By John GI Clarke.

South Africans were disappointed that Blood Diamond failed to win the two Oscars for which it was nominated. But residents from the Sigidi area of the Pondoland Wild Coast – where the film was shot – wanted the film to win so as to keep international attention on the truth of its embedded message and not because they think DiCaprio got the South African accent right. John Clarke, a social worker working with mining affected communities, relates an intriguing instance of ‘life imitating art’.

Three people, fearing for their lives, clamber up the side of a remote African gorge to reach an airstrip above. They have to reach the outside world so they can tell their story. Behind them the camera reveals a panoramic scene: a strong flowing river carving through a deep gorge lined with lush tropical vegetation.

Those who have seen Blood Diamond- the action adventure and African morality tale that earned Oscar nominations for Leonardo Di Caprio (best actor) and Djimon Hounsou (best supporting actor)- could be forgiven for thinking this paragraph is from that script. It closely resembles a closing scene in which Danny Archer (DiCaprio), Solomon Vandy (Hounsou) and his son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers), clamber up a hillside overlooking an alluvial diamond mine, with mercenary soldiers in hot pursuit to rob them of the rare pink diamond Solomon found: “the kind of stone that can transform a life.. or end it” as the production notes explain.

In fact the introductory paragraph actually describes a real scene with three real people - Mzamo Dlamini, Nonhle Mbutuma and Zeka Mnyamana - ascending the steep gorge above the Mzamba estuary on the Pondoland Wild Coast, 120 kms south of Durban.

The stretch of coastline is home to the little known and relatively undisturbed global biodiversity hotspot known as the Pondoland Centre of Endemism which includes several rare and threatened species of plants that thrive in its spectacular river gorges. However, in addition to rare plant species, the 22km strip of coast between Port Edward and the Mntentu Estuary is richly endowed with deposits of titanium and heavy minerals. The region is also known as one of the poorest in South Africa in terms of income and health indicators, notwithstanding its abundant biodiversity and mineral wealth.

Mzamo, Nonhle and Zeka live in the Sigidi community, a rural village of scattered homesteads, which happens to be adjacent to the mineral deposits. They had agreed to be interviewed by a camera crew from the award winning environmental program 50/50 broadcast weekly on South African National Television, and had crossed the Mzamba river to avoid having the TV crew attracting too much attention in their village, to alert the outside world to the intimidation and fear that certain powerful community leaders had been spreading, evidently against anyone with misgivings about the proposed mining of their land by a small Perth based Australian mining company, MRC Ltd.

In an astonishing coincidence, the location chosen by Blood Diamond director Edward Zwick to film the dramatic escape of the fictional heroes of his film, happens to be the very same panoramic hillside that the Sigidi three ascended in their rendezvous with the 50/50 film crew in October last year.

Unbeknown to the 50/50 TV crew, six months earlier, the tranquillity of the valley below was shattered by loud explosions and gunfire – the final battle ground between rebels and mercenaries spilling their blood over diamonds.

An earlier scene films Solomon nostalgically longing for the day when ‘paradise’ will be restored for himself and his family. The visual cues to evoke a sense of that ‘paradise’ happen to be spectacular aerial scenes of other gorges, rivers and hills of the Wild Coast, pretending to be Sierra Leone.

Fittingly – and with no prior knowledge of the Blood Diamond script and choice of location - 50/50 producer Sandra Herrington titled her documentary Wild Coast Corruption: Paradise Lost.

In an ironic instance of ‘life imitating art’, Dlamini - literally following in Solomon’s footsteps up the same hill, told how a group of pro-mining elements were manipulating information flows, and intimidating people into silence.

“Yes, the people are very scared. Most of the people have kept quiet now because they see how things are, what happens. The mining agents seem to block anything. They seem to want everything to go via them so that they can see that it is not dangerous and it doesn’t oppose the mining” he said.

The 22 minute documentary goes on to probe whether the mining aligned interests were in fact deliberately sabotaging the promising community based eco-tourism enterprise, to force the community into accepting mining as the only feasible means of economic upliftment.

The irony twists further when one reads Zwicks comments in the Blood Diamond production notes “It seems that almost every time a valuable natural resource is discovered in the world—whether it be diamonds, rubber, gold, oil, whatever—often what results is a tragedy for the country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come.”

But was Zwick aware that he was shooting a film in a context afflicted by the same corrosive evil that his film portrays?

Genevieve Hofmeyr, of Moonlighting Films, the South African production company which organised the shooting on the Wild Coast responded. “I can’t speak for Ed, but I became very aware of it in the process”.

Because of the environmental sensitivity of the area, the film company was obliged by the Eastern Cape Department of Environment, to form a committee with representatives from the local community. “We worked hand in hand with local people and they informed me of the issues.”

She agreed that it was quite extraordinary that Blood Diamond and Paradise Lost shared so much in common.

Dlamini had in fact benefited from two days casual work on the movie set of Blood Diamond, but had yet to see the film. In fact he admitted that he had never seen any film in a big-screen movie theatre before! We hastened off to see it together, eager to see familiar scenes and perhaps recognisable faces among the extras on the ‘big screen’.

“I have seen films on TV and Video, and always enjoyed Leon Schuster films (a popular South African satirical filmmaker). But this is something else…” he remarked in amazement and wonder, as we left the cinema.

Returning to the hillside overlooking the site where the make-believe alluvial diamond mine had been, we looked for the exact spot place where Di Caprio’s character had grasped a handful of red earth on one of the dramatic closing scenes. We speculated how much titanium and other heavy mineral deposits were in fact present in his fistful of sand.

The MRC website reports that the Xolobeni Mineral Sands are rated as the “tenth largest deposit in the world”.

Richard Spoor, - a human rights attorney whom the community have enlisted to help them in their battle with the mining company - doubts whether the ruined landscape left behind by a real opencast mine – as envisaged by MRC - would ever be restored, let alone the quality of life of the community developed.

“Mining is essentially a wasting industry, and on the evidence of the failure of mining companies to do cost/benefit analyses, the rural poor and the natural environment always come away bearing hugely disproportionate costs while the owners and shareholders take most of the benefits”, he comments (he has yet to see Blood Diamond).

Spoor’s other rural community clients on the Platinum rich reefs inland do not have the same options for generating sustainable income that the Wild Coast coastal communities have, given the attractions it holds. To illustrate, there are apparently only a dozen places in the entire planet with a geology that creates waterfalls flowing directly into the ocean. Three of the twelve occur on the Pondoland Wild Coast!

“Given the overwhelming disruption that mining brings, it is unthinkable that mining should be allowed on the Wild Coast, as eco-tourism must win hands down in any comparative cost-benefit analysis with mining”.

He adds sarcastically “When the Australians let us mine Ayers Rock for Sandstone, or the Great Barrier Reef for Calcium Carbonate, then we can let them come and mine the Wild Coast!”

No such ambition can be found on the MRC website. However there are other ‘gems’ of information to be found. In a still more bizarre connection between the Wild Coast and Sierra Leone one learns that MRC is also digging for diamonds in Kono, Sierra Leone!

Incredulous as this may seem in the context of the plot of Blood Diamond, the following extract from MRC’s 2006 third quarter report explains to investors that their promising “No 11 tailings dump resulted from alluvial diamond operations in the 1960’s by the Sierra Leone Diamond Trust. Although the plant was advanced for its time, investigation into the operating history of the plant after the fortuitous discovery of the 969.8 carat “Star of Sierra Leone” diamond (my emphasis) indicated that the initial plant design was flawed and it is believed the operating efficiency would have been reduced with time, leading to the loss of diamonds to tailings.”

Another ‘big pink’ perhaps?

Mzamo Dlamini and his brave friends wish to invite Blood Diamond producers to return to the Wild Coast and have another shot at an Oscar. They have a ready made script for a sequel. A truth stranger and more ominous than fiction.

**************

John Clarke is a social worker and freelance writer investigating the inter-connections between development, environmental and public health issues for the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (www.safcei.org.za, ) especially in respect to the impacts of mining and energy policy and practice.

Posted on March 22nd, 2007
Filed under: Articles