The compounds themselves, though highly touted by the mining companies, were acutely overcrowded spaces, housing thousands of men in large, open barracks. These conditions fostered agitation and regular, violent manifestations of this tension—often along ethnic lines. Yet, as a labor control tool, the compound system was undeniably effective, and thus a number of mining operations elsewhere on the continent adopted elements of this housing strategy, or even the entire approach, wholesale. Again, developments in the heart of South Africa in the late nineteenth century were to have both enduring and widespread ramifications.
A Prison by Any Other Name
The fact that the closed compound was modeled on the De Beers Convict Station tells us all that we really need to know: these accommodations were little more than repackaged prisons. With Africans concentrated in fewer, if larger, compounds over time, overcrowding exacerbated already challenging conditions. In addition to fostering both tension and morbidity, this housing system also facilitated the spread of disease. Although incoming recruits who were patently ill were either denied employment or quarantined, the compounds’ drafty and cool conditions resulted in innumerable illnesses, many fatal, for those men approved for mine service. For example, in 1884, Dennis Doyle, Kimberley’s sanitary inspector, estimated that an alarming 1 in 15 Africans living in the compounds in the latter part of the previous year was sick, whereas among night-soil collectors, the otherwise unhealthiest job in Kimberley, the figure was 1 in 199. The deadliest afflictions were pulmonary in nature, including bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and pleurisy. In the compounds, as in the mines, pneumonia was the most lethal, accounting for as much as 75 percent of African mortality, including outbreaks in 1892 and 1893 and a severe occurrence in 1897. This disease was also primarily responsible for a death rate for Africans in Kimberley of 41 per 1,000 in 1891 and 55 per 1,000 in 1892, which was 50 percent higher than the municipality’s rate for whites and double that of urban black communities elsewhere in the Cape Colony.[50]In 1900, a resident physician, Dr. Stoney, opined that this disease “will continue to be our most serious cause of death . . . so long as overcrowding in the compounds continues.”[51]These conditions were so appalling that J. X. Merriman had earlier (in 1886) written to his wife that “some compounds we saw are . . . a disgrace to humanity. No wonder the poor brutes steal—and no wonder that a curse seems to rest on the industry. If you treat human beings like brutes they must and will behave as such.”[52]
Although for many years De Beers’s management paid little attention to concerns such as Stoney’s and criticism such as Merriman’s, by 1903 the severe health and social problems in the compounds had prompted the company to upgrade these spaces. In turn, these improvements roughly halved mortality rates during the ensuing decade. Moreover, these belated “sites of social welfare” soon came to be considered “model,” with other mining operations from both within South Africa and further abroad regularly sending managerial staff to tour them. An account by William Crookes from 1906 provides some insight, albeit inflected with racist terms, into Africans’ lives in these modified spaces:
One Sunday . . . my wife and I walked unattended about the compound, almost the only whites present among 1,700 natives. At one part a Kaffir was making a pair of trousers with a . . . sewing-machine, in which he had invested his savings. Next to him, a “boy” was reading from the Testament in his own language to an attentive audience. In a corner, a party were engaged in cooking a savory mess in an iron pot; and, further on, the orchestra was tuning up, and Zulus were putting the finishing- touches to their toilet of feathers and beads. One group was intently watching a . . . game. It is played by two sides, with stones and grooves and hollows in the ground, and appears to be of most absorbing interest.[53]
So as to provide constructive outlets for workers’ frustrations, De Beers ensured that churches and missionaries were consistent features in its compounds, with Bibles furnished in a number of local languages. These clergy, however, also actively promoted hard work, temperance, punctuality, and deference to authority as the earthly route to salvation. Their ability to map out this behavioral path to the “Promised Land” rendered these company-friendly men of the cloth better positioned to motivate reverent members of the African labor force than even the most persuasive mine managers. Furthermore, the missionaries suggested that those workers who had died or been injured on the job were receiving their just punishments from “the Almighty” due to their “obvious,” though unidentified, sins. Given these sentiments, it’s not surprising that the following passage appeared in a 1906 copy of Outlook, the famous Christian mission organ: “The De Beers Company have set an example of just and reasonable treatment of their Native employees, which might with advantage be followed at other South African labour centres. What has been done at Kimberley could be done elsewhere and it is unfortunate that in other great labour centres the employers do not take the same view of their responsibilities.”[54]In the eyes of at least some within the church, it seems as if the diamond enterprise had become something of a “higher power.”
De Beers also offered post-shift recreational activities so that workers could physically “blow off steam.” These outlets included a swimming pool in its West End Compound, as well as open spaces for activities of all sorts, which were most pronounced on Sundays, workers’ day off. Compound residents also engaged in a range of other recreational endeavors, including drinking beer (spirits were forbidden, as were playing cards and all books except Bibles and hymnals), smoking dagga (a similarly calming, though less potent form of marijuana also used to treat a variety of ailments), singing and drumming, often along ethnic lines. Still others augmented their wages by serving as tailors and barbers and, before De Beers began supplying rations in 1896, as cooks. Predicated on these “freedoms” that workers enjoyed, in 1888 Gardner Williams boasted that “our natives are better housed and . . . fed than the uncompounded natives, and are better paid than miners in many . . . European countries,” though he failed to identify any of these allegedly penny-pinching nations to the north.[55]
For all of the structural improvements De Beers made, and constructive outlets it provided, the compounds remained virtual jails. According to Z. K. Matthews, writing about this form of housing in the early twentieth century, “My father, at the time I was born, was serving a term in a Kimberley mine, which meant that he remained within the compound for at least six months, never emerging until his term was over. Once a month he could come to the gate to see relatives, but at a distance across a fence, as in a prison.”[56]Only in the mid-1970s—almost a century after compounds were initially introduced—would De Beers finally open up its workers’ accommodations, thereby enabling its African laborers to come and go: the ultimate freedom.
African Labor Strategies and Unrest
African diamond miners daily negotiated an array of challenging working and living conditions, and, from 1883, degrading searches in the name of IDB suppression, but they did not endure this fate passively. Although militant unionism was absent, labor strikes, slowdowns, refusals to work and smuggling (typically taking diamonds out and bringing “Cape brandy” and other contraband in) continued apace. In the early years of underground mining, some Africans even assaulted white overseers after dimming the lights, often in retaliation for physical, at times even fatal, abuse at the hands of these bosses. Other times, African workers employed much less confrontational strategies, for example by pooling wages to purchase food, sharing cooking duties, or voicing complaints in the hopes that company officials would address their concerns. De Beers tolerated minor transgressions of its policies, though it reacted harshly to any activities that threatened its control and, therefore, its revenues. Irrespective of the divergent levels of risk associated with these various activities, Africans consistently and creatively sought to improve their working conditions.
Africans’ strategic action most fraught with risk was, ironically, inaction—a refusal to work. In response to this
endeavor, whether it took the form of a widespread, formal strike or entailed a much smaller number of individuals, mining companies invariably countered with force, though they also occasionally made small concessions. As could be expected, the grievances that sparked these instances of labor dissent were typically associated with wages, occupational safety, or some other aspect of the overall working and living conditions. On January 17, 1885, for example, as the French Company moved one hundred of its African workers into a compound, black employees protested and the alleged “ringleaders” were “quickly placed beyond the enclosure.” Going forward, African mine workers launched a formal strike—possibly the first by laborers of any sort in South Africa’s history—on April 5, 1887, over the use of the speculum, an instrument used for detecting diamonds concealed in the rectum. If ever a labor protest required neither explanation nor justification, surely this was the one.
Over the ensuing decades, workers continued to periodically engage in strikes, all of which were violently suppressed, with “dissident” participants punished and banned from reemployment. In a case from the 1890s, for example, a group of roughly twenty laborers refused to work in an underground location they deemed highly unsafe. Consequently, Charles Riordan, the head guard of the West End compound, flogged the members of this team and confined them to a detention cell for five days before ultimately dismissing them. A week later, “the scars and wounds were still raw and about four inches in length.”[57]
At times, African laborers also articulated their concerns instead of resorting to more extreme measures. In one such case at De Beers prior to the turn of the twentieth century, more than fifty African employees insisted that, among other things, the company cease conducting invasive searches. In particular, they objected to the enterprise’s practice of locking up Africans whose contracts were concluding for a period of days with fingerless, leather gloves chained to their hands, and examining their stool for swallowed diamonds. Even the speculum may have been less objectionable. The Kimberley Native Affairs inspector agreed with these workers that this anti-IDB measure was “humiliating,” yet there is no evidence of any redress.[58]White employees were, of course, exempted from this degrading set of procedures.
Challenges, Successes, and Dominance: De Beers into the Twentieth Century
The twentieth century witnessed one of the most remarkable monopolizations of an industry in the history of international commerce. From its origins as a single-source producer, De Beers steadily expanded its operations, first regionally and then globally. The enterprise’s administrators relentlessly sought to capture the output of emerging mines elsewhere on the continent and, ultimately, abroad. The company then funneled these stones through a single selling channel that it had, itself, earlier introduced. This transition to a vertical enterprise enabled De Beers to enjoy a virtual monopoly on both production and marketing and, thus, to dictate supply. Firmly in control of supply, the company was also able to manipulate demand through a series of highly effective advertising campaigns that both opened up new markets and expanded existing ones. At the heart of De Beers’s global marketing was the suggestion that these gemstones are extremely scarce, although diamonds are, in fact, not rare at all. De Beers created this artificial scarcity simply by limiting the number of stones that reached the market, and keeping this trade secret safely to themselves. As De Beers’s long-standing director Sir David Harris once warned: “For goodness’ sake, keep out of the newspapers and Parliament the quantity of diamonds that can be produced.”[59]
For all of its storied corporate accomplishments, the success of the De Beers company was neither inevitable nor devoid of challenges. Well before the enterprise could expand its operations, it needed copious African laborers to service its landmark mines in South Africa. Going forward, the company would also encounter a series of formidable domestic and external challenges associated with its meteoric ascension—some foreseeable, others unanticipated. In fact, De Beers was, itself, taken over in the 1920s by the Anglo American Corporation, which was piloted at that time by its founder, the astute, calculating, and determined Sir Ernest Oppenheimer. Had Oppenheimer not opted to leave this acquisition largely intact and retain the esteemed De Beers name, the story of this fabled diamond company would be significantly shorter.
The Supply of African Labor
Over time, De Beers phased out many of the degrading practices described earlier in the chapter and phased in a range of employee benefits. It consequently became a desirable destination for African workers, at least relative to other opportunities for work and remuneration, and helped the company achieve stability in this vital aspect of its operations. Yet as with the company’s eventual industry dominance, an initial uncertainty characterized the supply of sufficient numbers of African workers.
The South African, or (Second) Boer War (1899–1902), which pitted the British against the Boers and included mineral rights and access to the contested deposits among its multiple causes, created a severe labor shortage for the mines and prompted De Beers to hire costly recruiters, launch its own employment bureau, and offer improved wages for drillers. Only gradually would the supply of African labor return to its preconflict rates.
In the early twentieth century, the sources of indigenous labor remained consistent, with ethnic Tswana, Sotho, Xhosa, Tsonga, and Zulu well represented on the mines. Although static for some decades, the monthly wages on offer, at between £3 and £5, were more than twice the rate necessary to attract these regional, unskilled laborers, even as the development of South Africa’s gold-mining industry on the Rand spawned competition for these migrants’ services. In justifying the lack of upward movement in African∆ laborers’ wages, De Beers’s assistant general manager, I. R. Grimmer, explained the predominant view of a “target” worker: “The native comes here with the idea of making a certain amount of money. For instance, he does not look at it in quite the same way as a white man. He would not take into consideration the number of hours he has to work in the week, but he would calculate how much money he would get at the end of the week, and he would make up his mind that he would take a certain amount of money home, and would feed himself accordingly.”[60]Although Grimmer’s declarations are certainly questionable, Africans did keep coming, despite the flat wages.
By the early twentieth century, the annual recruitment and registration of workers at Kimberley had reached approximately 85,000, though the industry was still experiencing high turnover. In 1904, Williams commented that the market for labor remained “peculiar, owing to the fact that as soon as the rains come, a large percentage of the natives wish to return home to plough their lands.”[61]Harvest time prompted a similar exodus. Clearly, many Africans remained economically linked to their home areas, comprising a sizable, partially autonomous segment of the broader workforce.
In the 1930s, De Beers, like so many other corporations worldwide, suffered during the Great Depression. The company responded to the drastically reduced global demand for diamonds by slashing production, which meant laying off thousands of African employees. While white staff members were largely able to weather the financial storm due to corporate paternalism, apprenticeship opportunities, and the possibility of securing employment on the gold mines (due to simultaneously ascending gold prices), most black Africans found themselves without work.
Only following the Second World War, did the diamond industry rebound and once again require large numbers of African laborers. These employees were rewarded with salaries that were among the highest for black workers anywhere in South Africa, and twice what an African gold miner earned. De Beers also phased in pension and insurance plans, thereby ensuring a steady flow of labor to the mines and the regular, voluntary renewal of contracts. In fact, many African laborers remained with the company their entire professional lives. Even into retirement, they relied on pensions paid out at 60 percent of their most recent average earnings, leaving them with higher incomes than most working black South Africans.
&
nbsp; Irrespective of these employment benefits, from 1949 to 1994 the already challenging nature of this occupation was exacerbated due to apartheid, the system of racial segregation that shrouded South Africa. Throughout this period, black workers continued to perform the most dangerous tasks on the mines but earned only roughly a third of what white De Beers employees made. In many respects, retreating to the bowels of the earth was only slightly more disagreeable than negotiating the oppressive environment on the surface.
Corporate Challenges along the Way to the Top, and Once There
In addition to endeavoring to secure a dependable supply of African labor, De Beers faced a host of other challenges, both domestic and foreign. Although the strategic actions that the company took in response to developments within South Africa were instrumental to its success, De Beers’s aggressive (re)actions toward proceedings beyond the country’s borders were just as crucial to maintaining its industry domination. Over the course of the company’s reign, it exercised virtual monopolistic control via several strategies, including convincing—often with considerable pressure—producers to join its single-channel selling scheme; flooding the market with stones that resembled the output of producers who were reluctant to join the cartel; and stockpiling rough stones in order to limit their supply, and thereby manipulate the per-carat price of a diamond. De Beers’s approach was so aggressive that it ran afoul of American antitrust laws aimed at preventing monopoly; from 1948 to 2012, the company was banned from directly engaging in commerce in the United States, nor could its executives travel there on business. Yet, De Beers wouldn’t be the household name that it is had it not adopted the ruthless business tactics that prompted these punitive measures and coupled them with brilliant marketing strategies to both manufacture demand and manipulate taste. The enterprise’s monopolistic practices notwithstanding, De Beers’s dominance was regularly threatened, most often by new deposits unearthed in South Africa, elsewhere on the continent or, eventually, further afield. For De Beers, each new find rendered diamonds less rare and potentially jeopardized the company’s monopoly.
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