DeBeers and the U.S.-backed defeat of African liberation

In the 1960s the colonized world rose up to challenge the fact that the
Western powers had for hundreds of years built themselves with the
resources of nonwhite people for the benefit of white society. Because
of this plunder the average white family in Europe, North America,
Africa or Australia, who may not be as rich or powerful as the
Rockefellers could nevertheless count on this process to enjoy by far
the highest standard of living for working people in the world. 
The sixties are remembered for the valiant struggle of the Vietnamese
people who fought for generations to control their own country, first
defeating France and then sending the U.S. out with their tails
between their legs. 
In the U.S. the Black Power Movement shook this system to its very
foundations with the demand for more than civil rights. It was a
revolutionary demand for black political and economic power and
African liberation. On the continent of Africa itself the call for a unified
and liberated Africa gave hope to the suffering masses. 
In the late 1950s Kwame Nkrumah became the first elected president
of Ghana. With the supposed ousting of British colonial control,
Nkrumah pursued his ideals of attempting to eliminate all the
In Ghana, as in most of colonial Africa, centuries of expropriation by
colonial powers left the nominally independent nations without an
industrial infrastructure to process those resources. Nkrumah began to
talk about nationalizing Ghana’s resources and beginning to build its
own production capabilities. In the few short years of his power he
made enormous strides in this direction.
In the early sixties Nkrumah decided to begin to market Ghana’s
diamonds independently, rather than through the process demanded
by the DeBeers cartel. Profits from diamond sales could help develop
the country. Nkrumah also did not want to sell diamonds to the
company behind the apartheid regime of South Africa. Not long after
Nkrumah began taking steps towards this end the U.S. attempted a
failed coup against him. In 1966 the U.S. was finally successful in
ousting Nkrumah and he died in exile.