Ever Deeper: The Shifting Mining Process
By the mid- to late 1870s, well-funded operators were beginning to mechanize the highest-yielding mines using steam power, a practice that accelerated significantly into the 1880s. Following the amalgamation of claims, these consolidated mines were increasingly composed of large, deep, open pits rather than clusters of small diggings. As such, they required machinery to both haul the soils to the surface and, just as importantly, pump out floodwater, which could hinder further excavation and also endanger workers. Hundreds of feet down and encircled by the containing walls, or “reef,” Africans were employed to remove the earth using an array of tools, including hammers and different types of drills. According to Gardner Williams, “The native workers become very skillful in . . . methods of drilling, and do quite as much work as white men would do under similar conditions.”[43]Once the soil was removed, it was initially carted into tubs and subsequently placed in a haulage system, which had been introduced at the Kimberley mine in the mid-1870s. This procedure brought the soil to the surface, at which point workers moved it to sites where it was broken into pieces. Pulverization was initially performed manually, but from the mid-1870s on, large, rotary “washing” machines produced chunks sufficiently small to examine for diamonds. As a by-product of this process, mounds of picked over, discarded soil, known as tailings, became a telltale feature of Kimberley. Despondent residents often re-combed these piles, searching for stones of any size or quality to enable them to secure their next meal. This type of scavenging signaled the deepening marginalization and impoverishment of so many involved in the (otherwise booming) industry.
In 1882, the increasingly aggressive mining companies first attempted underground mining. However, they quickly abandoned this approach because of recurring rock falls, and subsequently suspended it for roughly another two years. In the meantime, horses, mules, and oxen remained operational mainstays at the principal mining enterprises, which included Kimberley Central, Standard Company, the French Company, Victoria Mining Company, Barnato Brothers, and De Beers. The year 1884, however, marked the beginning of the end for open-pit mining, which steadily gave way to underground operations in which vertical shafts were sunk in order to access the depths. This operational development dramatically shaped the mining experience for African laborers, who now endured round-the-clock production and even more precarious and potentially lethal conditions, including underground accidents and a host of respiratory ailments. The move underground was also accompanied by the introduction of more powerful machinery into the hauling and washing processes, though many of the removal methods at the rock face—blasting, (hand)drilling, loading, and tramming—remained the same. Thus African laborers continued to play a central role despite the rapid series of operational and procedural modifications to the mining process.
Accounts from the Field: Writing about “The Abyss”
Just as the many extant letters from the initial “rush” to Kimberley help deepen our understanding of that period, similar accounts from observers during the consolidation phase provide superb insights into the series of briskly unfolding regional developments. By the mid-1880s, for example, Kimberley had become the first South African town lit by electricity; it was also now being served by the Cape Town railway. Letters from the period provide revealing observations about these innovations, as well as the shifting labor process on the mines. For example, an account from 1877 by William Morton offers an illuminative description of mining operations as they stood at the end of that decade, as well as commentary regarding the immensity of the Kimberley mine:
Before and beneath us lies an abyss—a mighty oval-shaped cauldron, open full to the skies. We look over its edge, down a sheer descent of 200 feet . . . and across from side to side a thousand feet, or a fifth of a mile. One stands bewildered and a little dazed at the volume of the view, if I may so express it. . . . There are hills higher than the pyramids, but we look upon them unmoved. We are used to the wonders of nature, but we have not seen a creation of human hands of this magnitude. . . . Ten thousand men are working below and around us—five thousand down in the pit and five thousand around its edge. Far below, little black pigmy men—so they seem in the distance—are moving about, but not singly or at random, for closer observation shows that they are working in groups, each group upon a certain well-defined square patch of solid earth, at which they are picking and delving, or walking to and fro over it, carrying little buckets of loosened soil.[44]
A letter from J. X. Merriman to his wife from 1885, almost a decade after Morton’s correspondence, provides an updated account of local mining operations and, in particular, the considerable technological progress that had been made since the early days of the industry:
I have just come up from the bowels of the earth in the De Beers Mine. This is a huge pit about 300 feet deep—a yawning chasm: on the edge of this is a wooden kind of trestle 20 feet high over which wires are strained which reach down at a very steep angle some 180 feet into the edge of the crater. Up and down these wires the tubs—huge iron buckets each holding about a ton—are hauled by an engine. We clamber onto the top of the trestle and crawl into the tub, a bell rings and we glide down the wires, suspended in mid-air—thankful to reach the landing-place, from which we transfer ourselves to a sort of cage which goes down into the bowels of the earth another 200 feet, when we come to a great cave where in the dim light of candles miners are working and natives stripped to the skin are filling trucks with the precious . . . rock which contains the diamonds. These trucks run on little tramways under the shaft and are hauled up by the cage, and then emptied into the tub and hauled along the wires. In fact we came down exactly the way a load . . . goes up. After a good look round, I was not sorry to regain the upper air and find myself at the bottom of the trestle on terra firma again. But it was very interesting and is the only example of underground working which has yet succeeded.[45]
Finally, an account by William Crookes from 1908 about his visit to Kimberley five years earlier, provides additional testimony regarding both the increased complexity of the mining process and the ongoing centrality and vitality of African labor:
In 1903, the Kimberley mine had reached a depth of 2,599 feet. Tunnels are driven from the various shafts at different levels, about 120 feet apart, to cross the mine from west to east. These tunnels are connected by two other tunnels running north and south. The scene belowground in the labyrinth of galleries is bewildering in its complexity, and very unlike the popular notion of a diamond mine. All below is dirt, mud, grime; half-naked men dark as mahogany, lithe as athletes, dripping with perspiration, are seen in every direction, hammering, picking, shoveling, wheeling the trucks to and fro, keeping up a weird chant which rises in force and rhythm when a greater task calls for excessive muscular strain. The whole scene is more suggestive of a coal mine than of a diamond mine . . . all this mighty organization—this strenuous expenditure of energy, this costly machinery, this ceaseless toil of skilled and black labor.[46]
New Dangers Below
African laborers daily faced the prospect of occupational injury, disease, or even death—both above and below ground—in great part because of racially based corporate negligence and indifference. Prior to the move underground, for example, the reef regularly collapsed, which both crippled surface operations and injured, often severely, those African employees who worked them. Even after the transition to underground mining, fitfully from 1884 to 1888 and, thereafter, almost completely at both the Kimberley and De Beers mines, a sizable number of Africans continued to work on the surface and thus remained vulnerable to collapses. Moreover, both surface and underground workers were victimized by careless treatment of the explosives that were utilized to loosen deposits. For example, a dynamite accident in the De Beers mine in January 1884 killed three African laborers. Despite mine inspectors’ concerns regarding companies’ “abuse of dynamite,” no investigation was ever conducted. Going forward, although the full
-scale move underground may have caused the unpredictable reef to fade as a concern for mine workers, this operational shift generated an array of new threats. In 1888, for example, a fire in a De Beers mine shaft killed more than 200 employees (including 178 Africans) owing to poor ventilation and the absence of any escape routes. Again, the emerging diamond enterprise eluded prosecution.
Laborers who were lucky enough to avoid these threats to life and limb still risked contracting any one of an assortment of potentially lethal diseases. In fact, among African mine workers, it was one of these afflictions, pneumonia, which was the primary cause of death—not occupational accidents. Surpassing poor sanitation as the root of the major causes of death by the late 1880s, pneumonia was prevalent among those workers who spent long hours in inadequately ventilated mines. As part of a broader labor welfare initiative, in 1893 De Beers finally responded by reducing the number of working hours for its underground employees: three eight-hour shifts replaced the alternating thirteen-hour “night” and “day” shifts. But, the reduction in exposure did little to drive down affliction and mortality rates, in great part because medical facilities for African laborers remained poor or even nonexistent at this time. Instead, most employers preferred to procure new workers rather than pay for their existing ones to receive medical treatment.
African mine workers were also subject to corporal abuse, a form of pain and suffering from which white employees were exempted. For as long as Africans had been present on the mines, white overseers had been doling out physical abuse to motivate workers, to deter or punish diamond theft or, at times, simply arbitrarily. In January 1872, the Diamond Field newspaper included a report on a fatality stemming from physical abuse. Apparently, a white digger, “feeling indignant and disgusted at the laziness exhibited by his . . . (African) labourer, proceeded to kick him on the part set aside for such favours. . . . To his astonishment, from the rag which forms the only article of dress the Zulus luxuriate in, out rolled a sixty carat diamond. The digger at once made a prisoner of the black scoundrel, and tied him by the neck . . . to a pole, while he went to call for assistance. When he returned, the native was found lying dead at the bottom of the claim.”[47]Later that year, another local paper, the Diamond News, ran an article titled “A New Way of Punishing Natives,” in which a digger removed a black worker’s teeth and lacerated his lips and gums using a pair of carpenter’s pincers on account of the latter’s alleged pilferage of a diamond. Although these cases may have been extreme examples, during these initial decades of mining, corporal abuse was unquestionably part and parcel of the daily experience for African laborers.
Only gradually did these employment hazards recede for African mine workers. Combining to reduce fatalities from industrial accidents were increased regulation and heightened managerial concern, as well as lessons (lethally) learned. Of course, work-site perils didn’t disappear entirely. As mining depths began to exceed 1,000 feet, mud rushes constituted a new danger, which increasingly struck De Beers’s underground galleries. For example, in May 1898, a rush occurred at the 1,120-foot level, which barely spared the lives of a large number of African workers. According to Gardner Williams:
On this occasion “Jim” . . . was almost buried alive with his gang of 15 men. The rush shut this working party up in a narrow passage on this level for more than 64 hours. When the men were rescued at length from their stifling quarters, where they were imprisoned for more than two and a half days, without a morsel of food to eat or a drop of water to drink, all were greatly exhausted, as might be supposed. But in spite of his sufferings, the brave leader, Jim, went back at once into the mine to grope back over the mud in search of one of his gang whom he supposed was missing, and he would not return to the surface until he learned beyond doubt that all had been rescued.[48]
Thankfully for both management and underground labor forces, these types of calamities decreased over time, while the overall safety records of the mines improved—greatly reducing the need for employee heroics, such as those that Jim had displayed. Yet even if Africans were less likely to perish or incur injuries, the daily labor process remained as demanding as ever. Moreover, the profits derived from these efforts continued to flow disproportionately to the owners of the mines—the individuals who experienced the very lowest levels of physical risk.
The Expanding Supply of African Labor
Undaunted by the challenging conditions on the mines and faced with a host of rural pressures, African migrant laborers from throughout the subcontinent continued to pour into Kimberley. Once there, they were forced to engage with the emerging diamond enterprises on increasingly unfavorable terms. Pushed out of rural areas due to tightening racist legislation, hostile white encroachment, and a shrinking number of livelihood options, these African migrant flows rarely waned. Once hired, these employees constituted a dependable, durable labor force. Enjoying this vital influx of labor and keen to end the turnover that had characterized African workforces during the first decade and a half of mining, the fledgling mining companies sought to heighten their control over both the supply and cost of African labor. In 1885 and 1886, for example, the largest operations began hiring only formally recruited laborers, that is, those who were furnished by either rural chiefs or established labor agents. Many of these recruits worked longer contracts (six to twelve months, as opposed to the traditional three to six) and accepted wages that amounted to only half of what had formerly been paid out. Following amalgamation, fewer and fewer potential employers existed, and, therefore, African migrants were increasingly obliged to accept these unfavorable terms. In the early twentieth century, one De Beers manager went so far as to blithely explain that “the natives have been compelled by starvation to seek work.” Apparently, Africans’ motivations for seeking wage labor were of little concern to company officials at these emerging enterprises.
The Cheapest Workforce: Convict Labor
Although flows of desperate migrants streaming into Kimberley constituted an ideal labor supply, the utilization of convicts for mine work was even more appealing. Due to onerous legislation, summary trials, and a wide range of criminalized activity, Kimberley’s jail featured, by far, the largest inmate population in the Cape Colony. With a daily average of 658 occupants, it held seven times more inmates than Cape Town’s jail. From 1884, the year in which De Beers initially negotiated with the state to use convict labor, until the discontinuance of this practice in 1932, this arrangement served both the company and the government extremely well.
The mining enterprise received these inmates’ labor via the De Beers Company Branch Convict Station, which both relieved the state of its responsibilities to house and feed them and also granted it a small sum in exchange for the provision of each individual. A report on the practice from 1890 estimated that this scheme was earning the Cape government roughly £1,000 per year. As such, in 1905, for example, the state increased the population at the De Beers Convict Station by an additional 1,200 inmates, two-thirds of whom had been sentenced for stock theft elsewhere in the colony. Although the old adage that “crime doesn’t pay” certainly held for these convicts, for the state, criminal activity had never been so profitable.
The system also worked quite well for De Beers, as the company subjected thousands of these workers to longer shifts—sunrise to sunset—all without pay. Moreover, Gardner Williams explained: “We can depend on convict labour and it is always at hand. They cannot get away like ordinary labourers. We can also prevent theft better than with free boys. If the latter attempt to escape you cannot shoot them, whereas . . . Government officials can shoot a convict if he attempts to escape.”[49]Although contemporary readers may well find Williams’s callous rationalization disturbing, it certainly reflected the prevailing sentiments within the industry at the time he expressed it. Meanwhile, even for transgressions less extreme than flight, including perceived idleness or acquiring “forbidden articles” (e.g., tobacco), convicts could still expect to be whipped. In practice, th
ese inmate laborers were punished twice as often as were convicts anywhere else in the Cape. They also occasionally found themselves placed in a set of stocks—a rather anachronistic penal device, and the only set permitted in the colony—for three hours a day, two to three days at a time. Due to local authorities’ deep indifference toward these “criminals,” these unfortunate individuals were denied even the most basic rights the moment they entered this punitive system.
The Ultimate Form of Labor Control: The Compound System
While African mine workers endured myriad forms of both informal and institutionalized racism, occupational prejudice came into sharpest relief in the mid-1880s with the implementation of the compound housing system. In practice, labor control had always been a goal for mining employers, but as the diggings became increasingly industrialized and systematic, mine owners desperately needed a fully reliable workforce. The changing nature of the mining process, in turn, prompted adjustments in the ways that companies organized and managed their African laborers, both above and below ground.
Figure 5. De Beers compound, 188os. From Gardner F. Williams, The Diamond Mines of South Africa: Some Account of Their Rise and Development (London: Macmillan, 1902), 415
“Closed compounds” first appeared on the corporate mines of Kimberley Central and the French Company in 1885, followed shortly thereafter by De Beers, and by 1889 housed all 10,000 African employees (figure 5). Following the consolidation of the mines and the move underground, the latter of which more than doubled production costs, the new corporate operations required a dependable, regimented labor force, which the compounds guaranteed. This accommodations system virtually imprisoned African employees for the duration of their contracts, permitting movement only between two highly secured spaces: the mine and the compound. Furthermore, in the name of combating diamond theft, African workers were subjected to invasive strip searches as they moved between spaces within this closed system. Although white employees were also actively involved in IDB, they were able to avoid these humiliating measures through rigorous protestations, such as the sentiments expressed by the distraught wife that appeared at the onset of this chapter. The diamond companies’ capitulation further reinforced the racial divide within the industry. From the 1880s forward, whites served almost exclusively as managers or supervisors, whereas blacks were excluded from these types of positions for many decades to come.
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