Mandela gives De Beers the thumbs up
Posted on 26. Jun, 2006 by Cassandra in Totally Whack
So you kind of know that Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio was in town filming a new movie called ‘The Blood Diamond’?
Without giving too much away the film will not be released until Jan 12, 2007.
But it’s the wrenching story of
two South Africans, a mercenary (DiCaprio) and a fisherman during the savage ‘90s Sierra Leone civil wars when rebels seized mines
to sell “conflict” or “blood diamonds” to buy arms, murdering and
mutilating (hand/arm amputation was a popular rebel sport) thousands of
innocent men, women and children.
Clearly a terrible story filled with much fuel against any future love of diamonds.
Now De Beers is getting nervous that the film will create some seriously negative PR and have hired a very expensive Hollywood PR company to make things right.
Who have the PR firm hired to make everything better – Nelson Mandela.
“Mandela is going to say that all that stuff seen in the film is in the
past, that there are no more conflict diamonds in circulation and that
the diamond industry is economically good for South Africa.”
Which may be true for South Africa, but we wonder if Americans are going to realise that South Africa and Sierre Leone are two different countries on either side of a very large continent?
Mandela to defend De Beers from bad "Blood" – LA Times
