South Africa – Diamonds

Western Cape province, South Africa

The mining sector is very important in South Africa. Diamonds and gold made South Africa a rich country. However, everything has its own price…

I’ll quote this short text from Wikipedia and leave it without a comment:
“The mining and distribution of natural diamonds are subjects of frequent controversy such as concerns over the sale of blood diamonds or conflict diamonds by African paramilitary groups. The diamond supply chain is controlled by a limited number of powerful businesses, and is also highly concentrated in a small number of locations around the world.”

If you haven’t watched it yet, I can recommend here a movie from 2006 – Blood Diamond.

4 thoughts on “South Africa – Diamonds”

  1. Hello.
    Please understand that I am writing this comment so that you can maybe look at South Africa in a different light. I mean no disrespect but I feel I should share my thoughts with you.
    I have really enjoyed your blog as well as your really fantastic photographs that you share with us. I was really excited to see a photo taken not to far from my house and I was really interested to see what you had written. I was a bit disappointed to see the direction that you chose. It is no secret that South Africa has had a checkered past.There are things in our history that very few people are proud of. I would just like to share a few points of interest with you. Did you know that we only had official oppression here for 1 generation. Not that long by world standards. We are the first country in the history of the world to have a radical change of government without a civil war. This has Never been achieved before. Also, Why did non of the worlds super powers( That were so against our ways on the World news) step in and force a change. The USA and the Allied forces could have invaded, changed our government. Why didn’t they? ( I could go into that in great detail but I will save that for some other time)Don’t believe everything you see on the News.. Did you know that even the White South Africans were only allowed to read and see government censored and approved news! Even certain music was banned…
    On a lighter note
    Did you know that we are one of maybe two possibly the only country to have decommissioned and reversed our nuclear weapons program out of our free will.. Please show me any other country that has totally removed all its nuclear warheads from their military without force from outsiders…. Like I said.. We did… We are Nuke Free!!!

    What happened here for around 75 years was awful and so wrong on many levels, we cant change that,There is no denying that fact. But as a nation we are trying to move forward, having these terrible times from our past thrown back up in our faces does no good for anyone.
    I really urge you to take your time and try absorb the sights sounds and wonderful places that she has to offer, try not get caught up in the political webs as it is so easy to be ensnared by them. I really do think it is so important to learn from history ,so we can learn from our mistakes but it is naïve to regurgitate popular facts… As for the movie, Blood Diamond. It is one of my favourite movies of all time. I really think it is totally underrated and has many interesting subtle points that we can all learn from. ”Danny Archer”‘ had some insights that most people from the West would struggle to grasp. His thoughts on the Red Sands of Africa has merit, However I am South African, I am proud of that fact. Not everything is a simple as we would like to believe. I urge you to watch that movie again without looking at the obvious color narrative, rather try look a bit deeper into the real evil that quietly motivates man. It is not easy to understand unless you look at it from a different perspective. I look forward to your upcoming posts. I really wish you a great stay and I hope you return soon. Dan

    1. Hello!
      Thank you for your comment, but please remember that the entire month on my blog makes “one long post”. I often try to give some basic information about a given country (usually at the beginning of the month) and later, I write more about traveling. I try to avoid politics etc., but a few facts are often needed, I think (especially that some people from e.g., Europe may have no idea about some places in e.g., Africa and other way). Very soon, you’ll see my travel impressions from beautiful South Africa, because so far there were mostly facts.
      Have a lovely Sunday! 🙂

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