Kimberley, South Africa

Bonas, Charles

Some families have retained long connections with diamonds. Charles Bonas contacted us to say that the Bonas family for instance is still a diamond family. His Great-Great uncle Gustave was one of the first Directors of the original Diamond Syndicate – that bought all the diamonds from DeBeers and other suppliers. He was also President of the synagogue and highly instrumental in having it designed and built. His name is on the foundation stone in 1902. His descendent Charles says ‘I am sad to say we now have very little contact with Kimberley – only thing left is one client who goes to view sight goods every five weeks with my local South African representative for his South African cutting factory in the Cape. We have shifted most of our operations to Botswana in Africa and are now also representing junior mines from Lesotho, Canada and Brazil.  In a sense, it is not different to my forefathers, they moved to where the industry was based and so do we have to.’

(You can read about Gustave Bonas and about his beautiful his house (first called Lilianville after his wife and then called Dunluce when John Orr bought it) on the pioneer page of the website here

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kimberley/Gustav_Bonas.html