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Mid-winter in Kimberley, the diamond town of South Africa, is generally cold and dusty, but it can also be cold and wet, and every so often it actually snows in Kimberley. To be sure, on cloud-less days temperatures will rise to about 20 degrees, but can plummet to well below zero at night, and if it is a cloudy day, the temperature will generally remain below 15 degrees. In other words, Kimberley is a place of extremes. It is a true macho mining town, a place that places a premium on rough and ready behaviour, where “’n Boer maak ‘n plan” (a farmer makes a plan) is the norm and society does not tolerate or suffer people of a more genteel disposition well. My rough field-notes for the 9th of July 2024 are a jumble of scribbles, exclamation marks and bold underlinings of words and phrases, “Seattle Coffee Company, as I sit two Boertjies come in wearing Boerboel shorts and beanies”.[1] This is followed by a string of hastily jotted single words and sparse sentences:
“CARBONADOS – meteorites, BARBERTON 4.2, MANTLE – LITHOSPHERE – AESTHENOSPHERE, diamonds in the lithosphere, Carbon/Graphite, 3.2 Billion year old, Diamonds, 220 km deep, ECLEDITES (Sea crust, can see evidence of sea water)
My worked out field-diary for the 9th of July 2024 provides a semblance of order for my notes and gives some indication of my excitement:
Just had a meeting of about 45 minutes with Angus Jewel. The meeting went very very well. If all goes well I will be going to the Zama Zama site along the Boshof road opposite Wesselton Mine.[2]
Two years previously I had first contacted Angus Jewel, who as an exploration geologist specialised in diamonds, and with a career that spans sixty years and covers all the Kimberlite diamond sites of South Africa and Botswana[3], is probably the most knowledgeable and well-informed geologist that I could ever hope to interview for the purposes of my research. For the bulk of his sixty year career Jewel was employed by De Beers Consolidated Mining operating out of Kimberley. In the present Jewel is formally retired, although he does work as a consultant geologist for mining companies seeking expertise on diamond bearing kimberlites. Previously Jewel had indicated that he would be prepared to take me to the field and to show me an operational diamond mine in the vicinity of Kimberley. In the event, the mine had closed down, but Jewel was prepared to take me to a site along the Boshof road where Zama Zama artisanal miners were working on former diamond depositing floors now owned by the Ekapa mining company.[4]
Two days later (11th July 2024) finds me once again in the Seattle Coffee Company coffee shop in downtown Kimberley, with Baristas crafting elegant designs in cappuccino coffee foam, a golfer in the case of my companion, and a heart for me. My companion, the veteran geologist Angus Jewel, flips open his laptop and proceeds to give me a highly informed lecture on diamonds. Diamonds were formed in the lithosphere some 3 Billion years ago at extremely high temperatures and pressures at between 200 and 250 kilometres below the earth's surface. Approximately 90 million years ago these diamonds were brought to the surface in volcanic pipes that were essentially vertical fast-flowing streams of molten rock that we refer to as Kimberlite. The volcanic pipes that carried diamonds punched through the rock that overlay them and emerged at the surface nearly a kilometre above the current surface of the land. In the 90 million years since these eruptions nearly a kilometre of rock and soil has been eroded away. And along with that the kimberlite pipes were also eroded, the diamonds captured within the kimberlite weathered out and were washed away towards the Atlantic Ocean in a river system that we now know as the Orange River. A river that did not always flow along the same bedding, and at one stage was part of the Buffels River. Now, the important thing is that the value of alluvial diamonds increases the further one gets from the source. As the diamonds tumble in the river, all those with flaws in them invariably break, thus the further from the source the less the flaws within it and thus the higher the value per carat of alluvial diamonds.
The lecture over, we drove to the site. We arrived at a heavily padlocked gate in a high barbed wire fence with triple rolls of razor wire at its base and a single roll on top. The undergrowth had been cut back from along the fence and the gate. Fast-growing Mesquite and Pepper, both trees introduced by De Beers in the past, had sprouted at the gate.
Angus stops the car at the gate and we get out whilst Angus attempts to call the security detail of Ekapa mining that will accompany us within their property. After a few minutes, in which I look at the world beyond the gate and marvel at the size of South African post-industrial landscapes, a bakkie (small utility vehicle) pitches up. With its high resolution number displayed on stickers all around it is clearly a mining bakkie, but it is the heavy mesh that covers the windows as well as the thick roll bar that designates this pick up as part of the mine’s tactical unit. A young man with close-cropped hair, a flak jacket, a greenish khaki uniform and a pistol stripped to his side jumps out and greets Angus as “Oom”, uncle in Afrikaans and a term of respect. The young man, Jaco, introduces himself to me and excuses himself for being late explaining that he had been busy on the other side of town. Jaco proceeds to unlock the gate and tells us to wait for the security detail that will accompany us as we move further into the floors and the tailing dumps of the company. Shuffling around I come across spent shotgun shell cartridges scattered in the dirt, and Angus tells me that there have been run ins between company security and Zama Zamas, but that all is calm at present. A number of the artisanal miners have formed themselves into an association that has negotiated the right to process part of the tailing dumps that Ekapa owns and might still contain diamonds.
Once the security detail arrives, two men in khaki, combat boots and shotguns, in a twin-cab Toyota Hilux with rollbars and wire mesh covering the windows, we drive for about a kilometre over what had once been floors upon which the diamonds mining companies had dumped Kimberlite (Blue Ground) in the past to allow for it to weather. Angus pointed out peridotite boulders that had come up from 250 km depth in the lithosphere within the stream of molten Kimberlite thrusting its way to the surface. In the past the kimberlite dumps had been stabilised by “banks” of these boulders.
Now, what used to be an endless expanse bereft of any vegetation, is covered with tufts of grass and scrub, primarily Mesquite or prosopis and Withaak. We turn right on a dirt path that leads past scatterings of small-scale Zama Zama workings in between the thickets of thorn bush. Heaps of red sand, about a metre in height, indicate spots where people have been sieving the sparse soil for diamonds that might have fallen by the wayside as the Blue Ground was processed in the past.
At the site in between the thornbushes we see that the people have dug down through the red soil to the bedrock of shale which has been swept clean in the search for diamonds. We carry on driving further to the edge of the floors, the red soil starts to give way to the green grey dust that is the result of crushed and weathered Blue Ground. As the thorn trees thin out and eventually disappear altogether we enter a grey lunar landscape. At the very edge of this landscape, between the thorn scrub and lunar grey stands an old tan-coloured Peugeot 404. All its doors, bonnet and boot propped open with sticks, and next to it, in the early morning sun two rocking babies (sieves mounted between four posts and rocked back and forth) and a series of piles of sieved dirt of grey and red.
Ragged men, wearing a collection of overalls and high visibility protective clothing, stand by rocking cradles, shaking the red or grey soil through their sieves whilst the wind swirls by and the dust rises into the air. The men have draped scarves and cloth across their nose and mouth, even so, eyes, red-rimmed from the dust, look out from faces covered in dust, eyelashes and eyebrows coated in dust. The voices of women can be heard and cooking fires indicate that people live on site.
The lunar landscape has been created by the processed Blue Ground dumps, about five metres in height and extending from one side of the horizon to the next. The dumps of processed Blue Gound (Kimberlite) have been crushed, washed and passed over grease tables in the past in an attempt to harvest the diamonds that had been brought to the surface by the Kimberlite. The processed Blue Ground, which emerges from the process as a slurry, has been deposited into dumps that have been stabilised by “Banks”, walls of piled rocks that have come up within the Kimberlite but are known not to have diamonds within them.
Ahead of us, working along the edges of the dumps large numbers of men work rocking babies. As with the men whom we had seen earlier working among the thorn trees, these men had also stripped the soil down to the bedrock. But, in addition, they were also reworking the processed Blue Ground, as well as sorting out the rocks that had been used in the “banks”. In particular, the men had collected lumps of partially weathered Kimberlite that had inadvertently been left unprocessed and included in the “bank”. Working at rocking babies with different mesh sizes the men crushed and sieved the Kimberlite.
We approached one of the Zama Zamas and he spoke to us in Afrikaans, asking for money and stating that he is hungry. Angus drew my attention to the baked red brick that the man was using to crush the kimberlite and work it through the sieve of his rocking baby. Angus picked it up and showed me that it had been stamped with the letters DBCM (De Beers Consolidated Mines). In other words, the brick is part of the legacy of the time when Kimberley and all the farms and territories around it were either part of, or subject to, the company established by Cecil John Rhodes; Kimberley was well and truly a company town, and to a certain degree it still is, but now no longer subject to DBCM.
Angus and I walked on to the dumps and the “banks” themselves. All the while he points out interesting mineralogical and geological features. He points out the collected piles of Kimberlite, and tells me where he would be digging if he had to survive as a Zama Zama. He points out older coarser material and shows how this has collected at the base of the dumps. Angus notes that due to the relative density of diamonds they will have tended to collect at the base of the slurry dumps and that that would be the spot where he would be digging. An older man in freshly ironed immaculate blue overalls has been working a bit further away from the group and has been processing precisely those patches that Angus had suggested. The man approaches Angus, clearly aware that Angus possesses valuable insights. Angus compliments the man on his choice of site, and suggests that he should work further along the base of the dump. The man replies that to do so would be to go beyond where he is currently allowed to work. At this stage a second security vehicle arrives and Angus indicates that it is time for us to leave.