DIAMONDS have lost their sparkle in Kimberley, source of some of the 19th century’s greatest fortunes and a name bound up with the history of British colonial rule in Africa.
De Beers, the world’s largest diamond miner, has ceased production at its last three underground mines, ending 134 years of diamond extraction in this small town in the dusty Northern Cape, South Africa’s most sparsely populated province.
“These mines are more than a hundred years old,” David Noko, general manager of Kimberley Mines, said. “They are depleted. It is as simple as that. We have always known that mining is finite and must end some time. That is the nature of the business.”
Scotty Ross, a mining historian and guide at one of the sites, said: “The deeper you go, the more expensive it is to bring out the required tonnage. The diamonds are smaller and of lower quality. You finally reach a depth and output where it is no longer viable . . . That is where we are now.”
The company said in a statement that the mines were no longer profitable. They will formally close at the end of the year following the required consultation process with the Government and mining unions.
About 1,000 jobs will be lost, and the news has not gone down well in a town that has a 36 per cent unemployment rate and little to show for decades of often brutal and violent exploitation.
Yet De Beers, the company that first told the world that “a diamond is for ever”, believes Kimberley’s future could be even more glittering than its past. It has pledged to maintain other company activities in the town, and invested heavily in attempts to promote it as a tourist destination.
The company has put some £4.3 million towards upgrading the area around the Big Hole — the vast crater clawed out of the earth by thousands of desperate diggers — and helped to pay for the refurbishment of the Kimberley Club, favoured by the cigar-chomping diamond magnates when they are in town.
Market research indicates that the number of visitors to the site could increase from 80,000 a year to 200,000, and that they would bring with them many more jobs than those lost through the end of mining. Colonial-style trains, redolent of Empire, are beginning to stop at Kimberley on their runs from Pretoria to Cape Town.
“Maybe this time the money will be invested locally — there is very little in Kimberley for all that has been taken out,” said David, an accountant with the local municipality.
The rush to Kimberley began in 1871 when two brothers, Johannes and Diederik de Beer, found a handful of diamonds on their land. That discovery marked the start of South Africa’s emergence as a great mining nation — and entrenched white minority rule.
News of the find spread rapidly through the Cape Colony and the rest of the British Empire. Thousands of fortune-hunters descended on the town, which was then called New Rush.
One day an exhausted group of diggers, known as the Red Caps, found their cook drunk. As a punishment they told him to run up the nearby 1,000m-high Colesberg Kopje, or hill, and not come back until he had found diamonds. A few hours later, he was back with a fistful of them.
Using picks and shovels, as many as 50,000 desperate diggers clawed away at the small mound, slowly turning it into the world’s biggest man-made hole. New Rush was renamed Kimberley in 1873 after a visit by the British Colonial Secretary, the 1st Earl of Kimberley.
By the time the Big Hole, Kimberley’s first mine, was closed in 1914 it had a surface area of about 17 hectares — equivalent to 24 football pitches — and had been mined to a depth of 800 metres. About 22.5 million tonnes of earth had been excavated, yielding some 14.5 million carats of diamonds.
Some of the most famous diamonds in the world are believed to have come from the area, but no one really knows. “People just kept quiet. Buyers would never shout about getting a good deal. There were no records either, even of deaths,” said Janet Welsh, a registered tourist guide. “They worked hard, but they were not all that honest.”
Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist adventurer after whom Rhodesia was named and who became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, was one of the first to arrive. With astute use of the only water pump in the area, he raised money to buy up scores of small claims and forged a company; the forerunner of De Beers Consolidated Mines.
Today, De Beers is using new technology to reprocess several of the huge dumps that scar the surrounding landscape. The company’s main South African diamond sorting house will also remain in Kimberley, and its pension and payroll divisions have recently moved there as well.
“Our historic association with Kimberley is certainly not coming to an end. Nicky Oppenheimer (the current chairman) often stresses that Kimberley is his home,” a company spokesman said.
TEARS OF THE GODS IN A LAND OF DUST AND FLIES
THREE OF THE BEST
The Portuguese Diamond Thought to have been mined in 1910. The Smithsonian acquired it in 1963 for 2,400 carats of small diamonds
The Kimberley Originally a 490-carat stone, it was cut to 55 carats in 1958. Bought by a collector from Texas in 1971, valued at $500,000
The Tiffany Yellow Found in 1877 or 1878, it was named after the jewellery store that bought it for $18,000 (£10,000) and still owns it
