Last Updated :
19 March 2010 at 20:15 IST
Diamond cradle Jagersfontein property for sale
By Geena Paul
JOHANNEBURG (Commodity Online): Kimberley is synonymous with diamonds. And people all over the world know what is Kimberley process and where Kimberley is situated.
However, nobody knows how Kimberley was discovered. It is a story going back to centuries. There was a small town called Jagersfontein in the Free State province of South Africa around 200 years ago. The original farm on which the town now stands was once the property of a Griqua Jacobus Jagers, hence the name Jagersfontein. He sold the farm to CF Visser in 1854. A diamond rush started in 1870 after farmer JJ de Klerk found a 50 carat (10 g) diamond. Then a mad rush for diamonds started and three years later diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, some 130 km away from this town. In fact the diamond rush had started at Jagersfontein town itself. From there it, spread to other areas in Africa and that resulted in the finding of Kimberley.
Mines no longer operate in Jagersfontein, but there were many great finds, such as the 972 carat (194.4 g) Excelsior Diamond of 1893 and the 637 carat (127.4 g) Reitz Diamond of 1895. The diamond mine is the deepest hand-excavated hole in the world.
Jagersfontein has fallen on hard times since the mine was closed, and the downward spiral continued due to municipal mismanagement after the end of Apartheid. Exorbitant property taxes have been imposed on the white residents, causing most of them to leave the town. This in turn led to high unemployment under the remaining residents, both black and white.
And, now diamond giant De Beers has decided to get rid of the Jagersfontein property. The Jagersfontein mine leaves more than 13-million tonnes of mineral resources in tailings, with an average grade of 12,8 ct/t.
De Beers said in a statement that the tailings (commonly known as mine dumps) may be attractive to a mining company, or mining consortium, with empowerment credentials and a sound track record in respect of tailings processing operations or comparable operations.
The group’s South African unit, De Beers Consolidated Mines, will issue a request for expressions of interest later this month. The Jagersfontein mine, which predated the discovery of Kimberley diamonds in South Africa, produced several large diamonds, including the 995,2-ct Excelsior stone, which was discovered in 1893 and was the world’s largest rough diamond until the Cullinan diamond was found.
The 650,8-ct Jubilee diamond was discovered in 1895, while a more recent discovery, the Earth Star, found on May 16, 1967, weighed 248,9 ct as a rough gem.
De Beers said it has had discussions with national, provincial and local government authorities about the sale. The diamond producer went to court in 2007, to defend its rights to the Jagersfontein dumps, after South Africa’s department of minerals and energy granted a prospecting right to the dumps to empowerment firm Ataqua Mining.
De Beers argued that that the tailings contained diamonds that had already been mined, not resources that were naturally contained in the earth.
The Bloemfontein High Court eventually ruled in early 2008 that the Jagersfontein dumps were excluded from the country’s Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act, under which existing mineral rights reverted to the state and had to be applied for and converted to new order rights.
The Ataqua prospecting right to Jagersfonten was set aside in the ruling.
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