Incwadi Yami; or, twenty years' personal experience in South Africa

by J. W. Matthews

Our low white man, in the meantime, with perfect confidence and security, is awaiting his native tout, “building castles in the air” on the possible profit of the night’s venture.

Now for the sequel, the last act of the drama. This man has an intimate friend, a licensed diamond buyer, a more cold-blooded but less plucky rascal than himself, whose honesty (!) and respectability (!) can be gauged by the fact that he buys next morning in his office, without any haggling and without even demanding the necessary permit, a collection of stones which he introduces in ordinary course to the trade as a “digger’s mixed parcel.” Sometimes, however, the raw native, unfortunately for himself, sells a diamond directly to the low white man, who (if the native be not a regular customer) takes advantage of his ignorance and pays him in frequent instances partly in good and partly in base coin. In this way spurious bank notes, of which the accompanying engraving is a fac-simile, and gilt medals in imitation of sovereigns with the inscription “Gone to Hanover,” are palmed off, and get into circulation. Again, some very honest licensed buyers would advance money to others lower in the social scale, but also licensed, who would run the risk of purchasing diamonds for them from any one, whether legally qualified to sell or not. Of course if any of these were trapped and the stone traced, the monied men could never be punished, as all their transactions, having been with licensed men, were perfectly legal. I may mention en passant that a great trade was done in gold at this time; certain well-known men, afterward company promoters and directors, trading in and selling on a Saturday night all the gold coins they could gather together during the week, at a premium of three or four per cent., to a class of men who could have no other but an illegal object in view. Such ramifications had this trade!

This is the game as it used to be played; now with the new law there is more difficulty, and the process is somewhat altered.

This law, passed in 1882, is more stringent than any of its predecessors. Its main feature is that the onus of proof of the legal possession of diamonds is thrown upon the individual in whose custody they may be found, and any person within the confines of Griqualand West may anywhere, at any time, be searched by the detective department, and if diamonds are found on his or her person must give an account of their legal ownership or be liable to fifteen years’ imprisonment, with hard labor. The detective department at the time when this law came into force received information which led it to the arrest of a most notorious illicit diamond buyer, who both in Kimberley and at Jagersfontein[^[41]] (a celebrated mine in the Free State) had suffered for this crime. Acting on their information, the officers thought that, on searching this man, they would make a grand haul, when much to their disgust instead of finding diamonds galore they found simply pieces of glass most skillfully prepared in exact imitation of real stones, when of course their prize was lost, and the man, to their chagrin, had to be liberated.

These sham diamonds at first were brought out from Europe in all sizes, shapes and colors, but at the present time this internecine illicit trade, or fight among diamond thieves themselves, is waged to such an extent that the detective department know of at least four individuals on the Fields who are engaged in the manufacture of these spurious stones.

Fluoric acid is employed, so I am told, to partially dissolve the glass of which these are made into the shape required. As a matter of course the sale of these sham stones when effected in Griqualand West is hushed up.

The man taken in by purchasing a spurious diamond of this kind fondly imagines at the time that he is buying a real although stolen diamond under its value. He knows, if he be a licensed buyer, that he is contravening the law in buying of an unlicensed seller, and consequently, on finding out the deception which has been practiced upon him, dare not give the seller into custody for obtaining money under false pretences. He is well aware such a proceeding would merely reveal to the public his illicit connection; again, if an unlicensed diamond buyer, he naturally desires to keep the whole affair a secret.

It was not so, however, in the Cape Colony proper, Natal, Transvaal or the Free State, where the operation of the act was not in force prior to recent enactments, and the remark still applies to Natal and the Transvaal, where any one, morality being out of the question, can buy or sell a diamond legally. I use “legally” in the sense that the law cannot touch him. Of course buying goods well knowing them to be stolen is a crime in every civilized community, but in this particular instance, without the special enactments of the Cape Colony and Free State, one almost impossible to bring home to the criminal.

A curious case was tried in Beaufort West in 1884, which ended in the acquittal of the accused, a man well versed, not only in the mysteries of the I. D. B. trade, but also in the punishment attendant upon its detection. This man offered a certain Jew residing there one of these spurious diamonds for sale. This Jew would not purchase on his own judgment, but asked a friend to value the stone for him, which after buying on his advice for £280 he found out was merely a piece of glass not worth a farthing. Not living, however, in Griqualand West, where an unlicensed purchase would have been a crime, which might have consigned him to the Capetown Breakwater for fifteen years, but in the Cape Colony, where no restriction was then in force, he called in the assistance of the law, charged the man with obtaining money under false pretences, and the case came ultimately before Judge Dwyer at the circuit court held in that town.