Diamonds have been mined with forced labor and slavery-like systems for roughly 150 years , with major documented exploitation beginning in the 1870s in southern Africa and continuing in different forms into the modern era.

What that means

  • In the Kimberley diamond fields , labor coercion and racialized control intensified after diamonds were discovered around 1870 , with forced compounds, wage suppression, and prison labor used to control workers.
  • More broadly, the diamond trade has also been tied to modern slavery, child labor, and conflict exploitation in some places, so the abuse is not just historical.

Important nuance

“Slave labor” is a broad term. Some sources are describing literal slavery or convict labor , while others are describing forced labor, debt bondage, coercion, and exploitative colonial systems that were slavery-like rather than identical to chattel slavery.

Bottom line

If you mean the historical period when diamond mining first became heavily dependent on slave-like exploitation, the answer is since the 1870s —so about a century and a half. If you mean the exact start of every kind of abusive labor in diamonds worldwide, the timeline varies by country and period.