Tiaan Boshoff has worked at one of the world’s largest diamond mines for years — but, like most of his colleagues, he has yet to see a diamond there with his own eyes. The burly engineer is among hundreds of staff who man trucks and crushers 1km underground at Petra Diamonds’ Cullinan mine in South Africa, digging out rock to be taken up and x-rayed.
“Sometimes during the blast process the rock does disintegrate and it falls on to the ground,” said Boshoff over the roar of machinery. “They say when you see it, you will know it.”
Extracting diamonds from the earth is arduous and expensive, and for the workers who scurry deep below ground at Cullinan, near Johannesburg, a growing threat is challenging