2 Diamond Diggers and the New Elite

Diamonds were found in 1867-8 along the Vaal and Orange rivers in a region where some 3,ooo Griquas, i,ooo Korarmas and IOOO Afrikaners lived in uneasy proximity.' Britain had acknowledged the Griqua claims to the territory by treaty in

x834 and 1846. Reversing her policy, she gave independence to the Transvaal voortrekkers in 1852 and to the Orange Free State in 1854, repudiated her alliances with coloured peoples north of the Orange, excepting Adam Kok, and in effect abandoned them to Afrikaner domination. Then came the discoveries. Diamonds, prophesied the Cape's colonial secretary, Richard Southey, were 'the rock on which the success of South Africa will be built'.

Britain rediscovered a moral duty towards the Griquas. Wode house, the Cape governor, informed Kimberley, the British secretary of state, that 'as a matter of right the native tribes are fairly entitled to that tract of country in which, for the present, the diamonds appear to be chiefly found'. ²Kimberley agreed and added that his government would be much displeased if the republics were to extend their slave-dealing activities, oppress the natives, and cause disturbances of the peace by encroaching on Griqua territory.³

Britain walked off with the prize, while Griquas, Korannas, Rolong and Afrikaner republics disputed the ownership of the diamond fields. Cornelius Waterboer, the Griqua leader, had trustingly appealed to Britain for protection. An arbitration court awarded the territory to his people, and Britain annexed it in x871 under the title of Griqualand West. A payment of

£9,0ooo was made to the Orange Free State as compensation for the loss of her title. To the Griqua went the consolation of having their name perpetuated in one of the richest portions of the earth's surface, which once they had called their own. South

Africans of all races and a random selection of immigrants took their place. The influx raised the population of the territory by June 1871 to 37,000, of whom 21,000 were Africans and Coloured.' None of the administering authorities, whether Griqua, Afrikaner or British, was prepared for the rush. The diggers appointed committees to enforce order, and the Orange Free State asserted a nominal authority before the annexation, but there was a dearth of even rudimentary services.

Housing, hospitals, water supplies, sanitation, power and transport had to be improvised, usually by private agencies at rising prices. Diggers, some with families, lived in wagons, tents, huts or galvanized iron sheds. Africans, who usually walked barefooted to the fields, often arrived in an emaciated state:

'weary, grimy, hungry, shy, trailing along sometimes with bleed ing feet, and hanging heads, and bodies staggering with faint ness.'⁵ Many came from far in the interior with the sole purpose of earning £6 for a gun, the only weapon with which they could hope to protect their land and cattle against invading colonists.

No one accepted responsibility for the newcomers. Their desti tution rendered them unfit for hard toil, but forced them to labour twelve hours a day and more. They slept on the bare earth without shelter or in a brushwood hut, and suffered greatly from the cold. They lived on mealie-meal, with an occasional chunk of refuse meat. Water, at 2s. 6d. a bucket, was beyond their means. Many acquired a taste for Cape brandy, retailed at 3d. a tot and ios. 6d. a gallon. There were no laws to regulate wages and working conditions, impose safety measures against

accident and disease, or enforce the payment of work men's compensation.

Farmers trekked to the fields with oxwagon, family, and a retinue of servants who were paid

£3

a year, or the price of a cow, to dig for diamonds, while the patriarch, smoking his pipe, sat at the sorting table. Recent immigrants, who accounted for one-quarter of the white population on the fields, soon adopted the South African way of life. They too hired Africans to pick,

shovel, break, haul and sift ground, to cut and carry firewood, to X

cook and wash, and to accompany their masters to market with sack or wheelbarrow. Most whites felt disinclined for manual

35 _I

Class and Colour in South Africa r85o-.95o

work during the summer, observed Sir Charles Payton, who spent six months on the diggings in

^1871.

'It is quite sufficient for them to sit under an awning and sort, leaving the Kafirs to perform all the other stages of work.'

⁶

Middle-class English gentlemen, like Cecil Rhodes and his brother, 'delighted to find themselves in a veritable Tom Tiddler's ground, where they could not only pick up gold and silver, but have it done for them

by "niggers" ^,.7

Conditions were ideal for making fat profits on a thin invest ment. Luck, foresight, tenacity, ruthlessness and a little capital

were needed for success. Most diggers probably lacked these qualities and failed to pay their way.' But the successful ones could amass great wealth,

production or speculation, out of a valuable mineral extracted without expensive plant and

peasants who received no protection against gross exploitation.

Diamonds to an estimated value of rIl million were taken out of the ground

by I872.1

The labourer's share was a weekly wage

of 7s. 6d.

or ios. and rations worth 6s.

6d.,

consisting of twenty five pounds of mealie-meal (but whole mealies came much cheaper), an issue of coarse meat (called 'kafir' meat in the trade), a handful of coarse tobacco, and a Saturday night's tot of crude wine, spirits or brandy. Africans could not fail to note the contrast between their poverty and the value of their labour.

they missed the point, dealers in stolen gems drove it home.

Illicit diamond mining grew into a major industry. Stolen

stones passed from the labourer to a

'tout', who sold them for a

small part of their value to a registered claimholder or licensed

dealer. Louis Cohen, a native of Liverpool who emigrated to the

diggings m"IM6, noted that many wealthy diggers laid the basis

of their fortunes

buying stolen gems. They robbed the small

man of his diamonds and claim, became big mine owners or

dealers, and were then loudest in denouncing the profession that

they had previously practised with such success."' African and

Coloured labourers supplied the stolen diamonds. Few were

convicted but all were suspected, not least

unsuccessful

diggers.

mythology took shape. Coloured claimholders were

said to be more successful than white ones, because they received

stones stolen

relatives and friends.

¹¹

Africans, it was main

Diamond Diggers and the New Elite

tained, stole at least half the output.

¹²

'The partially civilized Kaffir rapidly develops into a thief.'

^{1 3}

The 'raw Kaffir'. fresh from the kraal, is best and most trustworthy. 'Above all things, mistrust a Kaffir who speaks English and wears trousers,' advised Payton, who had a prodigious capacity for consuming and regurgitating colonial prejudices.

^{1 4}

Prospectors from Australia and California imported notions of a 'diggers' law'. A Diamond Diggers' Protection Society, formed in

1870,

issued a set

regulations.

1 ney

stipulated that 'no licence to dig should be granted to a Native', prohibited persons of colour from holding claims or diamonds in their own right, and prohibited the buying of diamonds from any servant unless he had his employer's written authority to sell. The rules were given 'the force of law'

the executive council of the Orange Free State while it claimed to administer the diggings; but lost all semblance of legal validity after Britain had annexed Griqua land West.'

Coloured and Africans could then assert the same right as any white man to take out a licence and dig on their own account. The whites protested vigorously, especially when dia mond yields declined, or prices fell, or the cost of claims rose.

There was always some distress among the diggers. They blamed it on the servants who stole and the dealers who bought the stones, but, above all, on African and Coloured licensed claimholders.

Rioters swept through the streets of New Rush, the site of Kimberley, in

^z872;

tried to lynch an Indian accused of buying diamonds; burnt the tents and canteens of suspected traffickers in stolen gems; chased and flogged African passers-by. Two of the three British commissioners appointed to administer the diggings submitted to the campaign of violence. They issued a proclamation on

July suspending all digging licences held

Africans and Coloured. No more licences were to be issued to persons of colour except

leave of a diggers' committee or of a board of seven

bona fide white claimholders.¹⁶

Barkly, the Cape governor and high commissioner of Griqualand West, ruled that such discrimination was contrary to reason and justice, and there fore

ultra vires.¹I

He disallowed the proclamation, but under took to see how far he could meet the rioters' demands. The diggers then submitted draft rules which would bar Africans and

Class and Colour in South Africa z85o-195o

Coloured from obtaining licences to search for, buy, sell, or otherwise trade in diamonds. The rules also provided for written labour contracts, the expulsion of unemployed Africans from

the diggings, and the confiscation of diamonds held by servants.

Barkly conceded the substance of the demands in a proclamation

of IO August ^1872,described as a measure to prevent the stealing of diamonds.

Barkly kept up the appearance of equality before the law by applying the proclamation to all 'servants'. But it discriminated, and was meant to discriminate, against Africans and Coloured.

In the first place, no person could become a registered claim holder unless a magistrate or justice of the peace had certified him to be of good character, fit and proper to be registered.

White officials under pressure from aggressive racists could be relied upon to use their wide powers against Africans as a class.

Only a few licensed Coloured diggers, operating on the outskirts of the fields, remained to give credence to the Cape's doc trine of liberalism. Secondly, the proclamation laid the basis of the 'pass'I stem that spread in time to the Rand mines and from te-reto labour districts and towns throughout South Africa. It centred on the registration of labour contracts. Ser vants had to produce a certificate of registration on demand, and have it endorsed on taking their discharge. To leave the diggings lawfully, a servant had to produce the endorsed certificate and take out a pass. Any person found wandering in a mining camp without a pass and unable to give a satisfactory account of himself ran the risk of summary arrest, a 45 fine and three months' hard labour or twenty-five lashes.

The object was to detect and apprehend deserting workers, who were liable under the Masters and Servants Act to fines or imprisonment. A related aim was the recovery of stolen dia monds. A policeman or employer might without warrant search a servant's room, property and person within twenty-four hours of his leaving his place of work. Diamonds in his possession belonged to his master unless the contrary was proved.

Barkly's surrender to racism failed to appease the leaders of the malcontents. They were after bigger game than a handful of Coloured prospectors and debris-sorters. Aylward, Tucker, Ling

~mm~ ^- ¹

Diamond Diggers and the New Elite

and others like them wanted power

an unreasonable and dangerous amount of power, reported Southey, now the lieu tenant-governor of Griqualand West. They would use it, he warned, to deprive Her Majesty's Coloured subjects of their rights and privileges.'

⁸

He and his secretary John Currey resisted demands for a stringent vagrancy law and an outright ban on the employment of registered servants

Coloured and Africans for mining and the sorting of debris.

More tents were burned. Discontented diggers made common cause with plotters from the Orange Free State and speculators out to buy claims cheaply. They formed the Kimberley Defence League, organized armed vigilantes,

an hoisted

the black flrag.

Marvon, the secretary of state, sided with the diggers and ordered the dismissal of Southey and Currey in 1875 for having failed to establish good relations with the whites of Kimberley."

⁹

The Griquas rose in rebellion in 1878, and the Cape incor

porated Griqualand West in I88o. The colony's Va r Act X

of 1867, as amended

Act

of 1879, could then-e applied on the diggings. It supplemented the pass laws

prescribing a maximum of six months' imprisonment with hard labour, spare diet and solitary confinement for any 'idle and disorderly person'

the phrase used to describe anyone who wandered abroad with out lawful means of subsistence and failed to give a good and satisfactory account of himself.

Southey had fallen foul of the Colonial Office

rejecting

racial discrimination and protecting migrant workers against

gross neglect. In his dispatches he complained of diggers who

turned sick labourers into the street instead of caring for them

as the law required. At his instance the legislative council

passed Ordinance

of

1874

to provide hospital accommodation,

medical attention and sanitary services 'for the benefit of the

native labourers', though at their expense. Every master was to

deduct one shilling a month from his servant's wage and pay it

to the registrar of servants, for a hospital and the improvement

of general sanitation. The diggers objected strenuously to the

levy, which came out of the worker's pocket, although the

annual African death rate in Kimberley reached the alarming

figure of seventy-nine per thousanid in 1879 in contrast to a rate

Class and Colour in South Africa T85o-.950

of forty for whites.^{2 0} The levy yielded £Io,ooo in 1882, and a hospital was built. Nearly twenty years later, however, sick Africans, usually suffering from scurvy, were often left 'to lie in the compounds day after day in their dirty blankets and their bodies in a filthy condition .21

Human beings were cheaper than diamonds, as white workers also discovered. Men died or suffered injury in accidents caused by inexperience, lack of training, inadequate safety measures and the failure to supervise machinery. Witnesses told the Diamond Mining Commission of 1881 that no proper inquest or inquiry was held after an accident.^{2 2} The commission suggested that safety regulations be introduced, but Cecil Rhodes and some other members of the commission seemed more anxious to prevent diamond thefts than to prevent accidents. Much atten tion was given to whether white employees as well as Africans should be searched for stolen stones. For the small claim holders, whose pressure had led to the elimination of Coloured diggers, were by then being eliminated in turn. A world-wide slump in diamond prices in 1875 forced many diggers out of the fields. More left as the yellow ground became exhausted. At

lower levels, when digging deep into the blue ground, men found open-cast mining impossible on small claims of thirty feet square. Rockfalls, water seepage, boundary disputes, high costs and technical difficulties associated with deep-level mining hastened the process of converting independent diggers into servants of big companies.

Successful diggers and dealers, foreign merchants and in vestors bought and accumulated claims, formed syndicates and merged into companies. The original 3,600 claims in the four big mines at Kimberley were reduced by 1885 to 98 properties, held by 42 companies and 56 private firms or individuals. The mergers continued until each mine was worked as a unit. Big capitalists bought or squeezed out small shareholders. Small companies formed large companies which eventually merged into one great corporation, the De Beers Consolidated Mine. It controlled all the Kimberley mnes and ninety per cent of the world's output of diamonds before the end of the century.^{2 3} Laws enacted to protect small diggers now operated for the

~*,,I -~ 1 -

or, ¹ ^-wr,

Diamond Diggers and the New Elite company's benefit. Men who had clamoured for protection against illicit diamond buying found that the weapons they had helped to forge were being turned against themselves.

A special court was set up in x88o to try cases of illicit diamond buying - 'the canker worm of the community', said the judge, Sir Jacobus de Wet. The Trade in Diamonds Consolidation Act of 1882 prescribed a maximum penatty or a tnousana-pount Mne or fifteen years' imprisonment or both for being in un lawful possession of uncut diamonds. Only a licensed dealer was allowed to buy the uncut stones. But heavy penalties did not stop the traffic. Attempts were therefore made to stop it at the source. Regulations of 1872 and I88o, that provided for the searching of persons when they entered or left mining ground, proved ineffective. A majority of the diggers and claimholders who replied to a questionnaire circulated by the commission of 1881 favoured the compulsory searching of African workers;

some wanted whites also to be searched; and some suggested the lash, life imprisonment, banishment, or a stricter pass and vagrancy law to put down illicit diamond buying. Amended regulations of 1883 required all mine workers, other than managers, to wear uniforms and to strip naked in searching houses when they left work.

White workers complained of being degraded to the 'Kafir's'

level, went on strike, demonstrated and rioted in 1883. Twenty-

X

five Africans who had joined in the turmoil were sent to jail for disorderly conduct, and the company rescinded the order to strip. A new instruction, issued in 1884, required white employ ees to be searched while clothed in shirt, trousers and socks, and those who refused were threatened with instant dismissal. The men called a general strike, stopped the pumps on all mines, and when the 'French' company resumed work, marched on the mine to put the hauling gear out of action. The company's guards, barricaded behind sandbags, called on them to halt, opened fire, killed four demonstrators outright and fatally wounded two more. The workers held a splendid funeral, gathered at mass meetings to protest, and went back to work after the owners had agreed to subject white employees to only irregular surprise searches.²⁴

Class and Colour in South Africa ^1850-I950

Africans were searched every day at the end of their shift.

Stripped naked, they jumped over bars and paraded with arms extended before guards, who scrutinized hair, nose, mouth, ears and rectum with meticulous care. It was much the same kind of search that Africans endured in Kimberley's central prison where, remarked Judge, the civil commissioner, 'many a raw native ignorant of the laws of the province experienced the first acquaintance with civilization.'"

⁵

Rhodes and his fellow directors took the parallel a long way further when they hit on the idea of confining African miners in closed compounds for the four or six months of their contract period. This debasing form of working-class housing was firmly entrenched

i888, the year of the great merger of all controlling companies with De Beers. The compound was an enclosure surrounded

a high corrugated iron fence and covered

wire-netting. The men lived, twenty to a room, in huts or iron cabins built against the fence. They went to work along a tunnel, bought food and clothing from the company's stores, and received free medical treatment but no wages during sickness, all within the com pound. Men due for discharge were confined in detention rooms

X for several days, during which they wore only blankets and fingerless leather gloves padlocked to their wrists, swallowed purgatives, and were examined for stones concealed in cuts, wounds, swellings and orifices.

²⁶

Kimberley's shopkeepers protested loudly that they were being deprived of trade

the company's policy of converting 'a labour contract into a period of imprisonment with hard labour and a truck system of wages'.

²⁷

To appease them, De Beers undertook to stock its shops with goods bought only in the district; and Rhodes distributed the profits, amounting to

£1io,ooo a year, between a sanatorium, mining school and amenities for the whites of Kimberley."⁸ Africans, whose trade