TILTING AT WINDMILLS: PENÉLOPE: GO FOR GOLD NOT DIAMONDS

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

PENÉLOPE: GO FOR GOLD NOT DIAMONDS

Survival International has urged Spain’s Oscar hopeful, Penélope Cruz, not to wear Graff Diamonds when she attends the star-studded awards event.

The NGO claims that the celebrated jeweller is part of a new diamond mine which is being constructed inside the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve and could jeopardize the return of Basarwa Bushmen to their ancestral land.

Graff Diamonds recently bought a 10 percent stake in Gem Diamonds, the company which Survival International claims will construct the new mine inside the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve.

Around 3,000, Basarwa were evicted from the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve in 2002 and resettled elsewhere. Then in late 2006, the High Court in Lobatse ruled the eviction was illegal, paving the way for their return - although many have yet to do so.

Survival International says that plans for a diamond mine in the reserve will create a new obstacle for Basarwa’s return to their homeland.There is no suggestion that Graff, or Gem Diamonds, has forced the Basarwa off their land, but Survival International believe Graff’s share holding means it has a “moral imperative” to consider the fate of the bushmen and presumably bush women too.

I have to admit to knowing the owner of Graff Diamonds, Laurence Graff, very well. Not that I’ve ever met the celebrated jeweller and art collector. Rather CNBC has shown a documentary on him four times in the last nine days, and I happened to tune in each time. I think we are now family!

As for Penélope, or Pe as she is known in Spain, I suspect her eyes will be on the gold coated Oscar rather than diamonds on awards night.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Those of us who remember the work and writings of Laurence van de Post, must support the Bushmen and their culture. Together with the Hottentots, they are the only remaining examples of 5 world racial groups, the Khoisansiforms. Their water supply in the Kalahari was collected from the night dew using pierced ostrich eggs. They are today being exploited as badly as any other human endengered species.; February 18, 2009 at 5:15 PM

Post a Comment

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”