The world has gems. A mining town paid the price.

“We’ve seen for a long time that one day this thing will burst,” said Memane Paulus, a machine operator who has worked on the dam for the past decade.

What residents feared most this month came when a portion of the dam collapsed, sweeping through the community in a torrent of grey sludge, killing at least one person, destroying 164 homes and turning six miles of neighborhoods and meadows into into a gray wasteland.

Thec has caused panic in a country where mountains of mining waste known as tailings are part of the landscape. Experts estimate there are hundreds of tailings dams in South Africa, which mining regulators say is the legacy of an exploitative industry that mines lucrative gemstones for jewellery shops abroad, while poor communities are burdened with toxic waste at home.

Jagersfontein is home to one of the world’s oldest diamond mines, and residents of the town have seen walls of mountains of rubbish looming over their homes and streets. But there’s little they can do because it’s big business.

A consortium that bought mining waste from former mine owner De Beers is sifting the tailings to extract any remaining diamonds – an increasingly popular branch of mining. In doing so, the operation has piled up more waste and lax government regulation. Some miners were terrified when colleagues reported finding the dam was leaking.

“It’s definitely avoidable,” said Mariette Liverink, chief executive of the Federation for the Sustainable Environment, an environmental group focused on the mining industry. “Destruction to ecosystems, human life and future generations – the risks are enormous.”

After a similar dam collapse in Brazil three years ago killed more than 250 people, the international mining industry had promised to do better. A number of leading mine operators have collaborated to develop tailings dam standards. But many smaller operators, such as those in Jagersfontein, do not adhere to standards and lack the resources and expertise to manage tailings dams, Liefferink said.

Marius de Villiers, legal compliance officer at mine operator Jagersfontein Development, said it complied with all requirements set by South African regulators. The dam is regularly inspected, and an engineering report in July said it was structurally sound, he said.

“We didn’t even think this was going to happen,” de Villiers said. He said that while the company was still investigating the dam failure, it “must take responsibility for the operation and the dam failure.”

‘That thing will explode’

A truck driver at the dam found a crack in the dam’s outer wall around 2 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11, several workers there said in an interview that day. Workers said the driver reported the situation to the foreman, who checked it but did nothing.

He said the mine’s pan operator, Joe Makalajane, didn’t see the crack himself, but spoke to the driver at the end of their shift.

“He said, ‘I’ll tell you, that thing is going to explode,'” Makalajane, 45, recalled his conversation. On the management side, “they’re not taking it seriously,” he added.

De Villiers and plant manager Johan Combrink denied any reports of cracks that morning.

Dam wall collapsed between 6am and 7am Some residents were angry at the prospect that they could have been alerted earlier.

Rio-Rita Breytenbach, whose home is near the dam, was standing on a chair in the kitchen as the slime rushed towards her. She was swept off the chair and out of the house. Breitenbach, 39, who was caught in the rough current, said she floated on her back, paddling through the silt to keep her head above the water.

“I pray I survive,” she said.

She finally came to rest on a farm, where police found her—more than six miles from her home.

The sludge destroyed much of the two settlements in the south and east. The miles of fields look like frozen cement lakes, dotted in places with broken cars and sunken utility poles.

Jake Sefaka was visiting his mother across the city when the dam burst. He looked into the distance in horror – as far as he could tell, his three-bedroom house was being washed away, along with his wife and a son.

“I thought they were dead,” he said.

To his relief, his wife eventually called his mother to say they had reached the shelter.

He has to rebuild the house he bought 20 years ago for 40,000 rand ($2,300), which has now lost its entire frontage.

Sephaka worked at the mine shortly after it reopened in 2010, but quit after four years due to poor conditions, he said.

“I’m not happy,” he said, “the pressure of the mines”.

But the problems of the mine still haunt him.

colonial past

The Jagersfontein mine, where the first diamonds were mined by colonial settlers in 1870, is a relic of the diamond boom that often exploited black South Africans while enriching white owners. It produced a 650-carat diamond, one of the largest in the world, that was acquired by a British businessman from which a diamond commemorating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was cut.

Global mining giant De Beers operated the mine from 1932 to 1971. Then it sat idle, but in the early 2000s De Beers tried to use improved technology to extract minerals from the tailings. It sued for tailings mining rights without a mining license and won a verdict in 2007.

De Beers then sold the Jagersfontein tailings in 2010 to a consortium ultimately controlled by South African billionaire Johann Rupert, whose company owns luxury brands including Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. Just six months before bankruptcy, Rupert’s holding company Reinet Investments SCA sold all of its stake in Jagersfontein Development to Dubai-based diamond manufacturer and retailer Stargems, according to Stargems’ announcement.

Reinet did not respond to a request for comment.

Tracy-Lynn Field, a law professor specialising in environmental and mining law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said the companies could be sued for breaching South Africa’s environmental and water laws or could be forced to pay damages. Government officials may also have to answer, she said.

A 2007 ruling in the De Beers lawsuit exonerated the government’s mines department from the tailings dam. Instead, because the tailings are handled in dams, the Department of Water and Health oversees them despite limited expertise in mining, Field said.

Warning sign

Residents said they were excited when the mine came back to life in 2010, believing it would create jobs.

But soon they were coughing from the dust in the air and watched anxiously as the dam’s dirt facade nearly doubled.

“We’ve been saying, ‘What if something happened here? What if it breaks?'” said Itumeleng Monageng, 28, who, unfortunately, found the answer: This month his silt was knee-high, He rescued everything he could from his home.

Concerns have intensified in recent years when residents say they regularly see water seeping out of the dam wall. Jagersfontein Mayor Xolani Tseletsele said community members had expressed their concerns to water officials.

But the factory manager, Combrink, denied that the dam had ever leaked, and that employees had reported holes in the exterior walls. He attributes any moisture to stormwater runoff.

Inspectors inspected the dam and ordered operations to cease in January 2021, citing several violations, according to a copy of the water department’s directive. Chief among them is that the facility is disposing of more than 2 1/2 more waste at the dam than allowed in 2020 — and continues to dispose of it even after department officials demand it stop.

Five months later, the department approved the facility’s reopening, noting in a memo that Jagersfontein Development had agreed to undergo closer inspections and install new equipment to reduce wastewater discharge from the dam. Although the water authority said in its memo that Jagersfontein Development still needs to address the dam safety concerns raised in the independent engineering report, it did not give a directive or deadline for the company to do so.

Richard Spoor, a lawyer with decades of experience litigating mining cases, said it was extraordinary that water officials “found that high-level report showed serious risks” and allowed it to reopen.

Water ministry spokesman Sputnik Ratau said the dam had been allowed to reopen while safety concerns were addressed, as other conditions had been met by dam officials.

In 2018, Jagersfontein Development built a new section of the dam, increasing its capacity by 30 percent and improving profitability, according to the 2019 annual report filed by Reinet Investments.

Even with the expansion, the dam still has capacity issues – it has applied for a permit to dump waste in the original mine pit on the National Heritage site.

University of Hull geologist Dave Petley said analysis of satellite imagery after the collapse by a data and analytics firm showed that a corner of the collapsed dam had been slightly deformed from August 1 to 13. , indicating its vulnerability.exist U.K.. He said the new part is the collapsed part.

Mining companies and regulators with the appropriate expertise should have spotted these warning signs, he said.

For Sephaka, a former miner whose house was destroyed, it is the latest rancid chapter in the mine’s long life, and he believes it does little good for the community.

“It’s painful,” he said, examining the wreckage.

Written by John Eligon and Lynsey Chutel