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CHAPTER TWO
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Old Digger, Old Fool
What
started out as a diamond rush in South Africa is now a system of
corporations that are piled up on each other, to form an inverted
pyramid, in a relationship fantastically close and complex. Diamonds
financed the development of gold mines. Gold mines led to the recent
uranium discoveries. African finance in general underwrites a
considerable part of the world's banking activities. To an ordinary
unfinancial brain like mine it is all so deep and mysterious that it
came as a considerable shock to discover that the map of Africa is
still dotted, close to the cradle of the whole thing, with diamond
diggings of the earliest pattern. Private diggers still wield their
picks and shovels (anyway steam shovels) and scratch away at the
surface of the same earth that is pierced by shafts, practically next
door —shafts that go down thousands of feet into diamond-bearing
volcanic stocks.
The
private diggers see nothing out of the ordinary in this. To them,
digging is a natural, sensible proceeding, and underground mining
seems prosaic and rather decadent. They see no reason why they should
give up time-honored, respectable
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