2024 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 02:07
Authorities over the weekend asked all diggers to leave the area, citing coronavirus restrictions, to no avail
Single mother Lihle Magudulela recently wandered around a hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, and noticed an unusual crystal-like pebble.
After she cleaned it of the dirt, she found the stone to be very similar to a rough diamond.
When she began to brag about the find with the neighbors, rumors instantly spread throughout the area. And when a local shepherd found several such crystal-like stones at once, people with shovels piled up here.
Thousands have now gathered on the outskirts of the village of Kwahlati, more than 300 kilometers southeast of Johannesburg, despite government warnings that these obscure stones are not necessarily diamonds.
Men and women turn over the lumps of earth with shovels and picks and desperately dig in the ground with their bare hands. Many find mysterious whitish stones and carefully hide them in their pockets, believing that they are diamonds that are worth millions of dollars.
“They are real,” shines with joy Magudulela, who is in her 40s and struggles to feed her three children.
“I'm going to buy a car, a house, send my children to a private school,” she told AFP reporters.
The prospect of finding a diamond has sent shimmering ripples of hope to one of South Africa's poorest regions as the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated decades of extremely high unemployment.
The country, world renowned for its mineral wealth, still holds the record for the world's largest diamond discovery, Cullinan, discovered in 1905 in a small mining town of the same name.
South Africa is also the center of the Kimberley Process, an international certification scheme designed to keep conflict diamonds out of the market.
“We are poor, we are unemployed. But that could change everything,” says Preziz, 38, who did not want to give her full name.
She spent the night digging with her teenage son and little daughter. Her son grips tightly a clear crystal the size of a ping-pong ball.
“They are not tired, we are looking for money,” exclaims Preziz.
Rumor has it that the famous Cullinan diamond, which weighed more than 3,000 carats without a cut, also once lay just a few meters underground and was dug up with an ordinary penknife.
This rough stone was the source for nine major diamonds used to adorn the British crown jewels, as well as nearly 100 small diamonds.
Johannesburg resident Tulani Manyati, 36, came to Kwahlati from the poor town of Alexandra with her four young daughters.
"We are going to live in Dubai. I want a house with two levels, it will change our life," said Manyati, fiddling with the accumulation of found stones in his pocket.
"There is no school today," adds her daughter. "We're digging for diamonds."
Rumor has it that foreigners buy these stones for several hundred rand in the neighboring town of Ladysmith. But experts believe that the stones are unlikely to be particularly valuable.
“These are not diamonds, people are wasting their time here,” says 18-year-old Bhekumuzi Luwuno, skeptically examining one of the stones he dug up overnight.
Authorities over the weekend asked all diggers to leave the area, citing coronavirus restrictions, to no avail.
On Tuesday, the government sent a team of geology and mining experts to the area to collect rocks for analysis. Police cars, meanwhile, are monitoring the area to contain the crowd.
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