FASHION BRAIN • Jewellery

e recently ran an article entitled '7 reasons why diamonds are a girls best friend'...whilst this is very true in so many ways, how many of us know what is the history of the diamond?

Or how it has become a cornerstone in all our lives? We all have them, but what do you know about them?

Let's travel, err, time-travel that is to the late 19th century to colonial South Africa. In 1820, the British arrived to colonise South Africa, 1866 saw the discovery of the largest diamond deposits in the world, Kimberley Diamond Mine in Cape Province. But it is Hopetown I am interested in.

Thirty years after the British landed in SA, Sir Harry Smith, the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Cape Colonies extended the Cape Territories to the Orange River along its' Northern Border.

Various nomadic tribes traditionally inhabit this area with the Tekboere being the last of these as well as the Griquas. The area was a hard environment with little or no basics; you survived here on your wits, and nothing else.

Several farms granted to those in the area that were able to prove that they were residents of the area. The farms were very large in area, diverse in landscapes as well as equally harsh in environment.

Hopetown was born. How it became to be named as such, is under dispute, the official version is that it was named after the acting secretary of the Cape Colonial government, Major William Hope, I prefer the more romantic, and more realistic version that also fits with the times, the widow of the first owner of the Duvenaarsfontein Farm wore a silver anchor on a neck chain, when her servants, who had never seen an anchor, asked her what it was, 'It is a symbol of HOPE' she replied. One of the servants asked if he could make a wooden anchor...Hopetown was born!

A certain gentleman named Schalk van Niekerk, was walking to a neighbouring farm, some twenty miles North of Hopetown, he noticed a very interesting stone that the 15 year old son of the owner was playing with, a glittering white pebble.

He had already been told that this could be diamond country by a W.F.J. von Judwig, whom he had befriended some years before. This was proved to be a 21.25-carat diamond, we now know as The Eureka. (Pictured right).

Sir Philip Wodehouse the Governor of the Cape bought the diamond, from van Niekerk for a paltry five hundred pounds, £38,276.72 by today's money. (purchase value is based on calculations of relative value). The 21.25carat rough diamond, was eventually cut in Paris in 1867, it is now a modest 10.73carat stone with a brownish yellow tint, and worth an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

In the year 1868 another diamond was found in the Hopetown region, this time it was found by a local witch doctor by the name of Swartbooi, who stumbled across the stone on the Zandfontein farm, near to Hopetown. It was, until the second find, widely believed that the original Eureka find was a fluke. This second find changed the history of South Africa forever.

The second stone was again sold by Van Niekerk, for the sum of eleven thousand pounds to a pair of brothers, who in turn sold it for thirty thousand pounds, to the Earl of Dudley. It was this second find that initiated the Diamond Rush to South Africa. It was this rush, which led to discovering some of the largest deposits of diamonds in the world.

With fortune hunters from all over the world heading down what was rapidly becoming known as the 'Diamond Highway', Hopetown grew. With it sprung up other places where there were also diamond strikes, as well as gold and other precious metals. Places such as Kimberley, which is renowned for the some of the best diamonds in the world. Companies such as Cartier, Harry Merrill, Mont Blanc and Aspreys (The jeweller to the Queen of England), have all used Kimberley diamonds from South Africa.

The most famous, and probably the most successful name in diamonds to come out of the 19th Century, has to be Cecil J. Rhodes who is largely credited with the building of South Africa as we know it today. Rhodes was also a main instrumental party to the forming both South Africa as well as the diamond companies there. As a politician he was largely responsible for the diamond legislation...South Africa is currently responsible for some 15-20% of the worlds diamonds. A future is secured!!!

But there is a dark side to diamonds; diamonds have been responsible for many a crime, greed and even murder. Many people have had their lives torn apart for the little rock you may be wearing on your finger, or around your neck. I am talking about CONFLICT DIAMONDS.

Conflict diamonds or 'Blood Diamonds' are those that come from places in Africa controlled by rebel forces, Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia etc, and not from those countries with an internationally recognised government such as South Africa.

In December 2000, the United Nations finally took a stance on the illicit trade of diamonds from war torn countries, and those in the hands of illegal factions such as the RUF (Sierra Leone), and UNITA (Angola), these are forces or factions that are opposed to legitimate and internationally recognised governments, and are also responsible for countless acts of atrocity towards countless thousands of people.

Conflict diamonds that originate from these areas, are often mined by people taken by force from their families, watched their wives and daughters raped, their sons hands chopped off for refusing to vote one way or another as well as their whole village being displaced and destroyed.

After all that, they are then returned to slavery in the diamond mines of these illegal regimes and made mine diamonds for the local warlord, in order that he my fund HIS war. It is these diamonds that are smuggled over the border in to Liberia, and other neighbouring countries, that fund the equally illegal trade of GUN RUNNING. Two evils that feed off each other.

The West, America, Europe etc are just as much to blame for these atrocities, as are those that cause them. They are the ones that buy and sell the diamonds as well as supply the arms that are used to destroy the lives of so many people.

---

Photo: Palani Moha

Add a comment