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8h30 – 9h00 Coffee and registration
(Chair: Walker Swindell)
9h00 – 9h15 Opening
Sunet Swanepoel word of introduction.
9h30 – 10h00 1. Paper (Jan-Bart Gewald)
Expendable Beasts: The lives of Animals En-Route to the Diamond Fields and Beyond
10h00 – 10h30 2. Paper (Maaike Rozema)
Beasts of Burden, Animals to Think With: The Lives of Animals in Galton’s Imperial Imagination
10h30 – 11h00 Discussion
11h00 – 11h30 Coffee
(Chair:) Maaike Rozema
11h30-12h00 3. Paper (Walker Swindell)
Flies, Labour and Cattle: Towards a Multi-Species History of Mining in Kabwe (Broken Hill) Zambia, c.1890 - 1960
12h00 – 12h30 4. Paper (Jennifer Chibamba Chansa)
Mosquitoes, dambos and mine tailings: The environmental impact of malaria control and waste management on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt
12h30 – 13h00 Discussion
13h00 – 14h00 Lunch
(Chair:) Jan-Bart Gewald
14h00 – 14h30 5. Paper (Blair Rutherford)
Brown water, gold belts, and the gender work in changing artisanal mining landscapes in Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone
14h30 – 15h00 6. Paper (Craig Paterson)
More-Than-Human Infrastructures and Feral Methodologies: Notes on Walking for Archival Readings of Landscapes
15h00 – 15h30 (Discussion)
15h30 – 16h00 Coffee/Tea
Chair: Marja Hinfelaar
16h00 – 16h30 7. Paper (Robert Hart)
Some of my favourite images from the photographic collection at the McGregor Museum, Kimberley South Africa
16h30 – 17h00 8. Paper (Cobus Rademeyer)
Digging up a sporting future: The impact of mining on the emergence of organised sport in Kimberley, 1872 to 1914
17h00 – 17h30 9. Paper (Duncan Money)
Mining the Market: A Revised Chronology of the Rise and Fall of South Africa's Gold Industry
17h30 – 18h00 Discussion
18h00 – 18h30 Transport to Kimberley Club
18h30 – 22h00 Supper
8h30 – 9h00 Coffee
Chair: Jan-Bart Gewald
9h00 – 9h45 Steve Lunderstedt
The Five Important Factors That Influenced Diamond Mining In Kimberley
9h45 – 10h00 Discussion
10h00 - 10h30 Coffee
Chair: Walker Swindell
10h30 – 11h00 10. Paper (Jock Robey)
The story of diamonds in the earth
11h00 – 11h30 11. Paper (Russel Viljoen)
Squabbling on Smallpox: Labour and Lives in the Kimberley Epidemic of 1884
11h30 – 12h00 12. Paper (David Morris)
Skeletons under Foot: The Legacy of Diamond Mining in the Archaeological Record of Kimberley
12h00 – 12h30 Discussion
12h30 – 13h30 Lunch
Chair: Maaike Rozema
13h30 – 14h00 13. Paper (Tapiwa Madimu)
Negotiating ‘survival’: Zama-zamas and the diamond mining economy in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa, after 1994
14h00 – 14h30 14. Paper (Les Mitchell)
Stolen Children of the Endless Night: A Critical Account of the Lives of British Pit Ponies
14h30 – 15h00 Discussion
15h00 - 15h30 Coffee/Tea
Chair: Cobus Rademeyer
15h30 – 16h00 15. Paper (Wayne Dooling)
Kimberley, Islam and Networks of Accumulation in the Indian Ocean
16h00 – 16h30 16. Paper (Mathew Ruguwa and Innocent Dande)
From prosperity to Poverty: Asbestos mining at Mashava Mines in Masvingo
16h30 – 17h00 Discussion
17h00 – 17h30 Closing discussion (publication, way forward, …)
Jennifer Chibamba Chansa
This paper will examine the link between mining, waste management, disease control and environmental pollution on the Zambian Copperbelt. It argues that histories of the origins of mining-related pollution on the Copperbelt have greatly overlooked the impact of the use of mine tailings in mosquito control. The paper will further argue that although malaria control efforts introduced in the region during the 1920s and 1930s helped maintain a healthy workforce and provided a waste management solution at that time; malaria prevention by depositing mine tailings in mosquito-infested dambos had a significant impact on the environment. The paper will therefore highlight the linkages between mining, disease control and environmental pollution. By highlighting this complex relationship, the paper will build on scholarship on the origins of environmental challenges on the Copperbelt. In addition to archival records and interviews conducted in the region between 2017 and 2019, the paper will draw from existing studies on the use of mine tailings in malaria control on the Copperbelt.
Wayne Dooling
Colonial South Africa was as much integrated into the Indian Ocean World as it was to the Atlantic. This paper argues that Kimberley was home to a community of Muslims with continued ties to the Indian Ocean World, especially the Swahili coast and the Arabian Peninsula where slavery and slave trading continued to thrive well into the twentieth century. The networks that spanned the Indian Ocean provided some members of the Cape Colony’s black population with opportunities to amass significant wealth. Islam stood at the centre of this world which provided access to sources of capital – whether in slave trading in the Indian Ocean or diamond smuggling on the Kimberley diamond fields – so vital to the initial stages of accumulation, especially of urban real estate. Thus, the making of a black propertied class in colonial South Africa had domestic as well as external origins.
Jan-Bart Gewald
As part of a larger multi-species history of diamond mining in southern Africa, this paper concentrates on the role of non-human animals along and on the road to Griqualand-West in the first fifty years of the exploitation of the Diamond Fields of South Africa, 1865-1920. In essence, this period encompasses the heyday of animal labour in transport in southern Africa. The paper is based on archival and field research in which the routes travelled, and the diaries, letters, and formal reports dealing with the roads to the Diamond Fields are studied and analysed with a view to drawing out and expanding upon the role of non-human animals.
Initially I intended structuring the paper according to the various ways in which other than human animals are presented in the source material. But then I had a problem, dividing up all these animals into an academically satisfying rubric made me loose the historical context within which these animals lived and acted. I have thus made a compromise; I will attempt to present a short overview of the history of the diamond fields and the route to the diamond fields, after which I will present the manner in which animals have been viewed and used by humans. I will conclude by attempting to show how we might gain an insight into the way in which non-human animals saw and perceived of the Diamond Fields and their role in what was at times a literal hell on earth.
Robert Hart
Historic photographs can tell us so much about the past but at the same time also raise many questions. When using images to learn about history there are some guidelines that will assist the scholar or anyone interested in the past. When asked if I would like to give a presentation it was suggested I talk about some images that I find particularly striking and how one might analyse them. Some of my favourite images have metadata whilst others have scant back stories, and raise more questions than answers. Before discussing the individual photographs it will be worth listing some basic questions that one can ask about an image.
In relation to the last question if an image is accompanied by a caption it will affect the way the viewer responds to an image. Depending on the context sometimes it is both useful and effective to display an image without an accompanying caption. In short let the image speak for itself.
Steve Lunderstedt
Open pit diamond mining and the subsequent shaft and tunnel diamond recovery systems were born, bred and raised in the romantic capital of the diamond world, Kimberley. There were so many myriad factors that enabled diamond mining and recovery thereof to become streamlined, thus making De Beers Consolidated Mines, Kimberley and the city’s diamonds world-renowned and synonymous. Four of the five factors were personalities – Cecil Rhodes, Gardner Williams, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, and Harry Oppenheimer. The fifth major factor was politics, both locally within Kimberley, and also nationally and internationally.
Each of the four personalities made a significant contribution to this streamlining of diamond recovery and of controlling and marketing diamonds world-wide. Each of the four were important in differing ways, and all were astute, had brilliant minds, were respected and revered leaders, were business orientated, great orators and had seriously great memories. It stood them in good stead. Indeed, as is usual in any enterprise, along the way there were major hiccups at regular intervals, but it all seemed to come right eventually.
That three of the four personalities were involved in politics, as indeed were many of the Directors of De Beers Consolidated Mines, ensured that the mining and marketing of diamonds was controlled in ways and means legal, certainly in southern Africa.
In many large enterprises today, politics continues to play a role, but that of course, is another tale for another day…
Tapiwa Madimu
1994 marked the end of apartheid, and the dawn of democracy in South Africa. Consequently, post-1994 economic policies, particularly those related to land and mineral resources exploitation were expected to significantly shift from the racially exclusive and pro-white legislative instruments of the apartheid regime, to laws that accommodate previously disadvantaged economic groups. However, scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that a realisation of this aspiration remains far-fetched, as shown by the high levels of inequality in the country’s overall economy after 1994. This study utilises the diamond mining economy to elaborate on issues related to continuity and change in one of the country’s foremost economic sectors (mining). Thus, it uses unregulated diamond mining in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa after 1994, as a lens to demonstrate that there was more of continuity than change in the country’s mining economy. It does so by examining activities of the so-called ‘Illegal’ miners who operate outside the parameters of the country’s main mining legislation, the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA). These miners are known as zama-zamas, a Zulu word which means “try and try again” (Madimu, 2022). This name depicts their daily struggles, punctuated by hard labour and regular confrontations with private mining capital and security agents. I endeavour to examine the work of zama-zamas and explore the intricate details of their work routine as well as their plight to earn legal recognition. The Northern Cape Province has always occupied an integral position in South Africa’s mining history since the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867. Since then, diamond mining remained in the hands of private mining capital, epitomized by De Beers Consolidated Mines. There is a paucity of literature on unregulated diamond mining in South Africa, and available related literature focuses on ‘illegal’ gold mining. The study is informed by Nathan Andrews’ concept of ‘digging for survival and/or digging for justice.’ The concept mirrors the prevailing scenario in the Northern Cape Province where indigenous communities like those in Richtersveld, a diamond rich area, have had their title to land (which was expropriated by the colonial government in the 1920s) reinstated by a 2003 court judgement which was influenced by the country’s land reform programme. Yet, this restitution did not include ownership of diamond mining claims which remained in the hands of big mining capital, supported by the state. Despite the advent of democracy, indigenous people in the Northern Cape province remained marginalised and continue to negotiate survival on the fringes of the formalised diamond mining economy.
Les Mitchell
With the aim of recovering some of their lived experiences, this presentation describes the lives of small horses who were forced to work in British coal mines. It does this from a critical perspective and looks at why and how thousands came to be transported and used, their loss of liberty, the difficult and dangerous labour forced upon them, the conditions under which they lived and the likely traumatic effects on the bodies and minds of these sentient and sensitive beings.
David Morris
If, as Fred Inglis has written, “landscape… is a history made manifest”, then the landscape of Kimberley and surrounds constitutes indeed a record of its particular past – whether one calls this archaeological or historical. Paraphrasing Inglis further, as a landscape, this is “the most solid appearance” in which Kimberley’s diamond mining legacy declares itself – not as background, nor as a stage – but, indeed, as “the past in the present… renewing itself as the present rewrites the past” (Inglis 1977:489). Dominating this landscape’s formation are processes of extraction and surface accumulation: massive diamond mining pits, with underground shafts and tunnels, flanked by surface accretions – urban space morphing from tent town to mining town, with requisite infrastructure, and heaped-up debris dumps. Industrial materials are also strewn across floors beyond the outskirts of town, where blueground was laid out to weather and break apart before being gathered up and crushed to retrieve gems on grease tables. Graves, by contrast, are less an accretion, distinctively sunk into the surface for the disposal of the dead. They occur in formal cemeteries where memorials attest to funerary decorum. But increasingly apparent in Kimberley’s landscape are less formal burial contexts where human remains have been accidentally encountered during development works. Unmarked and undocumented, these contain hidden skeletons, literally under foot in different parts of the city. Investigation gives insight into these dead, not only into the mortality profiles of countless anonymous late nineteenth century labour migrants, and the physical hazards faced daily in the mines; they demonstrate also the extent to which dehumanisation and loss of rights extended from life in closed compounds into an absence of rights, and rites, in death. This unbidden legacy, intruding into our present, provokes a rewriting of aspects of Kimberley’s past.
Craig Paterson
This paper arises out of practical and theoretical considerations of my methodology as I sought to investigate a multispecies history of the southern Cape wilderness complex that included both Khoi and elephant responses to colonisation. The project aimed to examine how these groups engaged the area's forests, but the colonial records were found wanting and I was forced to look for other ways of uncovering traces of these communities. Drawing from such fields as more-than-human anthropology, the history of photography, and media studies, this paper asks how we can produce rich more-than-human histories in cases where the evidence in our conventional archive is scant, or, at times, absent, and can offer only hollowed-out materials to work with. Using diverse examples drawn from this project, I discuss landscapes as archives which allow for archival readings. The paper explores walking as an act of reading and argues that historians are able to read landscapes as archives by travelling through them. It also discusses some practical and theoretical ways of orienting these travels. In particular, I highlight more-than-human infrastructures as a means of orientation and, via Tsing, argues that “infrastructures are a way to explore multiple archives in the landscape.”
Cobus Rademeyer
The origin of organised sport in Kimberley is closely tied to the rapid development of the town following the discovery of diamonds in the late 19th century. The influx of European immigrants, particularly from Britain, brought with them their established sporting traditions and a culture of organised leisure. Various sporting codes, such as cricket, rugby, tennis, lawn bowls and soccer were introduced and popularised by these settlers, who were familiar with these codes and saw them as important for social interaction and physical activity. As the population grew and a sense of community began to form, so too did sporting clubs. These clubs provided a structure for regular games, competition, and the establishment of rules. The Kimberley Cricket Club, which existed before 1884, is one of the earliest recorded sporting organisations in Kimberley. It later evolved into the Griqualand West Cricket Board, which played a significant role in the early development of cricket in South Africa and even won the Currie Cup in 1890/91 season. The Kimberley Golf Club was founded in 1890, marking another step in the formalisation of sports in the town. The Kimberley Town Bowling Club has a rich history dating back to 1892, suggesting that organised bowls was established before the start of the twentieth century. While European settlers drove the initial establishment of organised sport in Kimberley, historical accounts also indicate the development of separate sporting activities within Black communities from the late 19th century. The influence and impact of Isaiah Bud-M’belle, brother-in-law of Sol Plaatje on the emergency of sport in Kimberley is paramount in this regard, citing the establishment of the Griqualand West Coloured Cricket Board in 1892 and his interaction with de Beers mining company in establishing the Rhodes Cup and Barnato Cup as trophies for Black sporting codes. The origin of organised sport in Kimberley can be attributed to the social and economic changes brought about by the mining industry and the early clubs formed the basis for structured competition and the development of a sporting culture in the diamond city.
Jock Robey
Kimberley is obviously famous for diamonds but geologically it is more famous for being the first time that diamonds were found in a rock, hence the name kimberlite. Previously all diamonds found in India, Brazil and now South Africa were found in river alluvial deposits and its origin was not known.
The discovery of volcanic pipes in the area now known as Kimberley initially seemed to solve the origin of diamonds. However it soon became apparent that diamonds had not grown in the kimberlite rock but rather in other rocks found as inclusions inside the kimberlite. These rocks known as mantle xenoliths are sourced from deep and are the true source of diamonds.
This talk will discuss the models of what we have learned of the structure of the earth from these xenoliths, the relationship and age of diamonds and their volcanic hosts, the type and form of these kimberlite volcanoes as well as touching on some of the major diamond mines in southern Africa.
Maaike Rozema
In this paper, Francis Galton’s Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (1853) is reexamined through the perspectives of multispecies history and animal studies. Motivated by a desire to decenter human narratives in the environmental history of a northern Namibian mining town, the essay investigates how both wild and domesticated animals not only shaped but were also shaped by Galton’s colonial expedition in what is now Namibia. Instead of serving as mere peripheral figures, animals emerge as pivotal agents intricately woven into the expedition’s logistics, survival strategies, and symbolic meanings. The essay argues that Galton’s narrative both dissolves and reinforces the boundaries between humans and animals: while he attributes agency and intelligence to animals in ways reminiscent of emerging evolutionary ideas, he concurrently practices domination, exploitation, and indiscriminate killing without moral reflection. By critically analyzing the language Galton employs to depict animals, this paper reveals the complex and often contradictory entanglement of Victorian science, imperial ambition, and human–animal interactions in the colonial encounter.
Mathew Ruguwa and Innocent Dande
Mashava Asbestos Mines, located some 40 kilometres from Masvingo Town, and which comprised of Gaths Mine, King Mine and Temeraine Mine ceased operations in the mid-2000s following a dispute between the government and mine-owners over the repatriation of profits. Slowly the mines deteriorated thereafter because spare parts were not readily replaced and vehicles broke down while salaries stopped being paid. Electricity bills accumulated. Thereafter, the government took over the mines and production plummeted. The paper places these happenings in the historiography of the Zimbabwean Crisis focusing on the mining sector. These mines gradually became ghost towns as poverty levels amongst their residents increased. We construct the paper basing on qualitative data gathered from journalistic reports and oral interviews with officials from EMA, former mine owners and workers, artisanal gold and chrome miners and local villagers. The paper chronicles the history of the Mashava Asbestos Mines from the early colonial period up until they became ghost towns which are plagued by asbestos dust and mining residues. The paper also analyses how former asbestos miner workers began to venture into artisanal gold and chromite mining to measure the extent of the environmental damage caused by the practices. The paper uses these narratives in writing about the boom to bust narratives in Zimbabwe’s mining histories
Blair Rutherford
Over the last ten years, more and more artisanal gold miners in Tonkolili district, Sierra Leone, have worked with financiers to hire and use excavators, deepening and extending the extraction activities. This machine-led extraction has had greater consequences on rural landscapes and waterways than the artisanal mining carried out with hand tools. This talk traces some of the gendered consequences of this changing mining work, examining the alterations to the waterways and other landscapes and how these have played out in various forms of gendered rural work, including collecting potable water, doing laundry, farming, and fishing as well as artisanal gold mining. Such experiences have prompted moral contestations and concerns, more as an inchoate environmentalism that speaks to classed and gendered injustices and disruptions to previous rhythms of productive and reproductive labour than a clearly articulated platform. Through analysing these particular vernacular environmentalisms, I pose questions concerning wider environmental assessments of artisanal mining in Sierra Leone and beyond, examining some of their limitations in terms of connecting with deeply felt sense of harms, particularly among women, emerging from these changes to everyday life and livelihoods. This includes analysing the gendered moral politics informing the imbrications of artisanal mining livelihoods with rural landscapes, the varying assessments of those who benefit and those who do not from this economic practice, particularly when assessing some of the differentiated stakes in these mechanized practices and their deepening environmental consequences.
Walker Swindell
Scholarship on Zambian mining history has primarily focused on the Copperbelt region with the recent turn to environmental history seeing studies of mining centres highlighting the long-term legacies of industrial mining, particularly concerning pollution and its effects on communities. However, this human-centred scholarship has largely ignored the environmental history of the oldest Zambian industrial mining centre, Kabwe (Broken Hill). The lead and zinc mine there was for a time the source of the territory’s most valuable exports. My PhD will be the first environmental history of the town yet unlike those previous studies my research will adopt a more-than-human multi-species approach in order to understand the impact of the growth and decline of industrial mining on constitutive elements of Kabwe’s local biosphere: the physical landscape, animals and humans.
This paper will be a literature review which will serve as the base for a my research agenda into the environmental history of Kabwe. I will begin by reviewing literature on Zambian mining history. Then I will review a series of environmental histories of mining centres from across southern Africa and the world in order to identify insights that are applicable for my research. Furthermore, I will outline how more-than-human historical studies, focusing on animal history, can be applied to my own research as I seek to understand the impact of industrial mining on animals. I will conclude the paper by summarising the insights drawn from these works which will serve as a basis for my PhD’s research agenda.
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