Workers unions have previously warned against job losses in South Africa’s mining sector, which employs almost half a million people., external and represents more than 4% of the national GDP, external.

De Beers is majority owned by Anglo American, which is reportedly trying to sell it and focus on the growing copper market., external driven by the recent rise of AI.

At the Venetia mine, De Beers has committed to using those two years of downtime to make the infrastructure more “efficient” with greater “capacity.”, externalready to reopen production once market conditions improve.

De Beers launched the advertising slogan “A Diamond is Forever” in 1947, seeking to cement the idea that a diamond ring was an essential part of marriage and later inspired a James Bond novel and the song recorded by Shirley Bassey for the film franchise.

But consumer habits have since changed and times are now tough across the industry, which has seen International Diamond Consultants’ rough diamond price index nearly halve since 2022.

Lab-grown diamonds have gained popularity in recent years, as consumers raise ethical concerns about miners’ wages and working conditions, as well as environmental damage.

However, De Beers and other established companies have also capitalized on those changes in the industry, producing their own lab-grown versions at a fraction of the price one would pay for natural diamonds.

De Beers is not the first major producer to scale back operations in recent years, but it occupies a particular place in the public imagination due to its long history dating back to 1871.

Its founder was Cecil Rhodes, the English settler whose forces dispossessed indigenous Africans of their lands and denied them basic rights.

He became a millionaire in the process and justified his disenfranchisement and racial segregation., external to Parliament in Cape Town several years later, saying “the natives are children… they are just emerging from barbarism, external“.

His legacy in southern Africa has become a lightning rod for discussions about the “decolonization” of the institutions that continue to bear his name.

This includes universities that have statues of him and scholarships based on his enormous wealth, such as the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, whose former Rhodes Scholars, external Among them are former US President Bill Clinton and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.