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For weeks on end it had been raining in Johannesburg. The summer season brings thunderstorms that cover the Highveld like a blanket. The heavy rainfall turns the grassland into a luscious green with grass growing knee high and the rivers turning into raging torrents. This was the environment that I left behind as I boarded a plane to Kimberley, the famous old mining town that is now the capital of Northern Cape Province. As the plane descended I looked out of the window and was immediately struck by the contrast between the landscape of the Northern Cape compared to my native Highveld. Whereas I had just left behind rolling hills and green grasslands I was now confronted by the browns and yellows of the semi-arid “Kimberley Thornveld.”[1] Before I was in a massive metropolis of 5.6 million people, now I was looking at a town of 290 000. Before I was gazing upon the mine dumps of the Witwatersrand, the remnants of the country’s once thriving gold mining industry, and now I was gazing at the gaping holes of the diamond mines of Kimberley. The wide mouths dotting the landscape like the craters on the surface of the moon. These holes, some of the largest man-made holes on earth, were the reason why I had left Johannesburg for my visit. It was here in the early 1870s that diamond mining, responsible for southern Africa’s industrial revolution, began and it was here that I would be spending ten days with my supervisor Jan-Bart Gewald (AKA JB) as he kicked off our project, Boom to Dust.
This was not the first time that I had visited the famous old mining town. I had visited ten years before as a tourist with my family. My father had worked as a geologist in the South African mining industry for over thirty years and he was keen to show us around the Big Hole as one of the key landmark sites in that industry’s history. As an added bonus we visited the nearby Magersfontein battlefield, the site of a bloody engagement between British and Boer forces in December 1899. Back then I was an enthusiastic history buff eagerly running from one place of interest to another. Now I was visiting as a PhD candidate at the Africa Studies Centre Leiden though my enthusiasm had not diminished in the ten years since. The intention of my visit was to accompany JB around the town, meet scholars, curators, archivists and history enthusiasts that make the town tantamount to a living museum, and come to understand the parameters of the upcoming research project. As well as to plan our June Workshop and learn more about the rudiments of fieldwork and archival research.
The contrasts between this visit and my trip ten years ago were perhaps the most striking features of my time in Kimberley. Whereas before I had visited in the depths of winter I was now visiting at the height of summer. In winter Kimberley can be exceptionally cold by South African standards with a minimum temperature of -8° regularly reached. Whilst in summer the temperatures can reach a high of 41°.[2] On my previous visit I wore shirts with long tracksuit pants and jeans whilst this time around I had packed for the summer season: shorts, short sleeved shirts and sandals. I was thankful for that decision the moment that I stepped off the plane onto the runway of the tiny Kimberley airport. Unlike Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, which is a bustling airport with multiple runways, terminals and jumbo jets, Kimberley airport is a single building which constitutes both arrivals and departures. A tractor tugging along three carts acted as the baggage vehicle. Walking across the runway I was immediately struck by a wave of heat. On the day of my arrival it was 32° compared to 24° in Johannesburg. The heat was, however, not wholly unpleasant to me as I was quite used to those temperatures and given that Kimberley is not on the coast it was not humid. Another contrast with my previous visit was the state of the landscape. The town of Kimberley lies at the juncture of three biomes: Grassland, Savanna and Karoo. The landscape around the town is for the most part flat with the occasional rising kopje and mine dump.
The vegetation of Kimberley and its surrounding area is classified as “Kimberley Thornveld” and is described as an “open savanna of mostly trees and grasses.”[3] Unlike my native Highveld however this “open savanna” is semi-arid with far less rainfall resulting in the wide open expanses of the region being incredibly sandy. The soil is constantly kicked up by wind, man and beast and covers the landscape in a red and brown hue. In winter this landscape changes, rainfall dissipates to be almost an afterthought, leaving the grassland without nourishing water. This gives the bush a dry brown colour, itself remarkably beautiful, when seen along with the blue of the endless expanse of sky. As a teenager I remember walking over the ground kicking up clouds of dust. Now in summer under the intensive heat of the sun I spent the next week wandering across this land, shadowing my supervisor as he showed me around the town.
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The first few days of my stay in Kimberley saw JB and I explore the town and its environs. Ten years ago I had been a tourist with only a residual understanding of the town and its history. Now I was travelling with an expert who in turn introduced me to scholars, archivists and museum curators whose knowledge was second to none. Before I had travelled around the town from the comfort of the backseat of my parents car, now I was now walking the ground of what had been diamond floors at Rooifontein Game Farm. Located to the southeast of the Wesselton Mine, this expanse of bush was the site of diamond floors where lumps of Kimberlite rock were transported by cocopans along railway tracks and were deposited and then crushed by ploughs or by hand. The landscape would be flat were it not for several flat topped mine dumps. These dumps mainly consist of shattered remnants of kimberlite interspersed with other rocks. On top of these dumps we found the various wastes of an industrial mining operation, bricks bearing the De Beers Consolidated Mines logo, shattered pieces of metal from buildings, a rusted hinge from a door and a piece of shell fragment from the siege which had been fired from either Boer or British artillery. These dumps, a common feature of mining operations across southern Africa, stand as silent reminders of industrial mining. Furthermore they stand as testament to the environmental degradation caused by mining as they often contain within them the toxic remains of chemicals that had been used in mineral processing.[4] Luckily for us and indeed for the town of Kimberley the kimberlite mounds are not significant dangers to health though whenever the wind picks up the dust residues of decades of mining is breathed into the lungs of the town’s inhabitants potentially causing respiratory problems.
Walking the ground of Rooifontein had another important purpose for the wider project and for my own research. It is here in June 2025 that we will be having a multi-day field school where experts from the fields of geology, archaeology and botany will talk us through how to conduct fieldwork in and around mining centres. The purpose of this fieldwork is to teach us how to “read the landscape.” This project and indeed my own research is centred around understanding the impact of industrial mining on the environment in and around mining towns in southern Africa. This requires an understanding of the aforementioned disciplines so that we can integrate insights into our historical research. By doing this we will infuse our archival research with a textured analysis drawn from our own experiences studying the environment of these towns. Fieldwork such as this will give me an opportunity to recreate the tactile experiences of historical actors, be them humans or animals, who lived and worked in and around these mines as the climate, sights, sounds and smells are all important elements of the historical experience. The experience of walking the ground at Rooifontein gave me a taste of what is to come in my own research project when I do my own fieldwork in Kabwe, Zambia.
In addition to the diamond floors at Rooifontein, I visited the Africana Library, the Duggan Cronin Gallery and the McGregor Museum. There JB introduced me to the staff and curators of these institutions. They will be integral to our June workshop and for his research into the environmental history of the town. It was the first time that I had met these kind, passionate and engaged people and it really highlighted to me the importance of cultivating good working relationships with archivists. They allowed me to view photographs and documents capturing particular details of Kimberley’s history, some of which we will reproduce in our workshop. Sitting in the photographic archive of the Duggan Cronin Gallery was a particular highlight as I got to see photographs that had not been used by researchers before. In the archive of the Africana Library I had the privilege of being shown a wide range of historical documents all the while receiving advice from my supervisor about how to conduct archival research in an effective and thorough manner. The advice included studying the archives inventory, making a list of and writing descriptions of collections that are of interest to me and taking photographs with a digital camera of the material that I would analyse in greater detail. Most importantly, my supervisor emphasized to me the importance of maintaining good working relationships with archivists and curators. Afterall, they are as enthusiastic about history as you are and if the people that I met in Kimberley are anything to go by, they are kind, generous and dedicated. These experiences when taken together have served as an ideal entry into the world of archival research which I will become more familiar with as I continue on my research journey.
During the course of our stay in Kimberley we were joined by Luke Blomsma, a history student from Leiden University. Luke was in the Northern Cape town because he wanted to conduct archival research into the siege of Kimberley. A lovely, enthusiastic and bright man, Luke took to Kimberley like a duck to water interacting with archivists and academics with ease. It was a joy to experience Kimberley with him and it serves as a reminder, if any is needed, that conducting historical research is not necessarily a solitary exercise.
In the final days of my stay in Kimberley I got the chance to reflect on the importance of the town and its relevance to our wider research project. I did this while sitting on the patio of the Kimberley club which was founded in 1881. The club, whose members included the likes of Cecil John Rhodes, Alfred Beit, J.B. Robinson, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and Harry Oppenheimer, has changed from its heyday as the meeting place of mining magnates, financiers and colonial politicians.[5] Now it is a hotel and restaurant with a rather more relaxed dress policy, hence my presence there in shorts and sandals a more modern South African fashion. Sitting on that patio I had the chance to reflect on not just the fieldwork and archival components of our research projects but also to appreciate how industrial mining was so integral to the development of the town itself and was in turn tied so intimately and often ferociously to the physical landscape. It made me realise that this town like so many across southern Africa (Johannesburg, Kabwe, Ndola, Tsumeb amongst others) would not have developed were it not for the discovery of minerals at these sites. The roads and tramways would not have snaked across the landscape were it not for the need for people, working in the mines or in the town itself, to commute to and from work. The derelict, barrack like (former) compounds would not have been built were it not the desire of the mine owners to control migrant labourers from across southern Africa. Furthermore the people that we met would by and large not be there were it not for the mining industry, Afrikaners, Englishmen, Chinese, and of course the people working the museums and archives themselves. These are the legacies of mining in southern Africa and it is these legacies that we are trying to understand through our own research. As I left the club and made my way to the airport I felt a rush of excitement, as I was now about to properly embark on my own research journey as part of Boom to Dust.