Episode 289 - Black Velvet Opskop, De Beers’ Trojan Horse, an Historic Trick and a Multi-Racial Miner Protest

It could be said that Cecil Rhodes quest for hegemony over the diamond industry of South Africa was quickened by rumours of significant gold discoveries in the Transvaal.

Others say not, because no-one was aware in these heady days of just how valuable the Motherlode of Main Reef was to become. First a quick note.

The easiest way to picture Kimberley in 1886–87 is not as a collection of neatly separated modern mining companies, each with its own mine. It was more like a gigantic underground chessboard, where the four great diamond mines around Kimberley—De Beers, Kimberley, Dutoitspan and Bultfontein—had originally been divided into hundreds of individual claims.

A claim was essentially a small piece of ground, and in the early days an individual digger or small partnership could own one or several of them. As the workings became deeper and more dangerous, those little claims were progressively bundled together into larger holdings and companies. By the mid-1880s, therefore, you had companies that owned groups of claims inside a particular mine, while the word "mine" referred to the entire diamond-bearing pipe or working area.

So, if you were standing in Kimberley in 1886 and somebody said, "I'm working in the Kimberley Mine," that did not necessarily mean he worked for a company called Kimberley Mine. He might have worked for Kimberley Central, or the French Company, or Standard, or one of the smaller interests that still held claims there. The mine was the physical hole in the ground; the companies were the owners of pieces of that hole.

In 1886–87 the whole industry was therefore in the middle of a gigantic transition from hundreds of little claim-holders hacking away independently at the diamond-bearing ground, toward a handful of enormous corporations controlling entire mines.

Underground mining was replacing the enormous open pits because the old workings were becoming dangerously deep; companies were sinking shafts and driving tunnels down into the pipes. At the same time, Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato were consolidating ownership above ground.

By 1886 Rhodes wasn’t powerful enough to overcome other significant owners in Kimberley, although most of the other entrepreneurs believed amalgamation was good for diamonds — no-one wanted to be dominated by Rhodes — or each other. And Rhodes was seeking domination.

While the majority of those in Kimberley scrabbled and scratched, the magnates were high on the hog. They frequented the Kimb