Editor’s Note
This article examines the dark legacy of conflict diamonds in West Africa and the international response, notably the Kimberley Process certification scheme established in 2003. It highlights the complex journey from a resource fueling war to one governed by ethical oversight, a critical transition in global commodity markets.
In the 1990s, rebel groups devastated Liberia and Sierra Leone, financed by a war economy based on the exploitation of diamond deposits. Suddenly, the business was associated not with glamour but with child soldiers and forced labor – also thanks to the Hollywood film “Blood Diamond” starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Certificates were supposed to provide a remedy. In 2003, the Kimberley Process, developed under UN leadership, came into force, aiming to keep blood diamonds off the world market.
Secretive, expensive, and mysterious: the global diamond trade is one of the most dazzling businesses in human history. But it is in a state of upheaval – new lab-grown diamonds are shaking an old world.
Usually, optimism prevails at the Mining Indaba. When Africa’s mining industry, one of the continent’s success stories, meets for its annual gathering in Cape Town, speeches are given, backs are slapped, and deals are made. But in the spring of 2018, representatives of the diamond business struck a different tone.
Diamond, from the Greek *adámas*, means invincible. The hardest material found in nature is a mythical substance. Centuries-old legends surround the most precious of stones; diamonds symbolize power, wealth, beauty, love – pretty much everything humans desire.
Diamonds have been produced synthetically since the 1950s. For a long time, however, the results were only suitable for industrial purposes, for drilling tools or medical technology, not for jewelry – they weren’t thick or pure enough. But for a few years now, laboratories have been producing diamonds of jewelry quality, cheaply and in practically unlimited quantities.
What does this do to a commodity whose value has always lain in its rarity? In a market that is already in upheaval because new competitors are pressuring the former monopolist De Beers?
Capital has taken a close look at the global diamond industry – in South Africa, Israel, India, and the Black Forest. And in doing so, it has also traced the technological leap that will ultimately force the powerful De Beers corporation to change its strategy – even if its representatives still deny this at the industry meeting in Cape Town.
Once the most important diamond mine in the world: “The Big Hole” in the South African town of Kimberley.
When Kimberley got electric streetlights in 1882, there was only one other city in the world that already had them: Philadelphia. Today, hardly anything points to the former pioneering status of the South African town. Except for the hole. It is considered the largest ever dug by human hands: The Big Hole, 17 hectares in size, located in the heart of the city that grew up around the mine. Miners dug up 14.5 million carats of rough diamonds here – one carat is 0.2 grams, making 2.9 tons. For decades, the Kimberley mine was the most significant diamond mine in the world.
In 1866, 15-year-old farm boy Erasmus Jacobus found a glittering pebble while playing on the banks of the Orange River, which upon closer inspection turned out to be a diamond. Soon, prospectors roamed the area. One of these groups had hired a cook who, because he was constantly drunk, got on everyone’s nerves. To get rid of him for a few days, they sent him in May 1871 to search for diamonds on an acacia-covered hill. When he returned, his pocket was jingling.
Diamonds are formed when high pressure and temperatures around 1200 degrees Celsius deep in the Earth’s mantle compress carbon into crystals. They only come within human reach if a volcanic eruption hurls them to the surface. The hill where the drink-loving cook made his find consisted of volcanic rock. It was located on a farm that belonged to two Dutch settlers: the brothers Diederik and Johannes de Beer.
The known diamond deposits in India and Indonesia were considered exhausted since the 18th century. The find in South Africa was the first in modern times that could be exploited on an industrial scale. This now happened immediately. Under pressure from the British colonial power, the de Beer brothers had to sell their land for a pittance. They packed their belongings and disappeared into the steppe. Only their name remained.