SIERRA LEONE-ECONOMY: Curse Of Riches

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Gberie

KONO, SIERRA LEONE, Mar 11 1996 (IPS) - An old electric fan turns noisily beside a short, fat, Lebanese man in a safari suit, chain- smoking from behind a mahogany desk in his dusty, sparsely furnished office.

By outward appearances, there is nothing remarkable about Kassim Basma. Yet, he is one of the richest people in Sierra Leone. He owns a mining company in the diamond-rich eastern provincial town of Kono that has made his fortune.

Last week alone, Basma exported 240,000 dollars worth of diamonds through the Government Gold and Diamond Office (GGDO). “This represents a mere fraction of what he must have found, a drop in the ocean,” a GGDO official told IPS.

“The fellow must have smuggled first 10 times that amount,” he added, “that is what they all do, and the problem is we can’t do anything about it. They are in business with the military authorities.”

The paradox of Basmas’s unremarkable office and his huge wealth is emblematic of the situation of this resource-rich West African state. Despite its diamonds, gold and other precious metals, it is one of the world’s poorest countries.

Diamonds were first mined here in the 1930s. Their exploitation seemed to signal a bright future for independent Sierra Leone but, instead, the huge amounts of money to be made encouraged corruption, weakened the authority of the state, and is a principal cause of the country’s brutal five-year-old civil war.

Sierra Leonean novelist Cheney Coker sees diamonds as “a blessing turn curse, largely responsible for the present plight of our country.”

Politician Desmond Luke agrees: “It is strange to say, but I believe without diamonds this country couldn’t have been in this state of exploitation and degradation.

“It seems no one can control this industry and the result is that our fertile soil is laid to waste, our school-going kids drop out to seek quick wealth and yet everything is smuggled out for the benefit of the outside world, particularly Lebanon. This situation must be changed,” he told IPS.

“The problem is that the whole thing has always been a free-for- all business,” a senior officer at the department of mineral resources explained. “You cannot really control diamond mining nation-wide, not even just in the Kono district.

“The thing is so portable and everyone seems interested in filling his own pocket. Very little goes to the state — I won’t say government, because government officials past and present have always found diamonds the easiest way to make their fortune.”

The GGDO was set up in 1987 by then President Joseph Momoh to “regulate” the trade after outcries over blatant corruption. But, according to the GGDO official who asked not to be named, more than a fifth of all diamonds mined in Sierra Leone are smuggled abroad.

“Last year alone, 200 million dollars worth of diamonds from this country were sold in Europe. Only a fraction — 22,002 dollars — passed through this office, that is, wasn’t smuggled.”

The GGDO is supposed to get one percent of the value of each diamond that is presented to them by licenced dealers, and the government one-and-a-half percent. The rest goes to the dealer who pays about a thousand dollars each year for a license.

Most of the diamond dealers here are Lebanese, but Russians, Americans and Armenians have also joined the scramble. A number of the dealers maintain mining companies in Kono — the main diamond district.

When De Beers first began operating here in 1932, it was unable to control illicit mining in the south and eastern provinces along the Sewa river. Freelance miners — originally regarded as Robin Hood-type characters — still lead a life outside the law, selling to the dealers or smuggling across the border to Liberia.

Oxford anthropologist, Prof. Paul Richards, in a study on Sierra Leone’s civil war, believes the conflict is at heart about control of the trade, and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) find ready recruits among the illegal miners whose lifestyle is already beyond the government’s control.

“This constitutes,” he writes, “their own protest against the state which would rather control the mining or give more rights to foreigners.”

Kono itself is now effectively under the command of the South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes. It is believed here they are also taking a cut on the mining, having been brought to the town by the British mining company, Branch Energy, which was given prospecting rights in Kono last year for Kimberlite.

Franklyn Laurance and Alex Gbaha both work for a licensed American mining firm operating in the southern provincial capital of Bo. They are however thinking of going into business on their own, rather than sending the proceeds to their boss in the United States.

But they acknowledge they don’t know the real value of the diamonds they mine or have the international contacts to sell them, the advantage that Lebanese families who have been in the country since the turn of the century have, and who have cultivated their political connections.

They lead a tough life though, spending at least two-weeks in each month deep in the bush supervising the digging by hired miners hoping they have chosen their site well, will strike lucky, and also escape the attentions of the RUF.

They must pay the “bush-owner” a cut on all that is mined, and provide the diggers with food and equipment. It is only when the accumulated “gravel” after a week’s work — about a tipper-load — is “washed” do they know whether or not it has been all worthwhile.

They believe they are in competition with the Lebanese merchants who have the money to advance credit to miners for picks and shovels and can sit back and wait for the stones to come to them, for which they pay a pittance.

But Gbaha, who was a mechanic at a rutile mine closed by the RUF, says the war has changed Sierra Leonean society. “People have woken up with a different idea, there’s no more child’s play when it comes to cash affairs.”