Nooitgedacht

Fifty years ago, almost any man with a shovel, a bottle of brandy and a passion to be rich could go digging for diamonds in South Africa and hope to make his fortune. Today, most diamonds are found in mines thousands of feet underground. What is left of known diamond-bearing top soil is probed by individual diggers who average between $15 and $800 a year. Last month the vast De Beers Diamond Co. threw open to prospectors 950 acres of a farm called Nooitgedacht (Never-thought-it-would-come-true), 20 miles from Kimberley, last remaining De Beers diamond grounds. Eighty-one diamond prospectors and their Negro helpers lined up for the rush.

At the toot of a motor horn, the prospectors stormed Nooitgedacht, began pegging out their 45-foot-square claims. The Negro laborers shoveled furiously through three or four feet of clay to a layer of gravel which the prospectors scooped up, rocked in hand sieves and dumped on sorting tables. The diggers (who will pay De Beers 10% of their finds) were a mixed lot. Among them were a monocled Scot known as "Donal the Duke"; bearded, Bible-carrying "Uncle Pete the Sky Pilot," and big, burly, sombrero-wearing Jacob Venter, 51, who has spent half his life looking for diamonds.

One day last week, Venter's Negro laborer Mannetjie called excitedly to his boss, held up a yellow diamond the size of a pigeon's egg. The diamond diggers crowded around, passed it from hand to hand. The stone was a "Cape yellow" weighing 511 1/4 carats, a nearly perfect octahedron and one of the biggest diamonds ever found in South Africa.* Next day Venter sold it for $51,100. Mannetjie's cut: $280. While other prospectors feverishly dug away in Nooitgedacht, Venter said merely: "Man, I been smiling so much it hurts."

* The biggest: the 3,106-carat Cullinan.

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