BACK IN THE DAY
THE ORIGIN OF THE BIG HOLE, KIMBERLEY
The Big Hole, Kimberley.
A century and a half ago, much of the Northern Cape was hot, desolate farmland. The landscape was waiting patiently for somebody to stumble across its secret, and when they did, it led to the most profitable diamond rush of the century.
In 1867, 15-year-old Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs picked up a pretty pebble on his family’s farm De Kalk, near Hopetown. The rock found its way to a geologist in Grahamstown, Dr William Atherstone, who classified it as a 21.25-carat diamond. The stone was dubbed the Eureka.
This kicked up some excitement, but it wasn’t until a shepherd, known only as Booi, discovered what would become The Star of Africa on the banks of the Orange River in 1869, that the diamond rush began.
All manner of men were drawn to the Kimberley mining camp – the wealthy and the desperate. They staked claims along the banks of the Orange and the Vaal, and its tributaries to the north, but one of the richest diamond deposits was to be discovered on a farm called Vooruitzicht, belonging to brothers with the surname De Beers. An unremarkable flat-topped hill called Colesburg Kopje stood nearby. Digging at the koppie began in 1871 and the Big Hole of Kimberley, as we know it today, started to take shape. The entire hill was levelled, and then the work went deeper… Early diamond mining was a dangerous occupation. This, combined with the sheer density of people – more than 50 000 men camped haphazardly around the digging sites – led to a high mortality rate. But where there is industry, people settle, and in 1878 the mining camp of Kimberley was declared a town. It bustled with rudimentary hotels, brothels, banks, pubs, schools and churches.
The Kimberley Mine became the richest diamond mine in the world for nearly a century, yielding 2 722 kg of diamonds that were picked out by hand. It is said that the Big Hole is the largest excavation site dug by hand in the world; so large, in fact, that it can be seen from space! The crater is 214 m deep, with a surface area of approximately 17 rugby fields and a perimeter of 1,6 km. Kimberley’s diamond fields made the fortunes of many men, including Cecil John Rhodes, who arrived at the mines at the age of 17 and sold ice to the miners to save enough money to buy his first claim; and Ernest Oppenheimer, a German diamond buyer who was instrumental in founding Anglo-American.
In 1914, the outbreak of World War I caused all of De Beers’ properties, including the Kimberley Mine, to suspend mining activities. The chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Francis Oats, explained to the press on 8 August 1914: “Since the declaration of war, we have sold no diamonds at all. We have to recognise that we are a company producing a luxury, which naturally does not find a sale in circumstances like those that we face today.” The Kimberley Mine never reopened. Diamond returns at that depth made its operation uneconomical. De Beers turned their attention to other sites, and so came the end of an era. The hole remains, though: a giant monument to a time of boom and bust.