Diamond industry – former jewel of Jewish Joburg – loses its lustre

LIONEL SLIER

Jewish names like Goldstein, Reichman, Herskowitz, Blom, Messias, Rosenstrach, de Neve, Fransman, De Jong, Landau, Slier, Katz, Kadinsky, and Zlotowski were prominent in the late 1920s when South Africa’s diamond industry took off in Johannesburg.

At that time, Amsterdam was the centre of the diamond cutting industry. The profession was heavily influenced by Jewish diamond workers because there was no guild system in Holland preventing Jews from working with diamonds as there was in other trades.

My grandfather, Philip Slier, was in the trade in Holland, and his son, my father, Jack, aged 14, followed him as an apprentice.

Four years after being apprenticed, World War I broke out in 1914, and Jack was drafted into the Dutch army. Fortunately, Holland’s neutrality was recognised by Germany, and there was no military activity in the country like there was in neighbouring Belgium.

By the time the war ended in 1918, the diamond trade had practically ceased to exist in Europe. Diamond cutters were keen to travel to America where the industry was still active. But they were subject to a quota system imposed by Washington, limiting the number of immigrants from each European country.

There was a burst of activity in 1919 in Holland when the Russian royal family jewels were sent to Amsterdam for re-polishing. These diamonds were referred to as the “Bolsheviki” and created a short boom, but that was all.

Like many other diamond workers, my father applied for a work permit to America. Meanwhile, diamonds had been discovered a half century earlier, in the northern Cape in 1867, when a 15-year-old farm boy, Erasmus Jacobs, picked up a pretty pebble near Hopetown. A Boer farmer, Schalk van Niekerk, visiting the farm saw him playing with it and sent it to a geologist in Grahamstown who authenticated it as a diamond. It was to be the Eureka diamond, “The Star of South Africa,” weighing 21 carats. (To give an indication of the size, most people walk around with diamonds of less than a carat in their personal jewellery).

At the time, the British governor of the Cape Colony, George Grey, said, “This is the stone on which the future of this country rests.”

There was a great deal of excitement in the Cape about the possibility of finding diamonds in the colony, but a British geologist went on record as saying, “The soil in South Africa would certainly not hold diamonds, and the news of their discovery there is absolutely fake.”

However, Kimberley was invaded by fortune seekers from the Cape and Britain, and some made money by trading in the rough diamonds bought from diggers. One such man was Barney Barnato, a Jew from England; others were German Jews like Alfred Beit and Ernest Oppenheimer. The latter bought two farms owned by locals, the De Beer brothers. Cecil John Rhodes, who later became prime minister of the Cape Colony, joined Barnato, and together they developed De Beers Consolidated Mines, which become the world’s largest diamond company.

Illegal diamond buying (IDB) was made a criminal offence in the Cape, and diamond dealers had to have a police permit to handle rough diamonds. After the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the law spread to the whole country. There was general dissatisfaction among diamond dealers who were restricted from trading in South Africa for this reason. They could deal only in polished diamonds, and there were relatively few of these in the country. Diamonds mined in South Africa were shipped uncut to be polished in Holland and Belgium.

The 1924 general elections resulted in the National Party under General Barry Hertzog forming a pact with the Labour Party under Frederic Creswell. They won the election against General Jan Smut’s South African Party. (Smuts lost many voters after he put down the Miners’ Strike in 1921 through a massive show of force, using the air force and army against the white striking miners).

After the Pact Government came into power, agitation from Kimberley diamond dealers to start a diamond cutting industry in South Africa was favourably received. Two diamanteers were sent to the Netherlands to recruit diamond workers to come to South Africa and teach locals the trade.

My father, Jack, who was still waiting for a visa for America, was told that in South Africa, they spoke the same language as in Holland, and there was a job available. He decided to go to South Africa and in 1925, arrived in Kimberley with an older brother, Andries, also a diamond polisher.

But a few years later, the trade in Kimberley faltered, and many polishers moved to Johannesburg because that’s where business was.

My father and another Hollander, Harry Messias, opened one of the first diamond cutting factories in the country, Amsterdam Diamond Cutting Works, around 1926. Very soon afterwards, Johannesburg became the centre of the South African diamond trade.

Many of the diamond factories that opened up at this time were Jewish owned. The Diamond Club was formed and, according to Louis Lipchin, a member of its executive in later years and known to have a phenomenal memory, most of the diamond dealers in those days were Jews.

“The diamond trade was definitely part of the Johannesburg identity. A list of the members of the executive of the Master Diamond Cutters Association contains more than 40 names, mostly Jewish,” he said.

The global financial problems of the 1930s affected the trade, but it survived. The war in 1939 brought about a revival, and the industry soon thrived.

My father and his Dutch Jewish partner parted company. My father said, “The world is divided between those who can have partners and those who can’t, and we were obviously both in the second category.”

He opened Holland Diamond Cutting Works in the centre of Johannesburg. Meanwhile his brother, Andries, returned to Amsterdam to be with the family. Andries said he was afraid of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, also in Holland, and didn’t want his parents to be alone. The entire family was killed in Sobibor death camp.

After World War II, the South African diamond industry continued to be fairly stable, and my father expanded his business to include jewellery as well as diamonds, and had a shop in the centre of Johannesburg.

But competition from the global industry was growing. The United States, Holland, Belgium and South Africa were the main players, soon to be joined by Israel after 1948. Today, the largest diamond centre in the world is in Dubai. De Beers has moved its headquarters from Kimberley to Gaborone in Botswana.

The local trade nowadays also faces competition from Russia, India, and China. Many South African factory bosses complain that it’s difficult to compete price-wise with these countries. High labour costs and indifferent government legislation has virtually put local polishers out of business. There are less than 300 diamond workers in the country. The trade is faltering in spite of the fact that the end of apartheid did away with labour restrictions, and the trade is open to everyone.

Diamonds have lost their glitter. The Jewish handle at the helm has loosened, and isn’t being replaced. I’m pleased that my father isn’t around to see it.