Just over a decade back, Todd Majaye was derided and maligned for suggesting that Botswana should become an international diamond centre. He has lived to see this dream come to fruition and he is getting ready to play a major role in the industry
In light of the impending changes in Botswana’s diamond industry, changes which might forever reconfigure the balance of power in international diamond trade, one man who should be allowed the last laugh is Todd Majaye. You see, at a time when convention was that diamond cutting and polishing couldn’t be done in Botswana, he was steadfast that, indeed, it could ÔÇô and profitably so.
It is amazing just how much things have changed ÔÇô a far cry from just over 10 years back when he decided to take on the might of the industry and its apologists, writing insightful op-ed pieces to educate the nation about the diamond industry, and how De Beers was screwing the daylights out of us all. And thus began a systematic campaign to cast him as a pariah, and he seemed to revel in the heretical role.
We meet this morning, not so much to mourn the past, but to talk about the present and the future. Today is a different world, and it finally shares his perspective. There is a nascent cutting and polishing industry in Botswana, and the new sales agreement between the Botswana government and De Beers requires the company to move all its diamond aggregation activities from London to Gaborone. It is no longer sacrilege to talk of Botswana turning into the centre for international diamond trade.
After the announcement of what is supposed to be a groundbreaking sales agreement, you would expect the nation to be in a mood of heightened expectation. But instead of asking about possible opportunities, it seems people are just happy to see the day go by. Majaye has an explanation for this apparent disinterest. Lack of information. He says government has not unpacked the new paradigm to its people.
To plant the seed of understanding the diamond trade among Batswana and create a platform for information sharing, he is planning a series of workshops in different centres, beginning with the inaugural one on November 23 and 24 in Gaborone.
“We expect government to be represented at the workshop because Batswana don’t have full information and this will be an opportunity for government to share information with its citizens. We hope government will be able to download these issues [relating to the new sales agreement]to give us full information,” Majaye says.
He anticipates this educational drive, which at other times will take the form of knowledge-based courses and seminars, to spill into the coming year. All of this is part of a bigger and more ambitious project, a diamond training institute which will offer courses in various aspects of the industry such as small scale mining, diamond sorting, rough to polished valuations, cutting and polishing, rough and polished marketing, entrepreneurship, market information analysis, and semi-precious stones processing. The institute, Afrimond, has already been running for some years in South Africa, where Majaye has been based for the past decade.
He states that the setting up of a diamond training facility in Botswana is 20 years overdue. He initially conceived the idea of establishing a national diamond training school in Botswana over 10 years ago. His vision at the time was to drive economic empowerment of Africans through provision of diamond skills focused on the specific needs of the African diamond industry, with Botswana as a base due to its status as the largest diamond producer in Africa. He could see a direct link between the abundance of African diamond deposits, empowerment of citizens of the continent through diamond skills, and African economic development.
Before then, he had successfully set up a training department for Botswana Diamond Valuing Company (BDVC), which catered for the specific needs of the company, followed by a training wing he established in Johannesburg to cater for some of the needs of the South African Diamond Board and the then Government Diamond Valuator.
But the dream could not come to pass because the environment in Botswana at the time was not friendly to this kind of initiative. He likens Botswana’s diamond industry governance at the time to something akin to a combination of communism and apartheid. The industry ownership was confined to De Beers and the government. Citizens and independent companies were not allowed to venture into any aspect of the industry. South Africa, on the other hand, was an open, free enterprise system and extremely passionate on broad based industry participation. His initiative was passionately welcomed in South Africa and that was how he set up a training facility there.
“But even then,” Majaye says, “I still agonized over my own country’s lack of national pride and political will to empower its own people, diamond industry wise and to localise downstream diamond activities and labour. This is one of the reasons that I put my neck on the block for the transformation of the industry, which is now happening.”
While he concedes that the industry transformation currently taking place has enabled the setting of Afrimond in Botswana, he adds that the decision to bring the institute here, more than a business move, is out of patriotism and the desire to contribute to the empowerment of people who for so long have been disempowered and marginalised.
In fact, he sees the institution becoming a key stakeholder in Botswana’s diamond industry through provision of knowledge and skills related to all aspects of the international diamond industry, as well as the provision of consulting services in all aspects of the industry.
“If the government and people of Botswana will embrace Afrimond with the same zeal they did with the Indians who are still to come, I see it complementing government’s efforts towards the development of the local industry in a big way. I see it playing a pivotal role in the downloading of all aspects of the industry that have not yet been performed in Botswana and to take Botswana to a level beyond cosmetics,” he says.
He asserts that most of the course instructors will be Batswana.
“It sounds funny, but Botswana has a lot of diamond experts that many do not know exist. We are a nation that cherishes foreign labour, irrespective of how inferior it is, because that is what imperialism ingrained in our minds,” he says.
Initially, Majaye is reluctant to discuss the new sales agreement between Botswana and De Beers, citing lack of full information on the agreement. We agree to confine our discussion to what has been disclosed, particularly relocation of aggregation activities, as well as the 10 percent marketing window that the agreement now accords the government.
Thus far, he states, there is an indication of an interesting beginning ÔÇô and then he adds a caveat, “that is if it will happen”.
His argument is that when you look deep, there is really nothing much that is new. He pronounces the 10 percent marketing window as outdated by as many as 20 years, and therefore having lost its meaning. The diamond aggregation issue is more than five years old, having formed part of the 2004 agreement which De Beers did not honour. Majaye argues that in 2004, Botswana gave away a lot in exchange for the aggregation relocation to Botswana, which under that agreement was supposed to commence operations in Botswana in 2009. But it did not happen.
“De Beers reneged on its obligation to transfer the aggregation function to Botswana, citing amongst others, the then prevailing global economic downturn, and also insisting that there were certain outstanding issues that needed to be resolved. The result of this was that Botswana was denied five years economic development opportunities, and loss of production time, with having to renegotiate an issue that was budgeted for previously and resolved. Whilst the current agreement is backdated to January 2011, the aggregation process has been given up to 2013 to be fully operational in Botswana. What guarantee do we have that this will not recur, given the looming global economic crisis, particularly with the imminent European economic meltdown?” he says.
But even with this reservation, Majaye accepts the new agreement as better than the previous ones. But he doesn’t think government has properly thought about the logistics for the implementation of the 10 percent production reserve.
His view on the transformation of Botswana into the epicenter of international diamond trade is that while it is a realizable dream, much will depend on the government’s willingness to include and involve its people in the transformation. He says the starting point is for government to begin to have its own people on the ground doing diamond business, as well as sharing information with citizens.
“Getting to a point of a global industry status is a long journey. If public administrators do not take the local indigenous private sector along with them along the journey, then a journey that is supposed to take one week will take 40 years as it happened with the children of Israel,” he says.
I ask how Batswana (and here I’m not referring to the usual suspects who already have their fingers in every pie, but folks for whom the train has long left the station and the next one is too long coming) will become meaningful players in the industry. It is a concern Majaye shares. He asks that people should overcome the fear and myth that to enter the diamond industry is difficult and very expensive because it is not.
“First they must learn the ropes of the trade,” he sates. “Otherwise they will remain tools and fronts for foreign companies. This is why we (Afrimond) are here. Secondly, they must pressure the government to create an environment that fosters the emergence and growth of citizen entrepreneurship within the industry. Thirdly, they will need to remove filthy garments of docility, rural jealousies, lack of self-confidence and the do-it-alone attitude.”
As we wind our discussion, I ask Majaye if he, finally, feels vindicated.
“Very much so,” he answers. “Everything I said is happening word for word. You see, when I said during the cold war period that we should beneficiate our diamonds locally, some people thought of me as a man close to losing his head. When I questioned the rationale for the continued control of our diamonds from London, and advocated for relocation of DTC to Botswana, they nearly dragged me to a mental hospital for confinement. They really believed I was mad, particularly the learned amongst us, the curse of colonial education that teaches us to do but not to think.”
And, therefore, Batswana have reason to be angry?
“Yes they have reason to be angry,” he says. “Indeed we would have progressed a great deal if we had the foresight to do things correctly back then. The current social problems bedeviling our country as a result of high unemployment rate would not be existent if we had harnessed our diamond potential back then. How can a small populated, mineral rich country like Botswana be having such high unemployment levels? Yes we were plundered and terribly robbed, not only of income from our diamonds, but of our pride and dignity.”