South Africa before the minerals

In the mid-1800s most people lived from the land, not from mines or factories.

Before 1867, southern Africa had no big industries. Most people - African farmers, Boer families and British settlers - lived by farming and herding cattle. There were four main political areas: the British Cape and Natal colonies, and the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

• African societies still controlled much of their own land and labour.
• There were few towns, few railways and little money in circulation.
• The discovery of minerals would change all of this in a single generation.

Diamonds are discovered

A shiny pebble picked up near the Orange River set off the first great mineral rush.

In 1867 a young boy, Erasmus Jacobs, found a diamond on a farm near Hopetown on the Orange River. Two years later a much larger diamond, later called the Star of South Africa, proved the area was rich in diamonds. Thousands of fortune-seekers rushed in.

• The richest diggings were around what became the town of Kimberley.
• People came from across the world and across southern Africa to dig.
• Diamonds were South Africa's first mineral 'rush' - the start of the revolution.

The Big Hole

Thousands of diggers turned a hill into the deepest hand-dug hole in the world.

At Kimberley, miners dug straight down into the diamond-bearing rock. Each digger worked a small claim, and as the claims went deeper the whole area became one enormous pit - the Big Hole. It grew hard and dangerous to work by hand, and only companies with a lot of money could keep mining.

• Kimberley quickly became one of the largest towns in the country.
• Deeper mining needed machines, money and many workers.
• Small diggers were slowly bought out by big companies.

Rhodes, Barnato and De Beers

By 1888 one company controlled almost all diamond mining at Kimberley.

Cecil John Rhodes and his rival Barney Barnato each bought up claims until, in 1888, they joined to form De Beers Consolidated Mines. This gave De Beers a near-total monopoly - control over most of South Africa's diamond production. Rhodes used his wealth to gain huge political power in the Cape.

• A monopoly means one company controls a whole industry.
• Controlling supply let De Beers keep diamond prices high.
• Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1890.

Gold on the Witwatersrand

In 1886 miners found the world's richest goldfield on a ridge in the Transvaal.

In 1886 gold was found in the Main Reef of the Witwatersrand (the 'Ridge of White Waters') in the Boer republic of the Transvaal. Almost overnight the mining town of Johannesburg sprang up. This goldfield became the largest in the world and pulled money, people and railways towards it.

• Gold made the poor Transvaal republic suddenly wealthy and important.
• Johannesburg grew from open veld into a busy city in just a few years.
• Britain now had a strong reason to want control of the Transvaal.

Why gold needed big money

Witwatersrand gold lay deep and thin, so mining it took huge investment.

The migrant labour system

The mines were run on the labour of black men who travelled far from home to work.

Mines needed thousands of workers who would accept low wages. Owners recruited black men from all over southern Africa on short contracts. These migrant labourers left their families, worked in the mines for months, and then returned home. Their families stayed behind in the rural areas.

• Workers were paid far less than white miners for harder, more dangerous jobs.
• Because they came and went, owners did not have to pay for family housing.
• The system split families and drained the countryside of young men.

The compound system

Migrant workers were housed in closed, all-male compounds under tight control.

At Kimberley and later on the gold mines, black workers were housed in compounds (also called hostels) - fenced barracks where many men lived crowded together, away from their families. At the diamond mines the compounds were closed, partly to stop workers hiding diamonds. Life inside was strictly controlled.

• Workers were separated from families and from the wider town.
• Conditions were crowded, and the work underground was dangerous.
• The compound system made it easy for owners to control the workforce.

Taxes, land and pass laws

Governments used laws to push African people off the land and into the mines.

To make sure the mines had enough cheap workers, governments used the law. Taxes (such as hut and poll taxes) had to be paid in money, forcing African men to earn wages. Pass laws controlled where black people could travel and live, and land losses meant fewer people could survive by farming alone.

• Rhodes's Glen Grey Act (1894) used a labour tax to push men into work.
• Pass laws made it a crime to move without the right papers.
• Later the 1913 Natives Land Act took most farmland from African people.

The Mineral Revolution, 1867-1913

1. 1867 First diamond found near Hopetown
2. 1871 Diamond rush and diggings at Kimberley
3. 1886 Gold found on the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg founded
4. 1888 De Beers Consolidated Mines formed
5. 1894 Glen Grey Act pushes Africans into wage labour
6. 1899-1902 South African (Anglo-Boer) War over control of the mines
7. 1913 Natives Land Act deepens land dispossession

A country turned upside down

In one generation, mining changed where people lived, how they worked and who held power.

The Mineral Revolution made South Africa an industrial country. Cities, railways and banks grew quickly, and huge wealth flowed to mine owners and to Britain. But that wealth was built on cheap, controlled black labour, deep racial divisions and the break-up of rural family life. These divisions shaped South Africa long into the future.

• Railways, towns and banks spread across the country.
• African societies lost land, cattle and control over their own labour.
• Rivalry over the goldfields helped cause the South African War (1899-1902).

What we learned

The Mineral Revolution made modern South Africa - and set the pattern of inequality that followed.

Diamonds at Kimberley and gold on the Witwatersrand turned a farming society into an industrial one within a single generation. Mining created great wealth, cities and railways, but it depended on a migrant labour system, the compound system and laws that forced African people into low-paid work.