The man slips the plastic pouch of gems into his mouth, an illicit haul from the sandy deposits scattered among the mountains of South Africa’s diamond coast.
“It’s my safe,” he explains, sliding the stash back along the inside of his cheek.
The group of diggers are waiting for the cover of darkness to make another raid on a disused mine, opposite their make-shift camp, where 10 miners died in an avalanche three months ago.
Photo: AFP
Illegal miners in South Africa are ready to risk death to chase a share of the mineral riches that shaped the continent’s biggest economy.
In sparsely populated Namaqualand, where the famed gem deposits run along the icy Atlantic Ocean to the Namibian border, diamond giant De Beers was once the top employer, providing 3,000 jobs and building two towns with recreation halls, a golf course and schools, to house its staff.
However, its mines were halted in 2008 and the company’s Namaqualand operations are in the final stages of a 225 million rand (US$27 million) sell-off after years of retrenchments.
The slowdown has emptied out the private mining towns, but has lured growing numbers of diggers from the area’s other small settlements into the abandoned fields.
“I can say that more than 60 percent of the active workforce are involved in the informal diamond trade,” said Andy Pienaar, of the social outreach office in Komaggas, one of the few small villages in the mining area.
“There was sort of a blessing from the community that ‘people, you may go’” dig, he added. “It was about survival. It was about sustaining and we’re not talking about high life standards, we’re talking about just basically survival.”
Komaggas has little sign of gem wealth along dirt roads that wind past humble homes where many residents survive on government welfare payments.
However, one local buyer, who also digs with a team who share the profits, estimates that he has made about 400,000 rand since he started digging three years ago.
“It changed my life -completely. I don’t even mind about looking for a job now because I was running around Cape Town, Johannesburg, looking for a job — there’s no need now, I’ve got a job now,” he said.
“I’m not a rich man but I can support my family each and every month,” he added.
With some of the world’s richest mineral reserves, mining and its knock-on industries contributed nearly 20 percent of GDP in 2010. Illegal mining losses represent a tiny fraction of that, but were still estimated at 5 billion rand four years ago.
Among the most popular targets for illegal miners are the gold industry’s disused mine shafts.
However, such shafts see regular fatalities from working in unsafe conditions. In Namaqualand, the diggers went underground, into the sandy layers usually mined in open pits, which eventually turned into a graveyard when the tunnels collapsed.
“It’s having quite a big impact on us as a business, but one of the biggest concerns we face around illegal mining is the safety issue associated with illegal -diamond mining,” De Beers spokesman Innocent Mabusela said.
“We would like to see tougher penalties,” he added.
The Namaqualand diggers are only fined 300 rand for trespassing if caught in the mines.
Diamond output is slowing — to nearly 9 million carats in 2010 from more than 15 million five years earlier — but the country’s deposits which produced famed rocks such as the giant Cullinan diamond are still yielding.
Two years ago, South African gems brought in the fourth highest values in the world: 15 percent of the US$12 billion worldwide production.
There is talk of “millions” being made in a boom in the area from January until the May accident, with the fatal Bontekoe site drawing hundreds of miners who used to queue to get into an underground cave and tunnels.
“It is very difficult and dangerous, you can be murdered in the process,” said a female buyer who only wanted to be known as Risa.
“If somebody knows you’ve got diamonds, they might follow you and try to get them. If you resist, they can kill you to get them,” she said.
Despite South Africa’s diamond trade regulations, a rock can be easily sold on the black market.
However, beyond the profits, the locals also feel a strong sense of entitlement to the land that predates the arrival of white prospectors in the late 1920s.
South Africa’s apartheid past handed control of the country’s resources to whites and only 8.9 percent of mines had shifted ownership by 2009.
“De Beers occupies our land and should give it back to us,” Pienaar said. “We do not want to be slaves on our own land any more. We don’t just want to be workers, we want to be owners. We want to be part of the decision making process.”
The community plans to lodge a claim to the land and there is also bitterness that the shine of gems has not reached Komaggas.
“Nothing has happened here,” said William Cloete, who runs a licensed mine next to Bontekoe. “All our diamonds, the billions, are out of our land ... But we’re sitting with nothing — an empty town with nothing.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last