South Africa's diamond mines have lost over 7,000 jobs in the past decade. It’s a 38% drop, according to figures from Minerals Council South Africa. The culprit? Lab-grown diamonds. They're nearly identical to the real thing but cheaper, and demand has swung hard enough in their direction that major producers, including De Beers, signed the 2025 Luanda Accord, an agreement to pool 1% of rough-diamond revenue into a joint marketing push for natural, mined diamonds.

To add to the problem, annual diamond production in South Africa decreased from 8.2-million carats in 2015 to 6.8-million; while overall sales revenues decreased from R14.4-billion to R10.8-billion.

And that's before you factor in 2026, which has been rough for diamond mining. In February, a mud rush at Ekapa Minerals in Kimberley, in the Northern Cape, killed five workers; the company has since gone into liquidation, and its liquidators are hunting for a buyer to keep it running, with offers due 14 August. Finsch has entered business rescue and started cutting jobs, while De Beers has hit pause on Venetia for two years, putting over a thousand jobs on the line.