![]() ![]() “We kept saying, ‘What if something happens here? What if it breaks?’” said Itumeleng Monageng, 28, who unfortunately found out the answer: This month he was knee-high in muck, salvaging whatever he could from his home.įears heightened in recent years when residents said they periodically saw water seeping through the dam wall. Residents said they were excited when the mine roared back to life in 2010, believing it would create jobs.īut soon they were coughing from all the dust in the air, and watching with angst as the dam’s dirt facade nearly doubled in height. Reinet did not respond to requests for comment. Rupert’s holding company, Reinet Investments S.C.A., sold all of its shares in Jagersfontein Development to Stargems, a Dubai-based diamond manufacturer and retailer, according to a Stargems announcement. In April, just six months before the collapse, Mr. It sued for the right to mine tailings without a mining license and won a judgment in 2007.ĭe Beers then sold the tailings at Jagersfontein in 2010 to a consortium that eventually came under the control of Johann Rupert, a South African billionaire whose companies own luxury brands like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. It then sat idle, but in the early 2000s, De Beers sought to capitalize on improving technology to extract minerals from tailings. It yielded a 650-carat diamond, among the world’s largest, that was acquired by British merchants and from which was cut the jubilee diamond, named in honor of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.ĭe Beers, the global mining titan, operated the mine from 1932 to 1971. With its first diamonds extracted in 1870 by colonial settlers, the Jagersfontein mine is a relic of a diamond rush that often exploited Black South Africans while enriching white owners. Of management, he added, “They didn’t take it seriously.” ![]() Makalajane, 45, recalling his conversation. “He said, ‘I’ll tell you, that thing is going to blast,’” said Mr. Joe Makalajane, a pan operator at the mine, did not see the crack himself but spoke to the driver as they were ending their shift, he said. The driver reported it to a foreman, who checked it out but did not do anything, the workers said. 11, a truck driver at the dam spotted a crack in the facade, several workers there that day said in interviews. ![]() He said that while the company was still investigating the dam break, it “must accept liability that comes with the operations and with the break.” ‘That thing is going to blast’Īt about 2 a.m. “We were not even contemplating that something like this would happen,” Mr. The dam was regularly inspected, he said, and an engineering report from July declared it was structurally sound. Marius de Villiers, the legal compliance officer for the mine’s operating company, Jagersfontein Development, said it complied with all requirements set by South African regulators. Experts estimate that South Africa has hundreds of tailings dams, which mining watchdogs say is the legacy of an exploitative industry that extracts lucrative gems for jewelry stores abroad, while poor communities are saddled with toxic waste at home. The Jagersfontein disaster has caused alarm in a nation where heaping dams of mining waste, known as tailings, are part of the landscape. The worst fears of residents came true this month when a section of the dam crumbled, sending a thunderous rush of gray sludge through the community that killed at least one person, destroyed 164 houses, and turned a six-mile stretch of neighborhoods and grassy fields into an ashen wasteland. “We saw it long time, that one day this thing will burst,” said Memane Paulus, a machine operator at the dam for the past decade. Suspended like a frozen tsunami over neat tracts of Monopoly-like homes in the rural South African mining town of Jagersfontein, the dam alarmed residents who feared it may collapse. JAGERSFONTEIN, South Africa - The dirt wall holding in mucky waste from diamond mining grew over the years to resemble a wide, towering plateau. ![]()
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