Diamonds
were first discovered in South Africa in 1867. The son of a farmer by
the name of Daniel Jacobs collected what he thought were shiny stones
along the bank of the Orange River.
Other kids
in the neighboring Villages would use the stones to play games. Soon,
they caught the eye of a neighbor named Schalk van Nieker who offered to
buy one for money. The boy's mother laughed and just gave it to him.
Nieker
passed the stone around to a few people to see if it had any value. It
soon ended up in the hands of a physician and amateur geologist by the
name of W.G. Atherstone who came to the conclusion that it was a 21.25
carat diamond. Once the governor of Cape Colony purchased the diamond
for £500, news began to spread throughout the region, and prospectors
started to congregate in hopes of striking it rich.
Two
Englishmen by the name of Cecil J. Rhodes and Barney Barnato decided to
buy up the mines in the area. In 1888, they combined their holdings to
create De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, establishing its
headquarters in Kimberley, South Africa.
Most
of the people who ended up working in the mines were Black migrant
workers. Most of their lands had been seized by British colonists, and
they had no other means of making a living, other than to work in the
mines for subsistence wages.
Between 1897 and 1899, more than a thousand Black laborers died due to mining accidents and a host of disease-related illnesses.
The
precursors to apartheid began to really take root in the city of
Kimberley in which communities were divided up by ethnicities, and mixed
marriages became outlawed.
Certain public
areas were reserved for "European Only," and the movement of African
people was heavily restricted. Apartheid only came to an end in the
early 1990s.
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