Kimberley and the Big Hole

A Hole Four Hundred And Sixty Metres Across Dug By Hand With Picks And Shovels After Diamonds Were Found In 1871, Which Produced Nearly Three Tonnes Of Them, Made Cecil Rhodes And De Beers, Drew A Quarter Of A Million Diggers Onto A Single Hill, And Created The Migrant Labour And Compound Systems That Shaped South African Industry For A Century Afterwards · Kimberley, Northern Cape

In 1871 somebody found diamonds on a low hill in the Northern Cape, and within months there were fifty thousand men on it digging with picks and buckets. By the time the open workings were abandoned they had removed a hole four hundred and sixty metres across and hundreds of metres deep, entirely by hand, and taken nearly three tonnes of diamonds out of it. That hole is still there at the edge of Kimberley with a viewing platform cantilevered over it and a reconstructed 1870s town beside it. What the rush produced besides diamonds matters more: it made Cecil Rhodes and De Beers, it funded the politics that led to the Anglo-Boer War, and it invented the migrant labour and closed compound systems that structured South African industry for the next century. This row does not romanticise any of that. Kimberley is also where the first stock exchange and the first electric street lighting in Africa went up, and it is a strange, flat, under-visited city.

In the Northern Cape 480 km south-west of Johannesburg, with the Big Hole and the mine museum at the city's edge, Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa

The Big Hole complex keeps daylight hours daily with a combined ticket covering the viewing platform, the mine museum, the reconstructed old town and an underground simulated mine experience - WHETHER EVERY PART IS OPEN VARIES, particularly the platform and the underground section, so ask at the desk rather than assuming. The McGregor Museum, the Duggan-Cronin collection and the Kimberley Africana Library keep daylight hours and most close one day a week. The Honoured Dead Memorial and the siege sites are open ground. The city is flat and compact and the old tram runs between the centre and the Big Hole when it is operating. Kimberley is about five hours from Johannesburg on the N12 and nine from Cape Town, with its own small airport, and it is MALARIA-FREE and very hot in summer.

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