the stage of cartelisation with other foremost chemicals and armaments organisations. Its cartel arrangements with the major chemical and plastics material company in the world, the I.E. du Pont de Nemours Corporation, link it with the modern military equipment industry that seems to issue inevitably from chemicals manufacture.
Explosives laid the foundation of the du Pont rise to power. ‘Their first big order was to supply Napoleon in his vain attempt to crush Toussaint L'Ouverture and the people of Santo Domingo, and the next was for the war of the United States – against the so-called ‘Barbary Pirates’. [The Empire of High Finance, Victor Perlo. p. 190.]The following quotation is form Cartels in Action quoted by Victor Perlo in The Empire of High Finance, page 195:
‘This established the role of du Pont, which has continued down to the present day, when it dominates the greatest and most profitable single corporation in the world, General Motors.
Du Pont’s association with I.C.I. goes back about forty years. It was in 1921 that more than half of the General Motors’ shares sold by the House of Morgan were bought by the Explosives Trade Ltd., a British subsidiary of the Nobel industries, with which I.C.I. was connected. Explosives were among I.C.I.’s earliest operations, and its interests in Nobel’s concerns in this and other fields were subsequently absorbed into the heart of the I.C.I. empire.
Ever since that early coming together the alliance between du Pont and I.C.I. has grown more complex. Both of them had effective patent and processing rights with the great German chemical combine, I. G. Farben, and they divided the world between them. Both du Pont and I.C.I. continued to respect their arrangements with I. G. Farben during the war. Du Pont and I.C.I. have abandoned all pretence of business rivalry in numerous major foreign markets, including Canada, Argentina and Brazil. There they do business as a single, unified concern through jointly owned local companies... they have succeeded in cartelising these tributary chemical markets, thanks to their combined power and prestige.’ If we see I.C.I. in association with Oppenheimer companies in South Africa, this should not astonish us. Monopolies are constantly drawing together, aligned by common industrial and financial interests in a given field and at a given time. The I.C.I.-Oppenheimer combination is not restricted to African Explosives but repeats itself in association with other Oppenheimer offshoots and groups. British blessing is given to the enterprise through the secondment on contract to the company of an expert from the British nuclear arms establishment. Moreover, the military equipment produced at its factories is based on the specifications of the British army, navy and air forces.
Important though African Explosives is to the Oppenheimer combine and South Africa’s military designs in Africa, it owes its existence to the diamond mining in which it was originally conceived. It is only one of the De Beers Consolidated progeny. There are several others, among them the investment company, De Beers Holding Ltd., of which it controls 84·5 per cent. On the death of J. T. Williamson, De Beers Holding contrived to secure an option on the whole of 1,200 shares constituting the capital of his mine in Tanganyika. A deal was fixed at £4,139,996 with De Beers responsible for estate duty and interest on Williamson’s shares. Satisfaction of these items was made by cession of 320 shares of Williamson Diamonds Ltd. to the Tanganyika Government, which subsequently bought up a further 280. The price of £1,317,272 agreed upon for these was met, together with six per cent total interest, out of dividends received by the Government on its total holding of 600 shares.
Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa Ltd., in which De Beers Consolidated has a majority holding, has a concession covering large areas of alluvial diamond deposits in South-West Africa, valid until the close of the year 2010. This was extended by the South-West Administration from a previous expiry date of 1972. A most valuable item in the De Beers’ inventory of profits is the ‘De Pass’ royalty owned by the South-West Financial Corporation Ltd., a full subsidiary of Consolidated Diamond Mines. This royalty gives its owner eight per cent of the gross proceeds from the sale of diamonds produced in the Pomona area of South-West Africa, in which South-West Finance possesses landed property and other mineral rights and royalties.
Participation in the diamond distributive trade comes to Consolidated Diamond Mines through the following holdings:
Diamond Corporation Ltd. – 5,996,903 shares.
Diamond Trading Co. Ltd. – 80,000 shares.
Diamond Purchasing & Trading Co. Ltd. – 200,000 shares.
Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd. – 150,000 shares.
De Beers Holdings Ltd. – 1,150,000 shares.
Its own production of diamonds has gone up from 895,744 carats in 1958 to 933,937 in 1960. Taken together with its earnings by way of royalties and investments in the diamond trade, it is small wonder that it has over the past fifteen years been able to declare the following impressive dividends:
The company’s fully paid-up and authorised capital stands at £5,240,000. Its net consolidated profit in 1960 was £10,734,468, after providing £4,622,731 for taxation. Dividends absorbed £5,667,437, the major beneficiary being De Beers Consolidated. The estimated profit for 1961 was £12,848,000, after providing £5,410,000 for taxation and £168,000 for dividends on preference shares. The figure for ordinary dividend payments is not included, but it is likely to be higher than the previous year.
Diamond Mining & Utility Co. (S.W.A.) Ltd. is associated with De Beers Consolidated by reason of a cession to the latter company of a large portion of a diamond area in South-West Africa, in exchange for a 20 per cent interest in the net profit on diamonds recovered. The company has 180,000 shares in Diamond Dredging & Mining Co. (S.W.A.) Ltd. To satisfy this purchase, Diamond Mining & Utility issued at par another 540,000 shares in July 1960, the authorised capital then being increased from £300,000 to £500,000. Its other interests are 114,400 shares in Industrial Diamonds of South Africa (1945) Ltd., which ceased operations in the spring of 1960, but retains 148,200 shares in Diamond Mining & Utility, as well as 197,900 shares in Lorelei Copper Mines Ltd., in which Diamond Mining & Utility also holds 200,000 shares. All in all, this demonstrates what might be described as a tight but cosy combination.
The most interesting hub of the whirling diamond wheel is the Diamond Corporation, whose £22 million capital is owned mainly by De Beers Consolidated Mines, Diamond Mines of South-West Africa and the ever-present Anglo American Corporation. The Diamond Corporation purchases, on periodical contract, the diamond production of the world’s most important producers, usually on a specific quota basis. These diamonds are then marketed through the Central Selling Organisation, together with the output of the De Beers’ group mines and those from the diggings owned and run by the South African Government, which is in the mining business on State account.
Where do the other diamond trading companies come in? Diamond Trading Company Ltd. receives and sells to the market diamonds of gem or near gem value. Industrial Distributors (Sales) Ltd. have a corner on drilling material and boart for the mines, which they sell to the market.
Close associates of De Beers also have interests in these tributary companies of the group. Société Minière du Beceka S.A., a company within the dragnet of the Société Générale de Belgique, has holdings in Industrial Distributors (1946) Ltd., Diamond Trading Co. Ltd., Diamond Purchasing & Trading Co. Ltd., Diamond Development Co. Ltd. and in another of Société Générale’s wards of the diamond world, Société Diamant Boart. Industrial Distributors, also within Société Générale’s direct investment portfolio, increased in 1961 dividend by about 20 per cent over those of previous years. Becceka’s association with the Congo is continued through the Société d'Elevage et de Culture au Congo (S.E.C.) and Cie Maritime Belge (C.M.B.).
Operating deposits on the Lubilash river in the Congo, which produce mainly industrial diamonds and crushing boart, Beceka has a subsidiary, Société Beceka-Manganese, working manganese deposits near a Congolese railway junction. At the beginning of 1962 Beceka-Manganese established a 500 million franc subsidiary, Société Minière de Kisenga, in which it is the chief shareholder. Kisenga has received certain concessionary and exploitation rights from Beceka-Manganese, which also participated in October 1962 in the creation of the Société Européene des Derives du Manganese – SEDEMA. The main parties to the formation of Sedema are associates of the Société d'Entreprise et d'Investissements du Beceka – SIBEKA – and the Manganese Chemicals Corporation of U.S.A.
From the report of the Société Générale for 1962, a directing hand behind all this segmentation, it emerges that an extraordinary meeting of Beceka on 21 March 1962 agreed that Beceka should renounce in favour of a new company, Société Minière de Bakwanga, all its mining rights in the Congo (mainly in the Bakwanga region), and should become the Société d'Entreprise et d'Investissements du Beceka, to be known by its abbreviated form, Sibeka. The purpose of Sibeka was re-formed to cover investigation, promoting and financing, by whatever means, in Belgium as well as in the Congo, and other foreign countries, of all kinds of enterprises, whether in mining, industry, commerce, agriculture or transport, especially those having connections with mineral substances of all kinds, as well as with their derivatives and substitutes.
Within the framework of this new objective, the former participations were increased and new participations were taken up or were in course of examination, in particular certain ones having to do with the production of artificial diamonds. The principal activity of Sibeka, however, is to be its important participation in Société Minière de Bakwanga, known as Miba. Miba’s production in 1961, its first year of working, was nearly 15 million carats of diamonds, which the chairman of Société Générale considered should be its normal ‘rhythm’, having regard to the selling market.
Sibeka has been busy in South Kasai, where other investments have been placed, including the modernisation of a 150 km. road from Bakwanga to the station at Mwene-Ditu. Société Générale’s participation in Sibeka stands at 525,000 shares of no par value, and it has assisted Beceka-Manganese to place 10 million francs out of the 11 million francs it has been allotted in the 81 million franc capital of Sedema. Sibeka has taken up another 10 million francs. The object of Sedema is the manufacture of manganese composites and manganese metals for the European market.
It is not long before any endeavour to trace the companies engaged in a particular field of mining leads into associations connecting with other sectors of raw materials production. Thus our examination of the De Beers’ diamond enterprises has taken us into the even vaster world of Société Générale’s interests, which we shall meet again more than once in the course of our journeyings through the tangled maze of international control of Africa’s basic riches. It is also significant that in almost every corner we find lurking some coupling with American major industrial concerns. In the present case, Manganese Chemicals Corporation comes immediately and directly into the picture.
Looking further into African diamond production, we find another Société Générale off-shoot operating in the Congo. Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo, known briefly as Forminière, concerns itself with mining, commercial, industrial and agricultural pursuits, chiefly in Kasai. Its main preoccupation is diamond mining.
Forminière is one of King Leopold’s original main concessions in the Congo. He formed the company in 1906 with the help of, among others, two American businessmen, Thomas F. Fortune and Daniel Guggenheim, the last of whom build up a fortune from mining in South America. Today Forminière is part of the vast complex dominated by Société Générale, Tanganyika Concessions and its child, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which has the Congo’s economic life in the palm of its hand, and is now greedily extended to Angola and Mozambique. Through its subsidiary, Société Internationale Commerciale et Financière de la Forminière – INTERFOR – it has sister interests with Beceka in a number of agricultural companies working plantations in the Congo on a grand scale.
Other holdings held by Forminière are in mining companies such as Société de Recherches et d'Exploitation des Bauxites du Congo – BAUXICONGO – featured also in Union Minière’s lengthy list of more important interests. Oil is also included in the Société Générale’s empire through Société de Recherches et d'Exploitations des Petroles – SOCOREP. This is among Forminière’s investments.
The Diamond Corporation acts as the rallying centre for the merchandise offered for sale by all the large producers. In its role as the central buying organisation for the international procurers of diamonds, it is not surprising that it should have a share in some of the most important producing companies outside the South African group. Messrs H. F. Oppenheimer and H. J. Joel of its own directorate are seated on the board of the Angola Diamond Co. (Companhia de Diamantes de Angola), another two members of which, Messrs Albert E. Thiele and A. A. Ryan, adorn the Forminière board. Mr Thiele and important connections with certain powerful American groups. He began his career in 1909 with the Guggenheim brothers, one of whom was so helpful to Leopold II. Thence he graduated to the chairmanship of the Pacific Tin Consolidated Corporation and to directorates in the Kennecott Copper Corporation and its subsidiary, Braden Copper Co. Oil and nitrates are also Mr Thiele’s business. Maracaibo Oil and Barber Oil are numbered among his directorships, as are Chilean Nitrates Sales Corporation, and the chairmanship of the Feldspar Corporation. As a director of Angola Diamond and Forminière, he has most certainly not innocently strayed from his basic moorings, anchored in Guggenheim, Kennecott Copper, oil, tin and nitrates, in which the Morgans have their helping hand. The Morgan Guaranty Trust is one of the main arteries from which flows finance for the Oppenheimer combines. Morgan is also in association with the Banque Belge, the leading banking string in the Société Générale structure, and the biggest bank in Belgium. Represented on the Angola Diamond board is another Angola concern, Companhia de Pesquisas Mineiras de Angola.
Angola Diamonds has monopoly rights permitting it to work for diamonds over almost 390,000 square miles of Angola, an area almost four times the size of Ghana or Great Britain. Forty-three mines are in operation, three new ones having been opened to replace three whose reserves were running out. Prospecting is going on for further deposits, nineteen groups being at work. Direct interest in the company, registered in Portugal, is held by the Angola Government, the on-the-spot administrative arm of the Portuguese Government. It holds 200,000 shares, slightly in excess of the 198,800 held by the Société Générale. About half the African workers for the company are forced labourers rounded up by the authorities and receiving a monthly wage of around seventy escudos, equivalent to about sixteen shillings. The very handsome profits of the company are divided equally between the Province of Angola and the shareholders after six per cent has been allocated to the managing bodies.
Shareholders’ profit at the end of trading, 1960, was 137,000,931 escudos, after the same amount had been reserved for the Angola Province and 15,341,649 escudos for legal reserve. Total profits, in fact, amounted to 289,343,511 escudos, of which 114,800,000 escudos had come from profits held in reserve. Interim and final dividends absorbed a sum for the year 1960 of 136,670,000 escudos.
The company pays no import duties on plant or material and no duties on diamonds exported. It also enjoys a loan from the Angola Government of 100 million escudos, in return for the free issue of 100,000 shares of 170 escudos each to the Province of Angola in 1955. The unheard-of uneconomic rate of interest on this loan is one per cent, repayments to be completed in 1971. Angola Diamond Co. holds 16·266 per cent of the issued capital of Sociedade Portuguesa de Lapidacao de Diamantes.
Diamond Corporation has contractual arrangements for the purchase of Angola Diamond’s output, which has recently been running at over a million carats and is estimated to give even higher yields, since mechanical excavators and washing plant have been installed, following the proof of extensive alluvial deposits. Gem diamonds represent 65 per cent of the output.
Diamond Corporation has broken into the Ivory Coast, with the formation of a local subsidiary to purchase diamonds on the open market of that country. How open the market will be is anybody’s guess. Some of the other newly independent African countries are striving to break away from Diamond Corporation domination. Ghana has set up its own diamond market in Accra, and all sellers, including Consolidated African Selection Trust Ltd. (CAST), working a 68 square mile concession in the Akim Abuakwa district, must sell through it. Sierra Leone Selection Trust Ltd. is CAST’s subsidiary operating in Sierra Leone.
Incredible as it may sound, Sierra Leone Selection once held exclusive diamond mining rights over practically the whole of the country. In 1955, following protestations from the people, especially in the rich diamond region of Konor, the extent of its concession area was reduced to some 209 square miles, then the extent of the company’s existing working. The curtailment of rights, however, was more apparent than real. The concessionary rights are for thirty years, but restricted rights were granted over a further 250 square miles, of which a hundred have since been taken up. The company is also allowed to prospect for deep deposits of diamonds anywhere in Sierra Leone, for a period of not less than ten years; and to mine them.
That the agreement was a sham is provided by the undertaking given by the then Colonial Government not to grant before 1975 to any applicants other than Sierra Leonians, or companies in which the beneficial interest or greater part of it is held by Sierra Leonians, any diamond prospecting licences or leases without first offering such licences or leases to Sierra Leone Selection Trust. Though this virtually gives a free hand to the company, the Government nevertheless made it a payment of £1,500,000 to compensate for supposedly lost opportunities. All the six million shares issued out of the 6,400,000 authorised to make up the capital of £1,600,000 are held by CAST. What profits the company makes are not publicly known, since accounts are issued only to shareholders.
The chairman of both CAST and Sierra Leone Selection is Mr A. Chester Beatty, who has as colleagues on both boards Messrs E. C. Wharton-Tigar, T. H. Bradford and P. J. Oppenheimer, Mr P. J. Oppenheimer also sits on the board of the Diamond Corporation, alongside Mr W. A. Chapple, who is another colleague on the CAST board. Both these gentlemen sit together on the London Committee of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Mr P. J. Oppenheimer also occupying a seat on the Johannesburg Committee, on which he is associated with Major-General I. P. de Villiers, C.B., and Mr A. Wilson, the last-named two being also joined together on the directorate of Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa Ltd.
Mr Thomas Horat Bradford represents Selection Trust Ltd., of which he is managing director, on its main associated companies in America, the Rhodesias, Canada and Venezuela. Mr Beatty keeps company with Mr Bradford on several of these boards. Mr Chapple’s connection with the diamond world is on a decidedly high level, if we may judge from his directorship of the Banque Diamantaire Anversoise S.A. Antwerp, which is still the world’s major diamond-cutting centre, employing over 13,000 people in this industry. The Antwerp Diamond Bank occupies an important strategic position. Something like 40,000 to 50,000 carats are cut in Antwerp every week, the bulk of the rough stones coming from the Diamond Trading Company, at the London end of the De Beers’ Central Selling Organisation. But Antwerp searches other sources for its diamond supplies and in 1961 got as much as 30 per cent of its total weight in carats elsewhere.
It is only too obvious that Mr A. Chester Beatty moves among the exalted ranks of the diamond world, especially that preponderant sector of it dominated by the De Beers’ group and pivoted around the Diamond Corporation and its Selling Organisation. It is therefore difficult to understand the play that Mr Beatty made in connection with the Sierra Leone Government Bill, passed towards the end of 1961, obliging all producers of diamonds in Sierra Leone to sell through the Government Diamond Office.
Mr Beatty, as chairman of Selection Trust Ltd., as well as of CAST and Sierra Leone Selection, its subsidiary, asserted that the expired contract that CAST had with the Diamond Corporation had not been renewed because of the excessive commission of 12 per cent demanded by it. CAST had offered four per cent, which had been rejected. A contract was therefore made with Harry Winston, Inc., of New York, owners and cutters of the famed Jonker diamond, who were said to be looking for a direct source of supply which would sidestep the Diamond Corporation. In view of the interconnection between Selection Trust and the De Beers’ companies, including the Diamond Corporation, through interdependent shareholdings as well as directorial interweaving, it is strange to witness one of the most prominent links in the chain, Mr A. Chester Beatty, protesting his anxiety to protest Sierra Leone’s interests against the Corporation, of which he is very much a part.
The protest from Mr Beatty was that if Sierra Leone Selection were obliged to submit its production the Government’s Diamond Office this would ultimately go to the Diamond Corporation, which was the Diamond Office’s end purchaser, precisely what he was fighting against. Moreover, this would mean severing the contract with Winston, for which breach compensation would have to be made. Mr Beatty pointed out that his solicitude for Sierra Leone’s welfare had caused him to secure a revaluation of the Diamond Corporation contract in 1957, so that an additional £2,700,000 had been received in its last three years of operation.
There is a curious twist here, for Mr Beatty asserts that £500,000 more in revenue would be received by the Sierra Leone Government under the Winston contract than under one concluded with Diamond Corporation. Four pertinent questions arise from this. What increased percentage of revenue was represented by the additional £2,700,000 Mr Beatty said was obtained from the Diamond Corporation on the last three years of the expired contract? How much of this came into the hands of the Sierra Leone Government, and what increased percentage of revenue did it represent for the Government? How is it that Mr Beatty could not obtain similarly advantageous terms from a new contract with Diamond Corporation? Is the eight per cent better price from Winston accurately reflected in the estimate of some £500,000 additional revenue for the Government that would accrue from a contract with Winston?
But is not all this just a facade aimed at maintaining the fiction that Selection Trust and Diamond Corporation are unrelated entities, a fiction retailed even by a press one would assume knows better? For we have the Freetown correspondent of West Africa declaring in that journal’s issue of 27 January 1962 that ‘the two European giants in the (diamond) industry – Diamond Corporation and Selection Trust – were clearly loggerheads’. The heart of the matter really lies in Mr Beatty’s complaint that the Sierra Leone Government’s regulation interferes with his company’s freedom, expressly laid down by the former Colonial Government in their concession agreement, to sell as they think fit. Mr Beatty, like the monopolistic interests he represents so efficiently on many boards, does not wish to recognise the winds of change that have come with African independence, giving the new nations the opportunity to order their economies in the way they consider more beneficial for their own good.
Intrusion into the diamond field has been made lately by a Texan who has more usually appeared wherever oil was bubbling. Mr Sam Collins has put his hands to gathering diamonds from the sea bed of the Chameis Reef on the South-West African coast, reported to contain a minimum reserve of 14 million carats. Mr Collins scouted round for additional capital for his Sea Diamonds Company, holding the operating company, Marine Diamonds. It was reported that Mr Oppenheimer, after watching his activities with some concern, decided to collaborate with Mr Collins. It would appear that General Mining & Finance Corporation and Anglo Transvaal Consolidated, which we have already met as part of the Anglo American complex, had engaged themselves in the venture. They were to make available additional funds up to £500,000 to equalise with a like amount to be put up by Mr Collins and the companies controlled by him. General Mining has an exchange of shares with Anglo American, and De Beers Consolidated Mines is among its portfolio of investments, as is also National Finance Corporation of South Africa, which is so helpful to a number of Oppenheimer companies in the matter of loans.
De Beers apparently had an option on 25 per cent of Sea Diamonds’ equity and a first refusal on Mr Collins’s holding, said to be about 80 per cent. Sea Diamonds in turn holds some 44 per cent of the share capital of Marine Diamonds, General Mining holding 25 per cent of the balance, Anglo Transvaal 15 per cent, and another Oppenheimer company, Middle Witwatersrand (Western Areas) Ltd., administered by Anglo Transvaal, seven and a half per cent. The remainder is held by the original concession holders. Middle Witwatersrand has a right of 10 per cent participation in any prospecting ventures undertaken by Anglovaal Rhodesian Exploration Ltd., of whose equity 50 per cent is held by Kennecott Copper. Everything seems to move round in circular motion within a ring that has no end. Mr Sam Collins may have acted quickly and shrewdly in staking his claim to an offshore diamond reef, and he will in all probability make a killing. But the greatest winners will certainly prove, in the long run, to be Mr Oppenheimer and his cohorts. The backstage goings-on to obtain control of what promises to be a most highly profitable venture prompted The Economist’s Johannesburg correspondent to observe that ‘the full story of the recent negotiations, if it ever emerged, might tell of a fierce struggle for control between South Africa’s mining magnate in the tradition of the rough, tough early days of Kimberly and the Rand’ (16 March 1963).
It is unlikely that De Beers will be able to make its way into the Japanese company now setting up plant in Japan for the manufacture of synthetic diamonds, which will initially turn out 300,000 carats a year to reach 600,000 annually. De Beers, in association with Société Minière de Beceka, have their own plant in South Africa for the manufacture of synthetic diamond grit operated by Ultra High Pressure Units. General Electric of America also has a process for turning out manufactured diamonds. The Japanese say theirs is not the same. And we have referred earlier on to Sibeka’s interest in the possibility of producing artificial diamonds. There have been several attempts to create diamonds by a factory process but they have, until now, proved somewhat uneconomic. With the strong likelihood that synthetic stones which can compete in price and performance with the natural product will soon be produced, another blow may be struck at the developing producer countries of Africa.