Kimberley, South Africa
Kimberley is the capital and largest city of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It is located approximately 110 km east of the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The city has considerable historical significance because of its diamond mining past and the siege during the Second Boer War. The British businessmen Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato made their fortunes in Kimberley, and Rhodes also established the De Beers diamond company in the early days of the mining town.
On 2 September 1882, Kimberley became the first city in the Southern Hemisphere and the second in the world after Philadelphia, in the United States, to install electric street lighting. The first stock exchange in Africa was built in Kimberley as early as 1881.
History
Discovery of diamonds
In 1866, Erasmus Jacobs found a small brilliant pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm De Kalk leased from local Griquas, near Hopetown, which was his father's farm. He showed the pebble to his father, who then sold it. The pebble was purchased from Jacobs' father by Schalk van Niekerk, who later sold it on again. It proved to be a diamond, and became known as the Eureka. Three years later, in 1869, an diamond, which became known as the Star of South Africa, was found nearby. This diamond was sold by van Niekerk for £11,200, and later resold in the London market for £25,000.Henry Richard Giddy recounted how Esau Damoense, the cook for prospector Fleetwood Rawstorne's "Red Cap Party", found diamonds in 1871 on Colesberg Kopje after he was sent there to dig as punishment. Rawstorne took the news to the nearby diggings of the De Beer brothers, his arrival there sparking off the famous "New Rush", which, as the historian Brian Roberts puts it, was practically a stampede. Within a month, 900 claims were cut into the hillock, which were worked frenetically by two to three thousand men. As the land was lowered, so the hillock became a mine, in time the world-renowned Kimberley Mine.
The Cape Colony, Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Griqua leader Nicolaas Waterboer all laid claim to the diamond fields. The Free State Boers in particular wanted the area, as it lay inside the natural borders created by Orange and the Vaal Rivers. Following the mediation that was overseen by the Governor of Natal, the Keate Award went in favour of Waterboer, who placed himself under British protection. Consequently, the territory known as Griqualand West was proclaimed on 27 October 1871.
Naming the place: from Vooruitzigt to New Rush to Kimberley
Colonial Commissioners arrived in New Rush on 17 November 1871 to exercise authority over the territory on behalf of the Cape Governor. Digger objections and minor riots led to Governor Barkly's visit to New Rush in September the following year, when he revealed a plan instead to have Griqualand West proclaimed a Crown Colony.Richard Southey would arrive as Lieutenant-Governor of the intended Crown Colony in January 1873. Months passed however without any sign of the proclamation or of the promised new constitution and provision for representative government. The delay was in London, where Secretary of State for the Colonies, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, insisted that before electoral divisions could be defined, the places had to receive "decent and intelligible names. His Lordship declined to be in any way connected with such a vulgarism as New Rush and as for the Dutch name, Vooruitzigt … he could neither spell nor pronounce it".
The matter was passed to Southey, who gave it to his Colonial Secretary J.B. Currey. Roberts wrote that "when it came to renaming New Rush, proved himself a worthy diplomat. He made quite sure that Lord Kimberley would be able both to spell and pronounce the name of the main electoral division by, as he says, calling it 'after His Lordship'". New Rush became Kimberley by a proclamation dated 5 July 1873.
Digger sentiment was expressed in an editorial in the Diamond Field newspaper when it stated "we went to sleep in New Rush and waked up in Kimberley, and so our dream was gone".
Following agreement by the British government on compensation to the Orange Free State for its competing land claims, Griqualand West was annexed to the Cape Colony in 1877.
The Cape Prime Minister John Molteno initially had serious doubts about annexing the heavily indebted region, but after striking a deal with the Home Government and receiving assurances that the local population would be consulted in the process, he passed the Griqualand West Annexation Act on 27 July 1877.
Big Hole and other mines
As miners arrived in their thousands the hill disappeared and subsequently became known as the Big Hole, or, more formally, Kimberley Mine. From mid-July 1871 to 1914, 50,000 miners dug the hole with picks and shovels, yielding 2,722 kg of diamonds. The Big Hole has a surface of and is 463 metres wide. It was excavated to a depth of 240 m but then partially infilled with debris reducing its depth to about 215 m. Since then, it has accumulated water to a depth of 40 m, leaving 175 m visible. Beneath the surface, the Kimberley Mine underneath the Big Hole was mined to a depth of 1097 m. A popular local myth claims that it is the largest hand-dug hole on the world, but Jagersfontein Mine appears to hold that record.The Big Hole is the principal feature of a May 2004 submission that placed "Kimberley Mines and associated early industries" on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative Lists.
By 1873, Kimberley was the second-largest town in South Africa, with an approximate population of 40,000.
Role and influence of De Beers
The various smaller mining companies were amalgamated by Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd into De Beers, and The Kimberley under Barney Barnato. In 1888, the two companies merged to form De Beers Consolidated Mines, which once had a monopoly over the world's diamond market.Very quickly, Kimberley became the largest city in the area, partly because of a massive African migration to the area from all over the continent. The immigrants were accepted with open arms, because the De Beers company was in search of cheap labour to help run the mines. Another group drawn to the city for money was prostitutes from a wide variety of ethnicities, who could be found in bars and saloons. It was praised as a city of limitless opportunity.
Five big holes were dug into the earth following the kimberlite pipes, which are named after the town. Kimberlite is a diamond-bearing blue ground that sits below a yellow-coloured soil. The largest, The Kimberley mine or "Big Hole" covering, reached a depth of and yielded three tons of diamonds. The mine was closed in 1914, while three of the holesDutoitspan, Wesselton and Bultfonteinclosed down in 2005.
Second Boer War
On 14 October 1899, Kimberley was besieged at the beginning of the Second Boer War. The British forces trying to relieve the siege suffered heavy losses. The siege was only lifted on 15 February 1900, but the war continued until May 1902. By that time, the British had built a concentration camp at Kimberley to house Boer women and children.Amalgamation
The hitherto separately administered Boroughs of Kimberley and Beaconsfield amalgamated as the City of Kimberley in 1912.Under apartheid
Although a considerable degree of urban segregation already existed, one of the most significant impacts of apartheid on the city of Kimberley was the implementation of the Group Areas Act. Communities were divided according to legislated racial categories: European, Native, Coloured and Indian, and legally separated by the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. Individual families could be split up to three ways, and mixed communities were either completely relocated – or were selectively cleared.Residential segregation was thus enforced in a process that saw the creation of new townships at the northern and north-eastern edges of the expanding city. Institutions that were hard hit by the Group Areas Act, Bantu Education and other Acts included churches and schools. Other legislation restricted the movement of Africans and some public places became 'Europeans Only' preserves in terms of the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act. The Native Laws Amendment Act sought to cleave church communities along racial lines, a law rejected on behalf of all Anglicans in South Africa by Archbishop Clayton in 1957.
Resistance to apartheid in Kimberley was mounted as early as mid-1952, as part of the Defiance Campaign. Dr Arthur Letele put together a group of volunteers to defy the segregation laws by occupying 'Europeans Only' benches at Kimberley Railway Station, which led to arrest and imprisonment. Later that year, the Mayibuye Uprising in Kimberley, on 8 November 1952, revolved around the poor quality of beer served in the beer hall. The fracas resulted in shootings and a subsequent mass funeral on 12 November 1952 at Kimberley's West End Cemetery. Detained following the massacre were alleged 'ring-leaders' Dr Letele, Sam Phakedi, Pepys Madibane, Olehile Sehume, Alexander Nkoane, Daniel Chabalala and David Mpiwa. Archdeacon Wade of St Matthew's Church, as a witness at the subsequent inquiry, placed the blame squarely on the policy of apartheid, including poor housing, lighting and public transport, together with "unfulfilled promises", which he said "brought about the conditions which led to the riots".
A later generation of anti-apartheid activists based in Kimberley included Phakamile Mabija, Bishop Graham Chadwick and two post-apartheid provincial premiers, Manne Dipico and Dipuo Peters.
Other prominent figures of the struggle against apartheid who had Kimberley connections include Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, who was banished in Kimberley after his release from Robben Island in 1969. He died in the city in 1978.
Benny Alexander, who later changed his name to Khoisan X and was General Secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress and of the Pan-Africanist Movement from 1989, was born and grew up in Kimberley.