Photo provided to the FRANCE 24 Observers. Some of the stones collected by Mtshali and her family. We are worried that the government says we must give back the stones if they are real diamonds, but we can’t do that, we’ve been neglected for so many years.ĭespite local authorities imploring people to leave the site for inspection, and uncertainty surrounding the true material of the stones, hundreds of people remain hopeful that the discovery will be their key to a prosperous future.
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Suddenly they see something that might be precious and they’re interested in us. Within a week of discovering these stones, the government sends people, but they never came before to check the water, the roads, the people living in poverty.
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We don’t have purified water, we don’t have paved roads – it’s rural. ‘Suddenly the government sees something that might be precious and they’re interested in us’įor Mtshali, the government’s intervention reveals systemic issues in her region.įor years, we have told the government that we have problems with roads, with schools, but we’ve been neglected. The government has asked people to vacate the site, fearing “chaos and a possible stampede” alongside concerns about the spread of Covid-19. The South African Department of Minerals and Energy sent their “enforcement and compliance” unit to inspect the site on June 15. #DiamondRush in #Ladysmith, KwaHlathi /ZotkILw4z1- D i m b a n e June 13, 2021Ī video posted on Twitter June 13 shows hundreds of people digging tirelessly for pieces of stone.Īfter the discovery went viral on social media on June 13, the government of KwaZulu-Natal, the province in which KwaHlathi is located, called for order, proclaiming that the excavations amounted to “illegal mining”. People are even sleeping there now, which shows how hungry and desperate they are. They wait for someone to dig out the soil and they start searching, because the stones are so tiny. The field is an open space, but it’s not big enough to accommodate all these people, they are crowded in the few open holes. You’d be surprised if you knew this place, because usually we only see a car every 15 minutes, but now there’s a lot of traffic. There are now people from all over, from different provinces. The rumours escalated into a national frenzy:
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While the existence of diamonds in the region has not been ruled out, some experts surmise that it is more likely quartz, a similarly transparent crystal that is far less valuable than diamond. They expect conclusive results before mid-July. In the case that they’re real, we want to have more of them, as much as possible.Ī team of geologists from the government has collected samples in order to determine whether the material is diamond or not. They’re still digging because the results are not out yet – they’re still testing whether they are real diamonds or not. Every person from my family has gone there. You have to dig for about a metre and you can find the precious stones, they’re very small. We used digging equipment, shovels, pickaxes, and we found a lot of them. Large Dimond reserves found by locals at kwahlathi was madness /KB43dmjN1J- Dashing-Dee June 11, 2021Ī video posted on Twitter June 11 shows crowds of people, equipped with pickaxes and shovels, searching for diamonds in KwaHlathi.