The Transvaal bought the largest diamond ever found as a birthday gift for Edward VII, the cutter kept the smaller stones as his fee, and South Africans petition for its return

On 26 January 1905 the surface manager Frederick Wells found a diamond of 3,106 carats at the Premier No. 2 mine near Pretoria. It was named after the mine's owner, Thomas Cullinan. It went on sale in London in April 1905 and found no buyer for two years. Louis Botha, the Transvaal's prime minister, proposed buying it as a gift for Edward VII. The Transvaal Legislative Council approved by 42 votes to 19 in August 1907, and the colony bought it on 17 October 1907 for £150,000. Winston Churchill, then a colonial under-secretary, persuaded the king to accept. A decoy stone travelled under guard on a liner while the real stone went to England by registered post. Joseph Asscher of Amsterdam split it on 10 February 1908. Asscher's firm kept every stone except the two largest as its fee. Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa, is the centrepiece of the sceptre, and the Crown Jewels are owned by the sovereign in right of the Crown. Queen Mary held Cullinans III to IX and left them in 1953 to her granddaughter Elizabeth II as private property. After Elizabeth II died in 2022, South Africans renewed calls for the return of the Great Star of Africa. By May 2023 an online petition had more than 8,000 signatures. The MP Vuyolwethu Zungula said the country's mineral wealth belongs to its people, "not the British palace."