Langlaagte, Johannesburg, was the scene of early surface diggings. The landscape was to change dramatically when British capital invested heavily in deep-level high technology mining.
At this point the finance capital of the world, London, stepped in. The international currency had been fixed to a gold standard, and new technology involving a cyanide amalgamation process to refine the extracted ore ensured that deep-level mining in South Africa would be feasible – but at a cost. Individual prospectors were soon wiped out, for deeplevel mining, started in 1895, required massive international capital and resources, justified by the certainty of cheap black labour within southern Africa and a plentiful supply of customers in the international market place. The hour of the mining corporations had arrived. The men who ran them would become immensely wealthy and would soon be called the Randlords.
The gold standard meant that the fixed price of gold could not be dictated by supply and demand; the mining companies had to find a way of cutting costs. This was not an easy undertaking. Aside from expensive, imported high-tech machinery entailing vast sums of capital, administrative and technical skills were crucial. Artisans were in short supply in South Africa and had to be recruited from the coal and gold mines of Britain and Australia. They brought with them a militant craft union experience, and could – and did – demand relatively high wages.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of labourers were needed to dig shafts, hammer (and later drill) holes into the rock. The process was labour intensive; after the rock had been blasted, labourers were required to ‘lash and tram’ the ore and haul it to the surface so that it could be refined into gold. The mining industry thus found itself, as Jonny Steinberg remarked, in ‘an unenviable position of classifying itself as both capital and labour intensive’.
The mining corporations set about creating a labour supply of lowly paid semi-skilled labourers that would balance the high costs of the high-tech machinery and skilled artisans. Several factors assisted them. Struggles for land during the nineteenth century left a largely vulnerable black population. They had experienced an era of warfare involving the defence of their land and cattle against Mzilikazi’s warriors, trekkers, British troops, colonial and Boer annexations.
Against this background, the mines were able to extract labour with ease. They were also able to benefit from the experience of diamond mining. For one thing, the diamond mines had established a pattern of migrant labour, and their closed compound system was adapted to the gold mines on a greatly enlarged scale.
