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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY, JULY 6, 2021

EMPTY FEELINGROME’S MUSEUMSALL TO YOURSELFPAGE 14 | CULTURE

RARE TALENTS‘PET TUBE’ PUTSON A WILD SHOWPAGE 12 | TECH

TECH COLD WARTHE CHIP-MAKING TOOLTHAT CHINA CAN’T BUYPAGE 6 | BUSINESS

yielded four stones for Mr. Molefe, 41,who conceded that he had no cluewhether they were actually diamonds.

“I’m feeling desperate,” he said. “Weare just hoping. If they are real dia-monds, it means we are winning.”

The diamond rush has completelytransformed KwaHlathi, where the chiefestimates that 4,000 families live.

Cattle once grazed on the slope, which

Sbusiso Molefe swung the pickax fromhigh above his head and hacked into theclumpy black dirt around his feet. Hetook a few more vigorous whacks intothe edges of the shallow crater he haddug at the bottom of a hillside, beforescooping up a handful of loose dirt andshaking it in search of the sparkle of agem.

The rumor that a herdsman had foundclear stones resembling diamonds in thesoil of a grassy, tree-filled slope lastmonth lured thousands of South Afri-cans to KwaHlathi, a sleepy village inthe eastern province of KwaZulu-Natalwhere cattle roam freely.

Coming by taxi and by car, many fromhours away, they dreamed of a turn ofluck in a country whose persistentstruggles with joblessness have reachednew heights during the pandemic.

No one who came seemed in the leastdeterred by the widespread skepticismthat the stones were really diamonds.

Two days of strenuous digging had

is on traditional land owned by the chiefand was until recently covered withSweet thorn trees and grass. Now, itlooks like a bare, cratered moon — atreacherous terrain of holes, many ofthem the size of graves.

The chief said he was none too happyabout what the diggers were doing tothe land, but he understood their plightand did not intervene.

Mr. Molefe came here after reading onsocial media that diamonds had beendiscovered in the field, less than an hourfrom his rural home village. It soundedtoo good to be true, but he had to check itout.

He had been without a job since Octo-ber, when the textile factory where heworked as a supervisor had burneddown. With his job search hitting deadends, he has been subsisting on socialgrants totaling less than 1,100 rand ($77)a month, a quarter of what he hadearned at the factory. Staples like beef,milk and butter were luxuries he couldno longer afford.

“As the man of the house, it makes mefeel less than,” he said of the difficulty ofproviding for his three children.

Unemployment in South Africa is at32.6 percent, the highest level recordedsince the government began producingquarterly labor force reports in 2008.Among young people, the situation iseven more dire: About three of everyfour South African youths are withoutjobs.

Those statistics translate into all man-ner of odd jobs — and risky ones, likeventuring into abandoned mines, thathave proved deadly. They also help ex-plain the long-shot appeal of KwaHlathiand its purported diamonds.

A satellite village of sorts sproutedhere. Many diamond seekers wrapped SOUTH AFRICA, PAGE 7

Searching for precious stones in KwaHlathi, South Africa. Jaded by a long history of corruption, many people snickered at government leaders’ requests to stop digging and leave.PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOAO SILVA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A desperate dig for diamondsKWAHLATHI, SOUTH AFRICA

BY JOHN ELIGON

Rumors of a field of gemsdraw thousands of jobless people in South Africa

The digging at the village went on all night. Unemployment in South Africa now standsat 32.6 percent, and about three in every four South African youths are without jobs.

Yan Shengmin, a Chinese tenor, isknown for bouncy renditions of Broad-way tunes and soulful performances inoperas like “Carmen.”

But lately, Mr. Yan has been focusingon a different genre. He is a star of “RedBoat,” a patriotic opera written to cele-brate the 100th anniversary this monthof the founding of the Chinese Commu-nist Party. Mr. Yan has embraced therole, immersing himself in party historyand binge-watching television showsabout revolutionary heroes to prepare.

“I feel a lot of pressure,” Mr. Yan saidin an interview between rehearsals.“The 100th anniversary is a big occa-sion.”

A wave of nationalistic music, theaterand dance is sweeping China, as the

Communist Party works to ensure thatits centennial is met with pomp and fan-fare.

Prominent choreographers are stag-ing ballets about revolutionary martyrs.Theaters are reviving nationalisticplays about class struggle. Hip-hop art-ists are writing songs about the party’sachievements. Orchestras are perform-ing works honoring communist mile-stones like the Long March, with chorusmembers dressed in light-blue militaryuniforms.

The celebrations are among the ef-forts by Xi Jinping, China’s authoritar-ian leader, to make the party omnipres-ent in people’s lives and to strengthenpolitical loyalty among artists.

Mr. Xi, who has presided over a broadcrackdown on free expression in Chinasince rising to power nearly a decadeago, has said that artists should servethe cause of socialism, rather than be-come “slaves” of the market.

In honor of the party’s centennial, Mr.Xi’s government has announced plansfor performances of 300 operas, ballets, CHINA, PAGE 2

State-approved music for China’s centennial bash

A performance in Beijing honoring the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary. Xi Jin-ping, China’s authoritarian leader, said artists should serve the cause of socialism.

NOEL CELIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Communist Party’s historybathed in nationalist art inbid to strengthen its image

BY JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZAND JOY DONG

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

In another age, the events of this seasonwould have been nearly certain toproduce a major shift in American poli-tics — or at least a meaningful, discern-ible one.

Over a period of weeks, the coronavi-rus death rate plunged and the countryconsiderably eased public health re-strictions. President Biden announced abipartisan deal late last month to spendhundreds of billions of dollars rebuildingthe worn infrastructure of the UnitedStates — the most significant aisle-crossing legislative agreement in a gen-eration, if it holds together. The Con-gressional Budget Office estimated lastweek that the economy was on track toregain all of the jobs it lost during thepandemic by the middle of 2022.

And in a blow to Mr. Biden’s fractiousopposition, former president Donald J.Trump — the dominant figure in Repub-lican politics — faced an embarrassinglegal setback just as he was resuming aschedule of campaign-style events. Adistrict attorney’s office in New Yorkcharged his company, the Trump Orga-nization, and its chief financial officerwith “sweeping and audacious” finan-cial crimes.

Not long ago, such a sequence of de-velopments might have tested the parti-san boundaries of American politics,startling voters into reconsidering theirassumptions about the current presi-dent, his predecessor, the two major par-ties and what government can do for theAmerican people.

These days, it is hard to imagine thatsuch a political turning point is at hand.

“I think we’re open to small moves;I’m not sure we’re open to big moves,”said Mark Mellman, a Democratic poll-ster. “Partisanship has made our systemso sclerotic that it isn’t very responsiveto real changes in the real world.”

Amid the mounting drama of the earlysummer, a moment of truth appears im-minent. It is one that will reveal whetherthe U.S. electorate is still capable oflarge-scale shifts in opinion, or whetherthe country is essentially locked into aschism for the foreseeable future, withroughly 53 percent of Americans on oneside and 47 percent on the other.

Mr. Biden’s job approval has beensteady in the mid-50s for most of theyear, as his administration has pushed ashots-and-checks message about beat-ing the virus and reviving the economy.His numbers are weaker on subjects likeimmigration and crime; Republicanshave focused their criticism on those ar-eas accordingly.

Over a holiday weekend, the presi-POLITICS, PAGE 4

U.S. outlookbrightens,yet politicswon’t budgePOLITICAL MEMO

Recovery of the economyand easing pandemic fail to shift partisan boundaries

BY ALEXANDER BURNS

Here’s a paradox: A new drug forAlzheimer’s disease, aducanumab, getsapproved by the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration through an acceleratedprocess without sufficient data, al-though there was limited evidence thatit works, leading three advisory boardmembers to resign in protest. Mean-while, mRNA coronavirus vaccines arenot yet fully licensed despite massiveevidence of their benefits.

In December 2020, the F.D.A. ap-proved the distribution of mRNA co-ronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer andModerna under the agency’s emer-gency use authorization provision,which permits an accelerated approval

process for medi-cations and treat-ments during apublic healthemergency. Theapprovals weregranted after theagency reviewedthe results ofclinical trials thatinvolved morethan 70,000 par-ticipants. Untilthe coronavirus

pandemic, the agency had never givenan E.U.A. to a new vaccine.

Now more than 180 million doses ofthe Pfizer vaccine and 133 million ofModerna’s have been administered inthe United States, with millions moredoses distributed worldwide. In thehistory of medicine, few if any biolog-ics (vaccines, antibodies, molecules)have had their safety and efficacyscrutinized to this degree. First, clini-cal trials showed the vaccines were 95percent effective at preventing symp-tomatic illness. Since then, a number ofpeer-reviewed reports in leading jour-nals have substantiated the vaccines’safety and efficacy, using data col-lected in Israel, Qatar, the United King-dom, the United States and other coun-tries.

In other words, the mRNA vaccineshave overwhelmingly been proved safeand effective by clinical trials, inde-pendent research and the experienceof millions of people around the worldwho received them.

But the vaccines’ approvals remainconditional, and the urgency of fullapprovals cannot be overstated.

Vaccination rates in the UnitedStates have hit a plateau, dropping tofewer than one million shots per day inrecent weeks. That rate has persisteddespite the approval of the vaccines forchildren ages 12 to 15 and an array ofincentives and strategies to promote

Vaccinesneed fullapprovalEric J. Topol

OPINION

Data from theU.S. and othercountries provesthat the Pfizerand Modernavaccines are safeand effective.The F.D.A.needs to act.

TOPOL, PAGE 11

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.nytimes.com/ezra-klein-show

The Ezra Klein Show

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