Abuse On Angola-Congo Border

A new wave of deportees has arrived in Kasai Occidental province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the setting for Heart of Diamonds) from the diamond mining region in Angola. Most of the women among the 27,000 people expelled by the Angolans have been sexually abused, according to local health officials.

"There are many injured people and 80 percent of the women had been raped," according to Pierre Didi Mpata, a doctor and director of an NGO running a local health center in Kamako, a village near the Congolese border with Angola not far from Mai-Munene where much of the story in Heart of Diamonds takes place. Some 5,000 refuges now crowd Kamako. The UN mission in DRC, MONUC, reports 22,230 more DRC citizens were sent back from Angola in the last two weeks. They are now between Kahungua and Tembo, some 95 kilometers from the Angolan border.

Mpata was quoted in a UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) report that among the people who had been sexually abused was Caroline Lomelo (not her real name), a mother of two.

"I was badly beaten up and raped by five Angolan police officers when they forcefully expelled us," she said. Lomelo returned to the DRC five days ago from Angola. According to Mpata, Lomelo can barely stand because she has a sexually transmitted infection. She is also six months pregnant.

"She is in danger of having an abortion because of the [gonorrhoea] infection she contracted," Mpata said.

Lomelo, who was training to be a nurse, said she had gone to Angola from her home town of Lodja, in the central province of Kasai Oriental, to look for her brother.

The Angolan authorities began to expel illegal immigrants from the country in December 2003, targeting illegal workers in its diamond mines near the border with the DRC. Previous mass expulsions in the area had been halted by an agreement between the two countries. In December 2007, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) denounced "the pervasive and systematic use of rape and violence perpetrated by the Angolan army during the expulsions of Congolese migrants working in diamond mines in the Angolan province of Lunda Norte".

The current wave of expelled immigrants have nothing and are exhausted after walking at least 100 kilometers from Angola where they were living in churches and schools where supplies of basic items were inadequate. "It's a miracle they survived," Mpata said.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Tags: romantic thriller, Congo, blood diamonds

Botswana Proves A Point

Not all African governments are as intransigently harmful as Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe. Just next door, Botswana recently transferred power from the democratically-elected Festus Mogae to his party's new leader, Ian Khama, demonstrating that African government does not have to be synonymous with tyranny.

Botswana also demonstrates that natural resources do not have to inevitably fall into the hands of the strongest strong man or the most rapacious ruler. Her diamond mines, discovered a year after the country achieved independence in 1967, make Botswana the world's largest diamond producer. But they are operated through a partnership between the state and the DeBeers Group that provides 60% of the government's revenues.

Those monies, in turn, go not into a despot's foreign bank account or to pay for private armies, but rather into places where government funds can do the most good: education, health care, public works, and a working justice system. The mines also provide jobs for thousands of Botswanans whose wages ripple throughout the economy, raising the standards of living for all.

Botswana is no Utopia, but it has the highest GDP per capita forecast in sub-Saharan Africa, $8,453, according to global investment banking group UBS. Botswana is also ranked as the continent's least corrupt country by Transparency International. The country has reduced the mother-to-child transmission rate for HIV from 40% of all live births to a mere 4% today.

Botswana proves the point that nations of Africa can prosper once they throw off the bonds of strongman tyranny.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Tags: romantic thriller, Congo, blood diamonds

Darkness Among Beauty In Africa

Africa is, purely and simply put, beautiful. When I visited it the first time to research Heart of Diamonds, I fell in love--as everyone does. Scenery to take your breath away, wildlife that fascinates, people who open their hearts to you like no other people on earth.

Unfortunately, while the events and characters in Heart of Diamonds are all fictional, they are not entirely figments of my overwrought imagination. Ruthless, evil murderers still haunt the Congo and many other countries in Africa. They may wear a cloak of patriotism, tribal self-realization, religious fervor or some other propaganda, but they are actually driven by one thing—unadulterated greed. While the rhetoric rolls on, so does the genocide. The only thing that doesn’t change is the total indifference of the so-called developed nations of the world.

In the 1960’s, millions died across the African continent as the lashes of colonialism were replaced by the automatic weapon fire of dictatorial self-government. In the 70’s and 80’s, civil wars claimed millions more while creatures like Idi Amin, Milton Obote, Hissene Habre, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Mobutu Sese Seko murdered their own countrymen and pillaged their country’s treasuries. In 1994, the world was horrified by 900,000 hacked bodies in Rwanda.

As of this writing, five million people have been killed in the Congo since 1998, according to the International Rescue Committee. There is no end in sight. Today, Robert Mugabe starves the people of Zimbabwe and the body count builds in Darfur while the world pauses briefly to wring its hands and sniffle before turning back to its TV dinners.

Some of the death and destruction in the latter half of the 20th century was the direct result of rebellion against the affront to humanity that was apartheid as well as other vestiges of the colonial era. Today's killers, though, are after what men have always lusted after in Africa--gold, copper, timber, ivory, cobalt--and the new riches, coltan, uranium, and oil. And diamonds, always diamonds.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Tags: romantic thriller, Congo, blood diamonds