MATEUS PAULUS

FOR Monica Shapwa, diamonds built her and gave her the life she could not have gotten anywhere else.
“Diamonds educated me, gave me job security and a better standard of life. I take care of my family, and I am also able to help other people. I managed to send my sister to university and take care of my unemployed mother,” she says with contentment.

Shapwa is a Diamond Sorter at Namib Desert Diamonds (Pty) Ltd (NAMDIA), a cutting-edge diamond marketing and sales company, that markets and sells a portion of Namibia’s unique and highly sought-after diamonds to the international market on behalf the Government of Namibia.

She was born in Walvis Bay before her family relocated to Windhoek when she was a young girl.

“This is where I started my school – from primary to high school. I grew up in Wanaheda as part of a large family, under very difficult conditions with my dad, a truck driver from Angola and my Namibian mother,” she says.

She says a Diamond Sorter basically evaluates diamonds based on the four Cs – which are Clarity (the number of impurities or inclusions); Colour (which ranges from clear or no colour up to yellow); then the Cut (whether round or broken); and the Carat (weight).

“These four elements help to determine the value of the diamond. Identifying a diamond out there is not for every eye but one needs experience and knowledge of the four characteristics to identify it,” says Shapwa, who has put in 20 years’ experience in the industry.

Her first job after school was a diamond polisher from 2001 to February 2005 when she moved to be Assistant Diamond Security Officer before getting into diamond sorting at the Namdeb Centre. She joined NAMDIA in 2018 as a Diamond Sorter.

Explaining what happens to the off-cuts when cutting diamonds, she said: “There are no off-cuts. A diamond is cut according to a plan. It is mapped and planned, depending on what you want to get out of it.

“The gem is cut and polished according to that plan. Before the advent of advanced technology, only certain dimensions were allowed to come out of a piece of diamond,” she explained.

She said there are different categories with the 4Cs in a rough piece of diamond.

“You find a stone that is a perfect round and another that is oblong because of how nature formed it. The same applies to colour but the dominant range is from clear to different shades of yellow although you also find some brown diamonds that look like charcoal,” she said. Yellow is the predominant colour because of nitrogen while octahedron is the predominant shape that gives the diamond the round shape once polished.

Shapwa says growing up she had no idea what a diamond looked like. “I had read about them but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be sitting where I am today,” she said about her career journey.

“I always wanted to do marketing and when I finished Grade 12, I was fascinated by IT and I enrolled for three months and one day a neighbour, a director at a company asked if I wanted to work for a diamond company and I needed no second invitation.”

She said looking at the harsh realities of how she grew up with many siblings in a 2-bedroom house, she wanted to earn money and create her own space.

“I wanted to move out of the house because I did not want to share a bedroom the way we did growing up. I love my privacy, I love my own space but because we were many, it was not possible to have it, so when the opportunity presented itself, I grabbed it and the following Monday myself and a friend were supposed to be at school, but we were at work.”

Shapwa says valuating diamonds is not for the faint-hearted. One needs patience and an understanding that it works with your feelings, so when you pick up a piece of diamond and you can’t connect then you are in the wrong industry, she added.

There are two sorters at NAMDIA who have to work within a small window of time to sort the diamonds.

“We do secondary sorting at NDTC where we buy our diamonds. Before they are delivered here, we go to NDTC to inspect our allotment. NDTC present us seven lots with similar values and we go through those lots and choose one that will yield a high return in the shortest time.

According to Shapwa this is to avert incurring high interest charges and to maximise returns on investments.

She says the Namibian diamond industry employs more women than men to the ratio 60:40 unlike in countries like India.

“When we travel to see clients, they are surprised to see a team of female executives because to them the diamond sector is dominated by men. In Namibia we broke that barrier a long time ago, and at NAMDIA, most portfolios are held by women,” she said.

According to Shapwa, while she holds an Honours Degree in Marketing from NUST, diamond sorting requires on-the-job training.

“Not even an Honours Degree can teach you that skill,” she noted, adding that the pricing strategy is determined by economic conditions, political conditions and market conditions during recession and wars, yet people want to attach tertiary degrees to the work.

Shapwa explained that while lab-grown diamonds had impacted the industry in some way, the situation was now under control because the prices of synthetic diamonds have proven to be unsustainable.

She said at the beginning the price of lab diamonds was high but it has been going down gradually and people who understand diamonds would not buy a synthetic diamond when they can get the real natural thing that would maintain value, as opposed to lab grown diamonds that depreciate in value.

Shapwa says during her spare time she is involved in sports as a football director of Ongos Sports Club.

“I was also a member of the Namibia Sports Commission, and I played netball and basketball. All my family loves sport and my daughter plays football.”

Her advice to women is to follow your heart. “Unfortunately, these days there are not many opportunities and people are forced to take whatever comes their way. Turn around whatever opportunity you get into something that you love, like I did,” she advised.

Shapwa said if she had the power to change anything, she would ensure the government gets more of the diamond resources because she has seen the impact that diamonds can have.

“The diamond industry must build something tangible for everyone to see. At the moment the diamond proceeds go into government coffers and is used in the economy from there and you cannot say which is diamond proceeds, which is not.

“Diamond proceeds should build district hospitals, schools and other tangible infrastructure outside government programmes for people to see and appreciate the industry,” she said.