The local government has ordered people to leave the site to make way for the investigation as fears have grown that the hundreds of mostly maskless diggers could spread the coronavirus amid a third wave of the pandemic hitting the country.īy late Tuesday, however, their requests had gone unheeded, and police cars were monitoring the area to keep the crowds in check. 'The tests conducted conclusively revealed that the stones discovered in the area are not. Triggered the diamond rush Thousands of people all over the world came. At a media briefing on Sunday, Ravi Pillay, provincial executive council member for economic development and tourism, said that the stones found there were only quartz. 1867- Vaal River (edge of Cape Colony in South Africa) December 1866- 1867. "These are not diamonds, people here are just wasting their time," said 18-year-old Bhekumuzi Luvuno, skeptically inspecting one of the stones he unearthed overnight. A boy holds an unidentified stone at KwaHlathi village, South Africa, on June 15, 2021. We have very ancient geology sticking out of the ground there as well so it is not impossible.” “But, I don't want to rule out that these might be diamonds because where the Tugela River is following a major fault zone. “You can get beautiful extensive deposits of quartz crystals - so there is a possibility that these might be quartz crystals,” geologist Dr Gideon Groenewald told CapeTalk radio. Videos circulating online showed dozens of people shouting in celebration after the first find.īut experts say the stones are unlikely to be valuable.
The news quickly spread on social media, causing the crowds to grow despite a lack of analysis on the transparent stones. The hunt began after word spread on social media that a herder had found a stone that looked like a diamond.
But this could change everything," said Precious, 38, who had spent the night digging with her teenage son and baby daughter. South Africa's unemployment rate rose to 32.5 per cent last year, a new record as the country's economy was battered by a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus. The rush comes amid a sharp rise in unemployment in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the poorest regions of South Africa, where already bleak economic prospects have been worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. The mad scramble for fame and fortune in 1871, followed the discovery of diamond deposits on a hillock dubbed Colesberg Kopje. He said those that continue to mine in the area, a situation that also risks the spread of Covid-19, would be encouraged to leave, though law enforcement could be drawn upon if necessary.Despite a lack of scientific analysis of the crystal-like rocks, first discovered over the weekend, over 1,000 people wearing bucket hats and boots have been searching the area nearly 200 miles southeast of Johannesburg in the hope of striking gold. Meanwhile, the number of people mining the land had dwindled to less than 500, Pillay continued, though significant damage had already been done with an area of around 50 hectares covered in holes of up to one metre, posing a danger to cattle. People in the area had also raised concerns specifically around roads and water during the visit, which officials at the briefing said they would address. Like many areas in South Africa, high levels of unemployment and poverty have left communities living hand to mouth. The event had highlighted the socio-economic challenges faced by local people, he continued. "The value, if any, of the quartz crystals is yet to be established but it must be mentioned that the value of quartz crystals is very low compared to that of diamonds." "The tests conducted conclusively revealed that the stones discovered in the area are not diamonds as some had hoped," he said, adding they were in fact quartz crystals. Provincial executive council member for economic development and tourism, Ravi Pillay, told a media briefing on Sunday he had counted some 3,000 there during a visit to the site, where samples were taken to identify the stones. People from across South Africa travelled to KwaHlathi in the country's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province where villagers had been digging since June 12 after a herder discovered the first stone in an open field and put out the word.
Thousands flock to rural South African village in hope of mining diamond only to find quartz crystals.(Reuters)
Then came significant finds in Griqualand West. Three years later the 83-carat 'Star of South Africa' was discovered in the same area, unleashing a frenzied diamond rush seldom seen before or since. Unidentified stones that lured thousands of fortune seekers to a rural South African village to mine the land with picks and shovels were not diamonds as hoped, officials said on Sunday, but quartz stones with relatively low, if any, value. The Kimberley Mine Museum offers a trip back in time to when diamonds were first found in South Africa in 1866, near Hopetown in the Northern Cape.
0 kommentar(er)
