THE KINGS OF DIAMONDS AGAINST HOLLYWOOD

	“Wrong movies, we do not fund wars” In the world’s largest deposits. “Di Caprio? He will cause serious damage” ORAPA (Botswana) – Seb Sebetlela did not become the head of the world’s largest diamond mine to see it endangered by the good spirit of Hollywood. And he is ready to defend it: not even Leonardo Di Caprio and his movie director Edward Zwick will put their hands in the safe box. “
	Yes, their movie may cause serious damage, deprive us of our wealth,” states he from the mine’s headquarters. Africa against the star system: Seb’s opinion is repeated like a tribal chant, here in Botswana, an example of development through diamonds, as well as in Johannesburg and throughout that part of the continent where the gems are found. The Africans’ equation is: diamonds equal development. The Orapa mine, the world’s largest by volume, is an open-cast deposit: a 2 by 1.2 km, 200-m deep hole (but it will dig down to 600). Every cubic inch of earth is processed by Debswana, a joint venture (50-50) between the Botswana Government and De Beers. “For us, Orapa and the other diamond mines in the Country mean 70% of exports, 54% of the State’s revenue and 30% of the gross domestic product,” says Charles Tibone, minister of mineral resources of Botswana. “Before the deposits were found in 1967, one year after gaining independence from the UK, we had five kilometres of roads, asphalted for the visit of King George V. Now we have ten-thousand kilometres. There were four secondary schools, now they are two-hundred. And this is all a result of the revenues from diamonds.” And, to be clearer with the observers of this miracle, he articulates: “Each challenge to our resources is a threat to our life-blood.” In the Africa of AIDS and poverty, a definitely strange struggle is starting: diamonds for conflicts against diamonds for peace. It is fought by two worlds that do not know and do not understand one another: the rich Beverly Hills of good intentions and the miserable Soweto of the great aspirations. It is fought by Seb Sebetlela, the black chief of the world’s largest deposit, whose wife never owned a diamond; and Leonardo Di Caprio, whose fiancée Bar Refaeli models for Recarlo, an Italian jeweller specializing in …. diamonds. *Excepts of an article written by Danilo Taino on Corriere della Sera. The most important newspaper of a circulation of 700 000.*