More than 130 years after South Africa’s first diamond rush, hundreds of prospectors are hoping to strike it rich on the booming international market by taking picks and shovels to the rocky terrain of the country’s veld.
The weather-beaten workers sort small, heavy stones with hand-cranked washers and sieving pans — the same tools used in the diamond rush of 1871 — meticulously examining the pebbles for those that sparkle in the blistering sun.
Small signs stake out claims with evocative names such as Good Hope, Bad Hope, Losers’ Rush and Moonlight Pool.
Kimberley, 510km south-west of Johannesburg, produced South Africa’s first diamond rush, which made the fortune of Cecil John Rhodes among others, and fuelled the country’s industrial expansion.
The international diamond group De Beers still runs three vast mines in Kimberley, and they are claimed to be the world’s oldest and deepest functioning diamond mines.
The company employs 11 000 workers and last year its Kimberley mines produced more than two million carats of diamonds to take advantage of the pickup in international demand. The booming market has also encouraged the small-scale diamond diggers and recently their numbers have increased in the Kimberley area to more than 300, according to local experts.
The individual prospectors are a tough, stubborn breed who are determined to make it on their own.
They work the area about 55km north-west of Kimberley which has been the preserve of the individual diamond diggers since 1870.
At Verlorenshoop (Lost Hope) mine, Fani Louw (63) points to a tree where he found a big diamond 1981. ”I was digging with a pick and saw it shining in the earth. I just plucked it out. It was a top quality blue-white, more than 50 carats,” he says.
With a toothless grin cracking his leathery face, Louw vows he is going to find another one soon.
The hive of prospecting activity is in the alluvial plain of the Vaal River, where millennia ago diamonds were swept along from the big deposits in Kimberley.
Small fortunes are still made by some diamond diggers. A few drive flashy new four-wheel drive vehicles and have sprawling mansions in nearby Barkly West.
But most clatter by in old jalopies and rent rooms in small houses.
Lucky prospectors take their gems to the diamond exchanges where licensed buyers assess the stones and pay cash.
Elizabeth Mali (73) is one of the few women working a diamond claim. She runs a team of five men who do the hard labour to break up and sieve the small rocks.
With an eagle eye, Mali sorts through a tray of pebbles and drops several glinting quartz crystals into a glass jar, just in case one might be the real thing.
”I used to work as a seamstress, working every day just for porridge,” said Mali, a grandmother. ”Now I am looking for the big diamonds, to get rich.”
Bigger operations use large earthmovers and heavy machinery to scoop up the crust and employ a dozen men to pick through the rocks for diamonds.
”If we find three to five carats a day, then we are doing well,” said Frans Hanekom, a site manager for a larger operation.
”If we don’t find anything for a week or so, then we might move to try another claim,” added Hanekom (26) who has worked in the diamond fields for eight years.
Dirk Potgieter (34) is a fourth-generation diamond digger. He remembers when his father found a 65-carat stone in 1982. ”He came home and he couldn’t talk. He just held it out in his hand,” said Potgieter, who now works as a tour guide but still hankers to go back to digging.
”It gets in your blood, so you don’t want to do anything else. Once you throw a sieve over and the diamond is sitting there like a cherry on a cake, then you’re hooked for life.” – Guardian Unlimited Â