Unemployment in South Africa is at 32.6 percent, the highest level recorded since the government began producing quarterly labor force reports in 2008. The government said tests had shown that the discoveries were quartz rather than diamonds.“As the man of the house, it makes me feel less than,” he said of the difficulty of providing for his three children. Staples like beef, milk and butter were luxuries he could no longer afford. With his job search hitting dead ends, he has been subsisting on social grants totaling less than 1,100 rand ($77) a month, a quarter of what he had earned at the factory. He had been without a job since October when the textile factory where he worked as a supervisor burned down. It sounded too good to be true, but he had to check it out. Molefe came here after reading on social media that diamonds had been discovered in the field, less than an hour from his rural home village. The chief said he was none too happy about what the diggers were doing to the land, but he understood their plight and did not intervene. Now, it looks like a bare, cratered moon - a treacherous terrain of holes, many of them the size of graves. The diamond rush has completely transformed KwaHlathi, where the chief estimates that about 4,000 families reside.Ĭattle once grazed on the digging field, which sits on traditional land owned by the chief and was until recently covered with Sweet thorn trees and grass. The diamond rush has completely transformed KwaHlathi, where the chief estimates that about 4,000 families reside.If they are real diamonds, it means we are winning.”

Molefe, 41, who conceded that he had no clue whether they were actually diamonds. Two days of strenuous digging had yielded four stones for Mr. No one who came seemed the least deterred by the widespread skepticism that the stones were really diamonds. The rumor that a herdsman had found clear stones resembling diamonds in the soil of a grassy, tree-filled slope last month lured thousands of South Africans to KwaHlathi, a sleepy village in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal where cattle roam freely.Ĭoming by taxi and by car, many from hours away, they dreamed of a turn of luck in a nation whose persistent struggles with joblessness have reached new heights amid the pandemic. He took a few more vigorous whacks into the edges of the shallow crater he had dug at the bottom of a hillside, before scooping up a handful of loose dirt and shaking it in search of the sparkle of a gem. KWAHLATHI, South Africa - Sbusiso Molefe stretched the pickax high above his head and hacked into the clumpy black dirt around his feet.

Diamond rush born desperation distrust