I watched Russell Simmons on CNN the other day and saw what many may have considered a strange sight. He was basically slamming the movie Blood Diamonds and demanding that its parent company Warner Brothers be more responsible with what they put out there because it could unduly influence the public. He said it’s important that all of us know our history.

With that sentiment in mind, I found it strange to hear Simmons defending the diamond trade in South Africa and Botswana, which were the two countries he recently visited on a “fact-finding” mission.

Please note that the horrific bloodshed and genocide of the early 1990s that the movie focuses on took place in countries like Sierra Leone and Angola. In my opinion those conflict zones should’ve been included in any sort of fact-finding mission. By only going to Botswana and South Africa, and by defending the diamond trade in those countries, Simmons by default wound up defending the De Beers Company, which held a worldwide monopoly for decades and brutally ruled the diamond business in those two countries for more than a century.

De Beers was set up by arch-colonizer Cecil Rhodes. (Yes the same Cecil Rhodes who the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship is named after). He took over what we now call Zimbawee and called it Rhodesia. His De Beers diamond company was and will forever be in many people’s minds associated with the brutal slave-labor practices of his company and the brutal Apartheid regime of South Africa that supported it.

I recall as a kid hearing all sorts of horror stories about how the black-majority population in South Africa was forced to work in diamond mines in subhuman conditions for pennies a day by the De Beers owners, all with the military backing and blessings of the white Apartheid government. Black workers were killed or crippled by cruel De Beers bosses and Afrikaner police when they went on strike to demand better working conditions. It was more than troubling to see how these workers were forced to mine diamonds off their own land and have these colonizers sell them all over the world, making the De Beers company and the White South African government rich and powerful.

We didn’t call those South African diamonds “blood diamonds” back in the 1980s when many of us in the hip-hop generation first became aware of the atrocities, but the blood of black South Africans covered those De Beers stones.

In fact, the brutality of Apartheid along with the horrors of the diamond trade was what motivated many of us as young college students to become involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, where we demanded that our universities and other U.S. businesses divest any and all funds from South African businesses.

Many compared Apartheid with the Holocaust for the number of people who were killed or wounded as a direct result of South African state-sponsored racism. Sadly, we had people in power like then-president Ronald Reagan, Senator Dick Cheney, later-President George Bush Sr. as well as the powerful state of Israel, all staunchly supporting this white terrorist Apartheid government every step of the way.

They refused to go along with and vetoed every single UN proposed sanction. They called then-incarcerated Nelson Mandela and his organization, the African National Congress (ANC), terrorists. There was even a point where right-wing knuckleheads in this country actually advocated purchasing South African diamonds as a way to oppose the ANC because it was getting help from Fidel Castro and communist organizations. The folks in power, who guarded our beloved Democracy here in the U.S., were doing very little to end Apartheid. This is the “history,” as Russell Simmons pointed out, we should always remember and never downplay or conveniently overlook.

During the CNN interview Simmons said he understood De Beers had a bad history, but said that times have changed and that this once-notorious diamond company had changed for the better. Simmons noted that as much as 80 percent of De Beers diamond profits now go back to South Africans and that the money generated from diamond sales represent a real opportunity for greater numbers of Africans to get a stronger economic foothold.

As I listened to him run all this down, I kept saying to myself Fuck That! De Beers shouldn’t own any of those diamond mines. Given all of the brutality that occurred over the years, there should be NO splitting of profits. The mines should be fully 100 percent controlled and owned by Africans. Hearing Simmons somehow defend the diamond trade while including De Beers representatives at his press conference in NY last week, it was crazy. It was like Jewish leaders standing with representatives of a company that profited from Jewish-prison labor under the Nazis, explaining how it makes sense to split profits with a company that built its business around slaughtering Jews and stealing their resources.

I know in South Africa they have this “Truth and Reconciliation” thing jumping off, where a lot of the atrocities of the past have been forgiven, for the sake of knowledge and the future. But for many of us here in the U.S., there was no truth and reconciliation process. Many of us have vivid memories of emotionally bleeding for and empathizing with the plight of our South African brothers. The memory of De Beers being a stalwart of the White Apartheid regime is still firmly etched in many of our minds.

Now De Beers and others are sinking serious dollars into an international PR campaign to counteract the message of the movie. But the company and its supporters never ponied up to travel the world and apologize and try and make right the role they played in financing the Apartheid regime. In fact, the explanations that things are somehow different now coming from the De Beers folks hanging with Russell are the first words many of us have heard from them since Apartheid ended twenty years ago.

Russell Simmons said that on his fact-finding mission, he was asked by leaders of Botswana and South Africa to come back and deliver a message about the “real facts” of the diamond trade. He pointed out that he went to the diamond mines in Botswana and that everything he witnessed seemed up to speed, that there were no abuses taking place. He said that blood diamonds make up only 1 percent of the diamonds being purchased worldwide, and that the diamonds we buy today go directly to help Africans. He then cited Nelson Mandela as one of the leaders who asked him to pass this message along to counteract the message many would be getting from the movie.

At the press conference, Nida Khan of the Source asked whether Simmons would have really been shown the harsh conditions and unsavory behavior that still goes on in many diamond mines, whether the governments of Botswana or South Africa would really show a high-profile figure with media access the dirt that goes on behind the scenes and off camera?

Did Nelson Mandela really give a message to Simmons to deliver? What was the exact wording of that message, I’d like to know. Why wouldn’t Mandela himself, a Noble Peace Prize winner admired and recognized around the world, issue his own statement and hold his own press conference? No disrespect to Russell, but why speak for a guy like Mandela on such a volatile subject? Perhaps I missed something, but I searched Google, Yahoo and a number of South African newspapers. I couldn’t find anything about Mandela speaking on this issue. I did see a couple of articles with Noble laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu coming out against the government of Botswana and the De Beers sister company that’s bushing the Bushmen off their native land. But I didn’t see one mention of Nelson Mandela talking about how buying diamond-encrusted pieces from Jacob the Jeweler or any other diamond dealer here in the U.S. was somehow going to be saving Africans. Folks are welcome to do the search themselves. I’m not perfect. Maybe I overlooked something.

Most of the articles I read spoke about the connection and partial ownership De Beers has with the main diamond company in Botswana, called Debswana. Many of the articles focused on how the Bushmen in Botswana have been tricked and forced to get off their land so De Beers and everyone else can mine diamonds. Most importantly, many of the articles reported that the average person in Africa is not seeing the benefits of all those diamond sales. The whole scenario reminds me of how we’ve been tricked into going along with the lottery, which was sold as a way to raise much-needed money to improve our schools. Yet public schools from NY to Cali are still in shambles.

In the Capetown Daily News I did come across an interesting story about how the U.S. State Department is making all sorts of moves to counter the message of Blood Diamonds because it feels the movie could have adverse effects on the economy. It’s a story I haven’t seen in the local papers out here in Cali.

As I read the story I could only shake my head because when it comes to the people in power, they’re all too familiar with how influential pop culture can be. They understand the power of image and lyrics and all that. They clearly understand that this stuff is not “just entertainment” as many would like to believe. So it’s not just Russell running around defending the diamond industry, it’s our own government. Go figure. I guess some things never change. The government defended De Beers during Apartheid. The government’s defending De Beers now.

I should add that the only positive article I saw regarding how diamonds are somehow helping out Africans appeared in South Africa’s Business Day newspaper, an “>opinion piece published in August 2006. I saw no other articles supporting this claim or remotely touching upon this in the months and weeks leading up to the release of the movie. I should also note that the recent so-called studies that some are citing about the benefits of the diamond trade are financed by the diamond industry.

One thing Russell did say on CNN which I agree with is that Hollywood and many others had never given a damn about blood diamonds. He rhetorically asked where were all the movies and films when genocide was taking place in the early 1990s? It’s a good question that many will have to wrestle with. That would include then-president Bill Clinton, the NAACP, and dozens of other organizations and churches.

Sadly many of us within hip-hop around at the time had suddenly decided to abandon our leather African Medallions to bling out with platinum and diamonds. This would include some of the artists that Russell himself worked with. If you recall, when all this slaughter was going on in Sierra Leone, many of us were watching Biggie and 2Pac videos talking about how jiggy we were. We all have to own up to our collective silence and ignorance on one of Africa’s most devastating periods.

But with all that being said, the debate is being raised now and it’s important that we both understand history and the politics of the day. One thing that I find especially troubling is that while De Beers is launching an all out PR campaign and Russell is telling us to go buy diamonds to support Africa, I still have yet to go to a diamond district in NY, LA or here in the Bay Area and see some cats from Botswana or Black South Africans selling me some diamonds wholesale in store they own 100 percent.

I see commercials every day from diamond retailers like Zales, Tiffanys and Paul from the Diamond Center, but I never see us black folk doing the selling.

It seems like when half the rap community goes out to purchase diamond-encrusted grillz to make their mouths look like disco balls, they’re usually buying from fellow rap star Paul Wall. Is the money he’s charging for all those 30-thousand-dollar-plus grillz going to help Africans build a clinic to fight AIDs in Botswana? Are Lil Wayne, Nelly, Jermaine Dupri and other grill wearers sporting those gaudy mouthpieces with the intent of helping impoverished Africans? I can’t call it, but stuff don’t seem right.

As for me, I’m not buying any diamonds, especially if they’re from De Beers or any company connected to De Beers. If we really want to help out Africa, how about making sure the debt incurred from first-world nations during decolonization is forgiven and forever erased? How about demanding that African countries be allowed to use generic drugs to fight the scourge of HIV and Aids? How about we look at the insidious ways countries like Belgium fostered the wars that led to the diamond genocide? Let’s bring those people to justice.

In 2006, if you’re really about blinging, hold a land deed not a stupid diamond chain.

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Davey D is one of the original hip-hop culture gurus and activists. This essay also ran at Davey D’s hip hop corner. It has been edited for length and style.