Digging Deep: A History of Mining in South Africa

South Africa’s mining journey began with the discovery of ‘mountains of copper’ in the drylands of Namaqualand, laying the foundation of an industry that would forever shape a nation’s destiny. Nowhere else in the world has a mineral revolution proved so influential in weaving the political, economic and social fabric of a society. Digging Deep explores South Africa’s great mineral revolution – the lucky strikes and the struggles of prospecting in the late 1800s, the rushes to boom-and-bust towns in the Eastern Transvaal Goldfield, the dubious beginnings of the Witwatersrand, and the stories of the visionary men like Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, Sammy Marks and Hans Merensky who pioneered and shaped the industry on which modern South Africa was built. This epic retelling is the only single-volume account of how South Africa’s gold, diamonds, platinum, coal and a host of other metals and minerals – the richest treasure trove ever discovered in one country – transformed a colonial backwater into the greatest industrialised power on the African continent. In this second edition, Jade Davenport adds two new chapters that closely examine the era since the advent of democracy in which time the mining industry has gone through a profound and distressing transformation.