![]() Mr McNally said what made his company's discovery even more extraordinary was that both diamonds exhibit a rare purple hue under ultraviolet light.įurther independent studies by Perth-based Delta Diamond Laboratory, has also revealed some of the alluvial diamonds they recovered from an ancient buried river system known as the L-Channel, glow an orangey-yellow colour after all UV light sources have been removed. In 2019, Russian miner Alrosa found a similar diamond, with a 0.62-carat outer shell and a free-moving 0.02-carat rough inside, which they dubbed the Matryoshka diamond after the traditional Russian nesting dolls. "So we thought, it's a diamond trapped inside a diamond. "At first we thought that it was a in stone or something inside of the diamond but it was clear," he said. India Bore Diamond Holdings managing director Peter McNally said the stone is thought to be one of only a handful of 'double diamonds' worldwide, which are highly sought after by collectors. “We must have money, cars, homes and our kids must be educated.The 0.85 carat gem which contains a second smaller diamond within a cavity inside, is thought to have formed up to 1400 million years ago, some 200 kilometres below the earth's surface. “Our dream is that, when we give the land back to Ekapa, 90% of us will have something in our pockets,” said 44-year-old miner Kagiso Nofomela, who hails from the town of Kuruman, about 145 miles away. The diamonds in the area of Kimberley mined by the cooperative, for example, are expected to run out in about five years. “While the World Bank is in continuing dialogue with the South African government, no study of the sector is planned at this time.”Įven should formalization projects like that at Kimberley ultimately prove successful, another question looms in the longer term: What happens to the small-scale miners when the resources run out, and where do they go? “Accurate, reliable data is an essential first step to understanding the sector, recognizing miners and formalizing their work,” said a World Bank spokeswoman. To plug this data gap the World Bank is pushing government to conduct a comprehensive study of artisanal mining, and may even fund it, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Pontsho Ledwaba, researcher at Wits University in Johannesburg, said there could be as many as 100,000 informal miners across South Africa. Illicit mining and mineral trading cost around $1.5 billion a year in lost sales, taxes and royalties, according to a 2017 estimate by industry group the Minerals Council, and sees criminal networks exploit vulnerable workers struggling to make ends meet. The failure thus far of this pilot scheme is a blow to wider corporate and governmental efforts to bring South Africa’s estimated tens of thousands of informal miners, or “zama-zamas”, into the mainstream, to boost productivity and curb crime. However the project has been hit by violence, with informal miners not included in the scheme attacking infrastructure and even members of the newly licensed cooperative, according to mine owner Ekapa Minerals which is running the initiative. The aim of the government-backed scheme was to curb illegal mining and black-market trade of diamonds, and serve as a blueprint for future attempts elsewhere in the country, not only in the diamond sector, but also potentially manganese, gold and chrome. Mine owners granted more than 800 unlicensed, or informal, small-scale miners the right to legally mine around 1,500 acres of diamond-rich waste fields. The project was launched 18 months ago in Kimberley, the site of a 19th-century diamond rush that lured fortune-seekers from the world over.
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