Burning Books, Preparing For Another Uniform

For some, a career path after school has already been mapped out, either by parents or by the individuals themselves. For others, like myself, all I knew was that six months after matric exams I would be in the army. For a year. I even knew where. And the plan after that? Who knew? Certainly not me!

Diamonds are not forever

Kimberley is the capital city of the Northern Cape province in South Africa, and in the 1870s it was the diamond capital of the world. Besides precious stones, it became famous for The Big Hole, claimed, but disputed, to be the deepest hole excavated by hand on earth. It is also visible from space.

The Diamond Rush in 1871 saw thousands of adventurers from all corners of the earth make their way to the dry, semi-arid region on the banks of the Orange River in the Orange Free State province in South Africa to seek their fortune.

Many made their fortunes digging for diamonds on the farm Vooruitzicht owned by Dutch settlers Diederik and Johannes De Beer which eventually became the site of the Big Hole. Some lost their hard-earned fortunes quicker than they made it through gambling and other bad decisions. Yet others discovered both fortune and fame and colorful characters of the day included Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato (Isaacs) who co-founded the world-famous De Beers Mining company in 1988 by merging their two mining companies.

Rhodes later bought out his rival Barnato and years later after Rhodes’ death, the company was taken over by Ernest Oppenheimer who transformed it into an empire. Although the glitter has long since vanished and today Kimberley is nothing like the bawdy, colorful and fascinating town it was in its heyday, it remains a world-renowned mining and diamond cutting center.

Ghosts with stories to tell

Interestingly, what eventually became the Big Hole was originally a hillock named Colesberg Kopje on the De Beers’ farm Vooruitzicht. The hill was quickly flattened after digging began and the Kimberley Mine beneath the 240m deep hole was eventually mined to a depth of almost 2000m. I’m convinced there are still ghosts around with stories that will never be told or heard. Unless you are prepared to take a walk along those subterranean tunnels deep in the bowels of the earth. Between 1871 and 1914 approximately 50 000 boys and men using picks and shovels to dig ever deeper managed to extract 2 772 kg of diamonds. I’m sure miners killed and were killed as they fought for their share of the little shiny stones that could change lives forever.

Shantytown gets a name

Many died in mine accidents, safety standards were nothing like they are in today’s mines, almost non-existent in the 1800s. Sanitary conditions were probably not even a concept then, scarcity of fresh water and vegetables and the intense dry heat in the summer also took their toll. The camp that quickly sprung up around the excavations grew into a shantytown of tents and temporary shelters and then permanent buildings was called New Rush. In a proclamation in 1873, it was renamed Kimberley after John Wodehouse, the 1st Earl of Kimberley, who was the British Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time. In 1878 the town of Kimberley was born and in 1880 it was incorporated into the Cape Colony.

With diamonds, adventurers of all nationalities, prostitutes, gamblers, mobsters, murderers, bars, saloons, and disease Kimberley had become a decadent city of limitless opportunities. And misery and despair. It had been said at the time there were more millionaires in Kimberley than in any other one place anywhere else in the world.

It was Africa’s Wild West. It was no place for sissies.

Marking Time

Straight out of school in January 1976, I had to get a job because my army call-up was only for July. Six months was a long time to do nothing, especially without money. Although university was an option, for various reasons, among them finance and just having had enough of school, it was therefore not a magnet attracting me in that direction. A job was the way forward for me to pass the next six months. Today it is still one of the biggest regrets, and mistakes, in my life to have not gone to varsity and graduated with that little piece of paper that would have enabled me to make some better decisions later in life.

However, it is what it is, and, like many others in South Africa in the 1970s, getting a job in a bank was the simplest way to start working for a living - even if it was working for peanuts. After all, it would only be for six months and then I would be on the train to Kimberley.

Where there’s life there’s a story

The thought of spending a year in Kimberley, despite its glittering history and former importance in South Africa, and despite never having been there, held no allure for me at all. I had heard it was damn hot and dry in summer and freezing cold in winter. That turned out to be true. I would be arriving in July, generally the coldest month in South Africa, along with June.

Experiences of people serving in armed forces around the world are a major source of stories, true, half true, embellished, tweaked, interesting, boring, and are often outright lies. Countless books have been written and countless movies produced on the topic of military and war.

Good writing habits

I too have many stories about my time in the force, but that’s not what this story is about. Nor is it about Kimberley. My aim now is just to develop good writing habits and thereby good skills and I’ve begun this journey writing about periods of my life; following a thread to see how it unravels.

In December 1975 I was burning my schoolbooks and school uniform after my final matric exams, figuratively, of course, and preparing to venture into the big wide world as a young adult starting his first job in January 1976.

Six months later in July, I would be exchanging my white-collar job uniform; shirt tie jacket, and smart trousers, for a no-nonsense durable shit-brown army uniform. After six months working as a wannabe banker, I couldn’t wait! Kimberley and the Big Hole were beckoning.