3: From Illusion to Reality
The Kimberley Discoveries, the Diamond “Rush,” and the “Wild West” in Africa
Gentlemen, this is the rock upon which the future of South Africa will be built.
—Richard Southey, the Colonial Secretary of Cape Town, addressing the South African Parliament in 1869 while standing over the 85-carat “Star of South Africa,” the second major diamond discovered in the colony
As this influx from the dark continent met and mingled with the rush from the outside world in the diamond-mines . . . how greatly vivid, unique, and stirring were the kaleidoscopic shifts of this strange concourse! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America had boiled over into a hotch-potch, splashed on a diamond bed in the heart of South Africa.
—Gardner F. Williams, longtime De Beers manager, writing in 1902 about the initial “rush” to the diamond mines
Although most readers will have at least some level of familiarity with the California Gold Rush of the 1840s and ’50s, the history of the global convergence upon South Africa following the discovery of the Eureka Diamond is certainly less well known. In practice, these two “rushes” were strikingly similar and were, in fact, strongly connected. In both settings, a motley group of fortune seekers, profiteers, speculators, and criminals gathered. And, in both scenarios, previously largely neglected spaces were transformed into thriving, frenetic commercial centers pulsating with money—San Francisco and Kimberley, respectively. Moreover, many individuals who had either struck it rich or at least tried their luck in California could be found two decades later seeking their fortunes in the heart of South Africa.
But foreigners were not the only ones “rushing” to the mines in and around Kimberley. Thousands of Africans also descended upon the digging sites, similarly hoping for a piece of the mineral action. Although many of these African “rushers” came from nearby communities, over time increasingly distant societies also began hemorrhaging members to the mines. And just as the California Gold Rush forever shaped America’s development, the profound upheaval and chain of events that followed the discovery of the Eureka Diamond would be felt not only in South Africa but also in places far removed.
This chapter considers the explosion of mining in South Africa following the discovery of diamond concentrations in and around Kimberley in the late 1860s. If Europeans had previously imagined Africa as a repository of precious minerals, these finds surpassed even their wildest dreams. At long last, illusion had become reality. Virtually overnight, central South Africa became the epicenter of the global mineral landscape—a type of African “Wild West”—unrecognizable to anyone who had traversed this area prior to Erasmus Jacobs’s discovery of the Eureka.
Despite the influx of foreigners and international capital, African diggers were initially able to own and work claims. Going forward, however, heightened competition with white diggers both generated and deepened racial tension. This antagonism eventually prompted legislation that enabled entrepreneurial businessmen such as Barney Barnato and Cecil Rhodes to amalgamate claims and thereby consolidate control of the deposits, which, in turn, ultimately led to the eminence of the famed De Beers enterprise. Collectively, these commercial developments, both intentionally and inadvertently, marginalized Africans involved in the diamond industry, reducing them to an ever-expanding migratory labor force.
Setting the Stage: The Resident Populations on the Diamond Fields
The South African terrain to which the treasure hunters rushed was certainly remote, but it was not entirely unpopulated. Local residents included the Griqua, a Europeanized African community whose origins can be traced to miscegenation between the original Dutch settlers in the Cape Colony and the resident indigenous populations, and the Boers, an Africanized European (Dutch) community. The Griqua had a slightly longer history in the region, though given their racially mixed ancestry they, too, were relative newcomers. In the following section, I outline the processes by which these two communities came to inhabit this space—a place that had been largely neglected until the Eureka changed, well, everything.
In the decades leading up to the diamond discoveries, African societies throughout the southern portion of the continent had been facing formidable challenges to their very survival. In the first half of the century, the upheaval known as the mfecane (c. 1815–40) saw Africans in the region violently thrust upon one another; the resulting waves of refugees unsettled much of the subcontinent. Following the eventual conclusion of this unrest, redwater fever and lung sickness decimated cattle holdings across the region on into the 1850s and ’60s. And, to make matters worse, widespread drought in the early 1860s further reduced cattle populations and limited crop output. The Griqua arguably experienced this environmental calamity most acutely, as their water table dropped, local streams and springs dried up, and the fields that they had once cultivated dried out. Game levels also declined, as Africans were acquiring ever-greater numbers of firearms through trade with white merchants and were consequently decimating animal populations faster than the fauna could recover. Indeed, by the time of the first diamond discoveries, hunters had killed off most of the large game south of the Molopo River.
Meanwhile, the Dutch descendants—Boers, or “Afrikaaners”—were streaming into the region and exacerbating the already dire situation for the Griqua. In the 1830s, large numbers of Afrikaaner farmers from the Cape Colony loaded their possessions into wagons and plodded northward. The reasons for the exodus of these “voortrekkers” included bitterness toward British overrule and sense of propriety in the Cape Colony, population pressures, and increasingly restrictive laws on slavery. As these farmers and their families trekked northward, they eventually arrived at the junction of the Orange and Vaal Rivers, where many of them opted to establish farms. Unbeknown to them, they were settling atop the richest diamond deposits in the world. Eventually, these migrant farmers founded two republics in the vicinity: the Transvaal (or South African Republic), north of the Vaal River, and the Orange Free State, just to the east of the (future) diamond fields.
Map 2. Southern Africa, showing Kimberley and surrounding areas. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP
In settling in the region, Boer trekkers displaced certain Griqua communities, often violently. Even when the Afrikaaners didn’t directly impinge on Griqua residents, though, these white settlers were hunters and pastoralists, in competition with their local rivals for the same things: game, cattle, and land. Predictably, contention for these resources grew more intense over time. Thus, well before the discovery of diamonds, the combination of overhunting and ecological decline forced Africans to seek new ways to restructure their economic, social, and political relations. From the 1840s on, as white settlement and merchant capitalism spread further into the interior of the subcontinent, increasing numbers of African males identified novel ways to raise the funds necessary to purchase cattle and guns and also to pay lobola, or bridewealth, in order to secure a wife and leave their fathers’ compounds. In order to generate sufficient revenue, members of some African societies, including the Pedi and Tswana, sold products obtained from local fauna, including ivory, hides, and feathers. However, over time, overhunting and drought limited their ability to secure and trade such items. Beginning in the 1840s, large numbers of Africans migrated south, often for several months at a time, to sell their labor. Thus, on the eve of the discovery of the diamond fields, an uneasy tension between Boer and Griqua existed in the heart of South Africa, while a number of other African communities were already sending off their young men to labor for white employers—a foreshadowing of events to come.
The Global Rush to South Africa
In practice, the “rush” is better understood as a process rather than a single event. Following Jacobs’s discovery in 1867, fortune seekers from around the globe initially descended on what became known as the “river diggings.” And although interest in these deposits endured for some time thereafter, attention quickly turned to the more lucrative “dry
diggings” at “New Rush.” These “dry” deposits eventually far outpaced the riverine sites in terms of carats produced, and it was around these sites that De Beers ultimately emerged. Prior to that far-reaching development, though, white diggers of all nationalities busied themselves working individual claims in both the “wet” and “dry” sites, sometimes successfully, oftentimes not. Regardless of their individual fortunes, the growing presence of these white migrants quickly transformed what had been an arid, dusty, largely forgotten place into a burgeoning urban area and eventually, via the efforts of some of the more entrepreneurial members of this rather unsavory crowd, the global epicenter of the diamond industry.
More immediately, shortly after the diamond deposits were discovered and fortune hunters began to descend on the region, state-level wrangling over the minerals buried in the regional soils and riverbeds commenced. The Orange Free State acted first, asserting legal domain over the “diamond rivers.” The Transvaal followed closely behind, proclaiming ownership of the entire north bank of the Vaal River until its intersection with the Hartz River. Meanwhile, at least until early 1870, local African chiefs had been able to successfully restrict white prospectors’ access to the diggings on the northern bank of the Vaal. In July of that year, only a modest number, approximately eight hundred whites, were congregated at Klipdrift (later renamed Barkly West).
However, it wouldn’t have been a “rush,” if there wasn’t a massive influx of people. Sure enough, by October, tents and shanties that stretched along over eighty miles of the banks of the Vaal served as the temporary homes for some five thousand white diggers, packed virtually on top of one another, while ten times that many were present by the following year. By the end of 1871, local chiefs had lost all control of the river diggings to both the teeming “rushers” and, more ominously, to Great Britain, which had intervened to annex a considerable portion of the area.
If varying yields from the river diggings dictated the fortunes of the thousands of white speculators and diggers that they attracted, the opening up of the nearby dry diggings, clustered around what would become the city of Kimberley, forever changed the course of Africa’s modern history. Indeed, the initial diamond rush might well have done little more than empty a handful of rivers in central South Africa of their diamonds and then subsequently fade into history like so many other short-lived, mineral-inspired rushes. However, the discovery of bountiful deposits away from the rivers not only prompted many of the initial treasure hunters to abruptly decamp for the nearby dry sites but also attracted many thousands more to the area who had previously been sitting on the sidelines. One local observer unflatteringly described this new wave of migrants as follows:
Rabbis, rebels, rogues and roués from Russia and the Riviera, transports from Tasmania, convicts from Caledonia, ex-prisoners from Portland, brigands from Bulgaria, and the choicest pickings of the dirtiest street-corners in all Europe . . . came here to escape grinding poverty or in many cases punishment of their crimes. . . . Unfrocked clergymen with the air of saints and souls of sinners. . . . It was a horde that increased and multiplied, and would have made a fine haul for the Devil.[16]
Another eyewitness commented on the reckless impulsiveness that this motley assortment of diggers exhibited: “They tore down their tents and abandoned the Vaal [River]. The camps were forsaken in a week. . . . The Boer farmers [near the dry diggings] watched in despair as diggers trampled the vegetation, cut down trees and stole cattle. A cloud of dust, visible for miles, hung above the diggings.”[17]From just these two accounts, it’s easy to imagine how wretched this group of treasure seekers truly was!
In practice, a blatant disregard for private property of any type characterized the rush. An account from 1869 by an English digger named Alderson provides insights into the destructive indifference of the community of diggers, which often operated more like a mob; the ways that local landowners futilely tried to retain control; and even the simmering tension between the long-standing descendant communities of the original Dutch settlers in the colony (Boers) and the more recently arrived British. According to the Englishman:
We heard that a farmer named Van Wyk was giving out ground to Boers on his farm, and that they were . . . finding diamonds. . . . We accordingly trekked over with our carts and oxen. . . . Then we were told by two [Orange] Free Staters of English descent that Van Wyk would not allow anyone but a Dutchman to work on his farm. The next rumor that reached us was that in a furrow which stretched across the north end of the present mine, 92 diamonds had been found. Van Wyk came up to us . . . to warn us against attempting to dig on his farm and gave us just one hour in which to . . . clear off. Whilst we were pondering over the position . . . two Free Staters advised us to leave, otherwise we should be fired at from the homestead. I, however, gathered up my pick and pegs, calling out “Who follows me?”. . . and I made for the kopje [a small, granite hill], expecting to be fired on at any moment. No such thing happened. I had advanced about 50 yards . . . then the remainder of our party came. On arriving at the top of the kopje I pegged out the first 30 ft. by 30 claim that was ever pegged, previous claims having been 20 ft. by 20. The others pegged the same areas. There were about 200 Dutchmen below the kopje, who seeing that no shots were flying round, rushed up with wild screams and marked out claims also. Thereupon Van Wyk . . . appeared. Van Wyk asked us all to stop work as he was willing to come to terms. He was immediately carried shoulder high to a wagon, and from that point of vantage he announced that he was by no means averse to Englishmen, and that we might all work on his place on payment of 15/- [15 shillings] per month per claim. I acted as the spokesman for the others; I told him I had been the first to rush the mine, and that I considered he would be well paid at 7/6 [7 shillings 6 pence] per claim. The Dutchmen unanimously supported the suggestions, and eventually the farmer agreed. We paid down our money. . . . They constituted to all intents and purposes leases in perpetuity.[18]
Other times, landowners were not so fortunate and either fled as diggers overran their farms or hastily sold off their properties, electing to receive at least some compensation before forever parting with their soon-to-be-ravaged land. Most famously, the De Beer brothers exchanged their namesake farm—which possessed promising diamond deposits and would eventually serve as the landmark site for the eponymous enterprise—to a group of investors, which included an aspiring industrialist named Cecil Rhodes, for only £6,000 (roughly a mere $650,000 today). It’s safe to say that this transaction delivered one of the greatest windfalls in the history of mining!
Eventually, the dry diggings came to be composed of four mines: Kimberley (initially known as “Colesburg Kopje” or “New Rush”), De Beers, Dutoitspan (originally owned by the aforementioned Van Wyk), and Bultfontein. The sites varied dramatically in terms of both their overall output and the quality of their respective yields. For example, the Kimberley mine (figure 3),[19]with 470 original claims, featured the highest average number of carats found in each load extracted, followed by the De Beers mine. Dutoitspan, which initially contained twice as many claims as De Beers (1,441 to 622), was the largest of the four mines, and although its diamonds fetched the highest average price per carat, it never matched Kimberley’s yields. Finally, Bultfontein, which contained 1,067 claims, was known as the “poor man’s kopje,” while its most barren sections even earned the dispiriting nickname: “the graveyard.”
Figure 3. Kimberley Mine, 1872, showing an end view of the excavations. From Gardner F. Williams, The Diamond Mines of South Africa: Some Account of Their Rise and Development (London: Macmillan, 1902), 196
Epistolary Accounts of the Physical and Emotional Nature of the “Rush”
To reconstruct the experiences of the white “rushers” on the diamond mines, we are fortunate that a rich cache of letters has survived. This correspondence typically consisted of diggers’ or prospectors’ firsthand accounts of the chaos, sent to wives and other relatives. Via these letters, it’s easy to see how the rush in
delibly affected these individuals, vaulting some fortunate souls into elation following lucrative finds, while banishing to the depths of fiscal insolvency those whose luck failed them. For example, the financial unpredictability of this venture prompted an English fortune seeker named John Thompson Dugmore to write to his wife in September 1870 that “The whole (digging experience) is a lottery in the strictest sense of the word.”[20] Beyond reflecting the alternating optimism and despair inherent in any get-rich-quick endeavor, these letters also played important roles in convincing ever more “rushers” to descend on Kimberley. A June 1870 letter from Mary Barber, a South African resident of European descent, to a friend illuminates the initial hope, excitement, infectiousness, and even “jolliness” that characterized this episode of “diamond fever”:
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