The Sperrgebiet (also known as Diamond Area 1) is a diamond

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

 mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 area in south-western Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

, in the Namib Desert

Namib Desert

The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place"...

. It spans the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

-facing coast from Oranjemund

Oranjemund

Oranjemund is a town of 4,000 inhabitants situated in the extreme southwest of Namibia, on the northern bank of the Orange River mouth. It exists to service the diamond industry....

 on the border with South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, to around 45 miles (72.4 km) north of Lüderitz

Lüderitz

Lüderitz is a harbour town in south-west Namibia, lying on one of the least hospitable coasts in Africa. It is a port developed around Robert Harbour and Shark Island.- Overview :...

, a distance of 320 km (198.8 mi) north. The Sperrgebiet extends to around 100 km (62.1 mi) inland, and its total area of 26,000 km², or 10,400 square miles, makes up three percent of Namibia's land mass. However, mining only takes place in five percent of the Sperrgebiet, with most of the area acting as a buffer zone. Members of the public are banned from entering most of the area, despite the creation of a national park there in 2004.

History

In September 1908, the German government created the Sperrgebiet in its colony of German South West Africa, giving sole rights for mining to the Deutsche Diamantengesellschaft ("German Diamond Company"). In 1915, during World War I, South African forces led by General Jan Smuts

Jan Smuts

Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...

 and Louis Botha

Louis Botha

Louis Botha was an Afrikaner and first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa—the forerunner of the modern South African state...

, the South African Prime Minister, invaded the country. The South Africans defeated the Germans, taking control of modern-day Namibia, including the Sperrgebiet. The owner of the mine, De Beers

De Beers

De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea...

, had total control of the area until the 1990s, when the Namibian government purchased a fifty percent stake. They formed a joint partnership called the Namdeb Diamond Corporation.

Nature

The Sperrgebiet has a diverse range of flora and fauna, due to little human intervention in the area for 100 years. Forty percent of the landscape is desert, thirty percent is grassland, and twenty-eight percent is rocky. The highest point of the Sperrgebiet is 1488m.

There are 776 types of plants in the Sperrgebiet, with 234 being endemic to south-west Namibia, despite the Orange River

Orange River

The Orange River , Gariep River, Groote River or Senqu River is the longest river in South Africa. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean...

 being the only permanent water supply in the area. A study has shown that climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 will affect the plant life in the area, specifically the Succulent Karoo

Succulent Karoo

The Succulent Karoo is a desert ecoregion of South Africa and Namibia.-Setting:The Succulent Karoo stretches along the coastal strip of southwestern Namibia and South Africa's Northern Cape Province, where the cold Benguela Current offshore creates frequent fogs. The ecoregion extends inland into...

. Drier winters may lead to the extinction of these plants, as they are endemic to the Sperrgebiet. According to Morgan Hauptfleisch, a scientist who works at the Southern African Institute for Environmental Assessment, the Sperrgebiet "is the only arid biodiversity hotspot and this makes it a very special area." It has more biodiversity than anywhere else in Namibia, supporting animals such as the gemsbok

Gemsbok

The gemsbok or gemsbuck is a large antelope in the Oryx genus. It is native to the arid regions of southern Africa, but formerly some authorities included the East African Oryx as a subspecies...

, springbok and brown hyena

Brown Hyena

The brown hyena is a species of hyena which occurs in Namibia, Botswana, western and southern Zimbabwe, southern Mozambique and South Africa. It is currently the rarest hyena.-Description:...

. Bird species resident in the Sperrgebiet include the African Oystercatcher, the Black-headed Canary

Black-headed Canary

The Black-headed Canary is a species of finch found in Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. It is sometimes placed in genus Alario as Alario alario...

 and the Dune Lark

Dune Lark

The Dune Lark is a species of lark in the Alaudidae family.It is endemic to Namibia.Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland.-References:...

.

National park and recent history

The Sperrgebiet was designated as a national park in June 2004. De Beers

De Beers

De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea...

 still controls the area, but will relinquish control to the Namibian Ministry for Environment and Tourism once a management plan for the park has been completed. In April 2008, a 500-year-old shipwreck containing Iberian

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

coins, bronze cannons, copper, and ivory was found in the Sperrgebiet. Under Namibian law, the Namibian government is entitled to all the items found onboard.

Literature

• Noli, Gino: Desert Diamonds. Gino Noli, Plettenberg Bay 2010, ISBN 978-0-620-40680-2.