DCW

Sightholder · Molefi Letsiki · DBSSSA

The first majority-black-owned De Beers Sightholder is also one of our co-directors.

In December 2022, De Beers Group named Molefi Letsiki Diamonds as the first majority-black-owned Sightholder in South African history. Molefi Letsiki is, separately and in parallel, a co-director of D and D Diamonds CC, the legal entity that operates Procut DCW. That overlap is structural, not coincidental: two people, two companies, one operating relationship at the supply tier of the global diamond market.

The announcement

The Sightholder appointment was carried by every major diamond-industry publication when it was announced in December 2022. It was not a routine cycle update. Sightholder slots open rarely; majority-black-owned Sightholder slots in South Africa had never opened before. The announcement is documented across the trade press and the De Beers customer directory itself.

The Etkind and Letsiki partnership at D and D Diamonds CC

Darren Lance Etkind founded D and D Diamonds CC in 2002. Molefi Letsiki joined as a co-director and is one of the operating partners of the Bedfordview cutting works that trades as Procut DCW. Sandile Tshepo Swartbooi is the third co-director.

The structure is straightforward. D and D Diamonds CC holds the SA Beneficiation Licence, runs the cutting works, and owns the EBC relationship with DBCM. Molefi Letsiki Diamonds (a separate entity run by Letsiki personally) holds the De Beers Global Sightholder contract. The two operations share a director, share knowledge, and operate at adjacent layers of the De Beers ladder, EBC and Sightholder, without merging into a single legal entity.

Beyond D and D Diamonds, Letsiki is Chairman of the Diamond Dealers Club of South Africa (and President-elect of its successor body, the Diamond Gem & Jewellery Association of Southern Africa), serves on the executive committee of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, and is a founding member of Young Diamantaires.

Why this matters to a trade counterparty

The dual-layer access (EBC at Procut DCW plus Sightholder via Letsiki Diamonds) is rare. The conventional pattern is one company at one layer of the buying tier. Procut counterparties in practice get the scheduled-viewing predictability of the EBC programme plus the adjacency benefits of a Sightholder peer relationship, without two separate counterparty agreements.

Counterparties evaluating us on transformation criteria (BBBEE, ESG, FCA, supplier-diversity programmes) inherit, through the Letsiki directorship and the parallel Sightholder operation, an evidence base that goes back to a publicly-recorded December 2022 announcement at the highest level of the global diamond trade. That public record is one of the strongest verifiable transformation signals available in South African mining-adjacent industry.

Independent press and first-party references