Great Star of Africa: Calls for UK to return 500 carat diamond to South Africa

Calls are rising in South Africa for Britain’s royal household to return the world’s largest identified clear-cut diamond within the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s dying.

Often called the Nice Star of Africa or Cullinan I, the diamond is reduce from a bigger gem that was mined in South Africa in 1905 and handed over to the British royal household by South Africa’s colonial authorities. It’s at present mounted on a royal scepter belonging to the Queen.

Calls for for the return of the Nice Star of Africa and different diamonds — together with requires repatriations — have intensified for the reason that Queen’s dying. Many South Africans view Britain’s acquisition of the jewels as illegitimate.

Nationwide dialog

A royal present or a ‘stolen’ diamond?

Queen Elizabeth II carrying the Imperial State Crown and carrying the Orb and scepter after her coronation. Credit score: Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs

“It was despatched to Asscher of Amsterdam to be cleft in 1908,” it added.

Supporting the British monarchy’s declare to the valuable stone, the Royal Asscher explains that the gem was bought by South Africa’s Transvaal authorities (run by British rule) and offered to King Edward VII as a birthday present.

A College of South Africa professor of African politics, Everisto Benyera, rejects this narrative. He instructed CNN that “colonial transactions are illegitimate and immoral.”

“Our narrative is that the entire Transvaal and Union of South Africa governments and the concomitant mining syndicates had been unlawful,” Benyera stated, arguing that: “Receiving a stolen diamond doesn’t exonerate the receiver. The Nice Star is a blood diamond … The non-public (mining) firm, the Transvaal authorities, and the British Empire had been half of a bigger community of coloniality.”

In response to the Royal Asscher, the Cullinan diamond was reduce into 9 massive stones and 96 smaller items. The biggest of the stones was named the Nice Star of Africa by King Edward VII, who additionally named the second largest reduce stone the Smaller Star of Africa.

The bigger diamond was set within the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross and the second reduce stone was mounted within the Imperial Crown. Queen Elizabeth II has been seen in lots of portraits carrying these diamonds.

“The late Queen of England has flaunted these (diamonds) for over half a century,” stated Leigh-Ann Mathys, a nationwide spokeswoman for the Financial Freedom Fighters (EFF), a South African opposition political occasion, to CNN.

Mathys accused British colonial powers of stealing lands and appropriating mines that belonged to native folks.

“Our name is for repatriations for all colonial theft, which the theft of the Nice Star of Africa is part of,” she stated.

“We do not name for its return, as this means that there was a legitimate settlement by way of which the British royal household was borrowed the diamond. It’s of their possession purely because of colonial tenacities that suffocated natives on this nation and elsewhere,” Mathys instructed CNN.