diamond rush south born desperation distrust

#Diamond rush south born desperation distrust cracked#

Now, it looks like a bare, cratered moon.

Cattle once grazed on the digging field.

People huddled to examine stones and celebrate their finds. While it was economic hardship that brought many here, the scene still felt like one big carnival, an escape from the hopelessness of a dour job market. “I’m selling,” others said quietly, offering stones for 100 rand ($7) to more than 600 rand, the prices revealing both their own doubts and their desperation. “Diamonds! Diamonds!” some people yelled. And there was no shortage of merchants looking to cash in on their newly extracted finds, which they insisted were precious stones.

#Diamond rush south born desperation distrust cracked#

Music blasted from cars while some people cracked jokes and sipped beer. Vendors sold biscuits, sweet corn kernels and kota - a South African street food of white bread, fries and bologna. Many diamond seekers wrapped themselves in blankets and slept in the holes they dug. They also help explain the long-shot appeal of KwaHlathi and its purported diamonds.Ī satellite village of sorts sprouted here. Those statistics translate into all manner of odd jobs - and risky ones, like venturing into abandoned mines, that have proved deadly. Among young people, the situation is even more dire: About three of every four South African youths are without a job. Unemployment in South Africa is at 32.6 percent, the highest level recorded since the government began producing quarterly labor force reports in 2008. The government said tests had shown that the discoveries were quartz rather than diamonds.“As the man of the house, it makes me feel less than,” he said of the difficulty of providing for his three children. Staples like beef, milk and butter were luxuries he could no longer afford. With his job search hitting dead ends, he has been subsisting on social grants totaling less than 1,100 rand ($77) a month, a quarter of what he had earned at the factory. He had been without a job since October when the textile factory where he worked as a supervisor burned down. It sounded too good to be true, but he had to check it out. Molefe came here after reading on social media that diamonds had been discovered in the field, less than an hour from his rural home village. The chief said he was none too happy about what the diggers were doing to the land, but he understood their plight and did not intervene. Now, it looks like a bare, cratered moon - a treacherous terrain of holes, many of them the size of graves. The diamond rush has completely transformed KwaHlathi, where the chief estimates that about 4,000 families reside.Ĭattle once grazed on the digging field, which sits on traditional land owned by the chief and was until recently covered with Sweet thorn trees and grass. The diamond rush has completely transformed KwaHlathi, where the chief estimates that about 4,000 families reside.If they are real diamonds, it means we are winning.”

Molefe, 41, who conceded that he had no clue whether they were actually diamonds. Two days of strenuous digging had yielded four stones for Mr.

No one who came seemed the least deterred by the widespread skepticism that the stones were really diamonds. The rumor that a herdsman had found clear stones resembling diamonds in the soil of a grassy, tree-filled slope last month lured thousands of South Africans to KwaHlathi, a sleepy village in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal where cattle roam freely.Ĭoming by taxi and by car, many from hours away, they dreamed of a turn of luck in a nation whose persistent struggles with joblessness have reached new heights amid the pandemic. He took a few more vigorous whacks into the edges of the shallow crater he had dug at the bottom of a hillside, before scooping up a handful of loose dirt and shaking it in search of the sparkle of a gem. KWAHLATHI, South Africa - Sbusiso Molefe stretched the pickax high above his head and hacked into the clumpy black dirt around his feet.