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The end of the drawn-out Mampoer Expedition saw the Transvaal emerge at last into its own as the Golden Republic of South Africa. The transition from British to Republican control had been completed; and Paul Kruger had been elected first President of the re-established state in April 1883.
At first, an economic recession had followed the change of government, as British investments were withdrawn. The gold discoveries at De Kaap would however change that, and the whole country would experience a boom with what seemed like an endless rush of diggers to fill the tills of stores and canteens, the treasury of the government, and the vaults of banks, with their spendings, their taxes and their fines.
The rush to De Kaap was by far the wildest and greatest the Transvaal had known at the time. Although the first discoveries had proved disappointing, there was never the slightest doubt among diggers that these first traces were an indication of the presence of enormous riches.
Throughout the area, there were obvious signs of ancient African mining activity. It is not known who was responsible for this activity. Legend had it that a Karanga tribe had mined alluvial gold in the area, and also worked iron a short distance away at emaLalane (place of small lala palms), known now as Malelane. This activity was however smothered by the arrival of a Sotho clan, the bakaNgonane, and then by the Swazis, who came over the mountains from Swaziland, wiped out the original population, and established a military garrison called emZindini (the place of firmness)on the banks of the Ngwenyana River.
Tom McLachlan had found gold traces in the valley of the Ngwenyana as early as 1874; but his discoveries were not payable; and nothing further had been found. The area had been surveyed into farms; a block of thirteen of them had been granted to George Moodie, who was now Surveyor-General of the Transvaal, as a reward for his abortive efforts towards
the construction of a railway to the sea. No development of any sort had otherwise taken place. The valley remained in its original state of wildness. It was a place of mystery and morning mists, a valley enveloped by a seething, unfathomable sea of whiteness at many a dawn, and the one narrow finger of the high veld in the east projecting into this ghostly sea, exactly like a Kaap(cape).
It was on this narrow plateau, known as the Godwan Plateau, that the first rush had taken place. A small, dry creek, some 400 yards long, was the first discovered source of gold; but after the initial disappointment the diggers scattered along the plateau, fossicking among the old African workings and searching diligently for signs of payable gold.
Charlie the Reefer was well in the forefront of the prospectors. He was responsible for discovering the first decomposed reefs on the farm Berlyn. Other reefs were found by men such as G.F. Rautenbach, and all contained workable gold, although these were patchy and destined to pinch out. An excited rush of diggers soon had the whole place pegged out. As a centre for the new field, a small ramshackle town sprang into existence almost overnight on government ground adjoining the farm Berlyn. It consisted of a miscellaneous collection of tents and shacks, housing about fifty canteen-keepers and storemen. It lay on the plateau among a litter of giant sandstone boulders, at the very edge of the great drop into the Kaap Valley, just above the creek where the first gold had been discovered, and had such a sinister atmosphere that the place was known to the early hunters as the Duivel’s Kantoor (Devil’s Office). It was later renamed
Kaapse Hoop (the hope of the cape).
The Duivel’s Kantoor rush did not turn out to be productive in the long run. While the diggers were still rummaging about the area searching for payable gold, two well-known Middelburg storekeepers, the brothers Charles and Benjamin Barrett, purchased Berlyn farm in May 1883 and secured a concession from the government giving them sole working rights over the place. There was a tremendous uproar among the diggers at this new monopoly. If David Benjamin had experienced trouble in imposing his concession over Pilgrim’s Rest, then the Barretts must have had many sleepless nights over Berlyn. A long-drawn-out court action commenced to establish the boundaries of their property, allow them to turn the diggers off the fields, and to smother the rush with fences and signs reading “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
The granting of these mining monopolies to individuals, over the heads of the mass of diggers, caused considerable ill feeling between the groups concerned. Still, as the government was inclined to grant concessions, they were naturally legal, and the diggers gained nothing except trouble by resisting them in court. The only possible consolation was that the negative fact that, so far, none of the organizations formed had made any spectacular profit; and the Barretts’ Berlyn, when it commenced operations as a company in 1885, proved no exception to the rule.
Many of the individual diggers lost all they had to concessionaires. At the Spitskop field feelings were especially raw. One of the Spitskop diggers was particularly famous. He was an individual named John Swan. He had made it rich somewhere near Spitskop, but always kept it a close secret. Working on his own at night, he contrived to recover enough gold to finance his activities, although he had to take his ore some miles to water.
Swan’s strike was apparently on a comparatively dry piece of land. His grand ambition was to lead water to the place, and so work it with profit. The nearest water supply was on the farm Olifantsgeraamte, many miles away. In abiut 1878, Swan started to dig a race to lead water from his farm to his strike. Mile after mile he dug and blasted this race, laboriously following the contours through the most rugged country and avoiding gorges and faults.
Then when the French company obtained their concession over Spitskop, Swan’s hopes were dashed. The company offered him some compensation and a 20 per cent interest if he would show them his strike. He refused. Like most of his fellows, he felt that he had been cheated out of a fortune by the monopolists and concessionaires.
Bitter, he packed his bags and belongings and abandoned his treasured strike and his water race, the most famous made by any digger. He moved to the Kaap Valley and prospected with James Simpson. However, he fell victim to the dreaded fever. When he lay dying Simpson begged him for the secret of his strike. John Swan gritted his teeth and turned his face to the wall. “It’s good,” he muttered, “it’s rich, but it’s deep. They’ll never get it.” That was the end. His strike was never found. The race still remains, a seemingly endless trench meandering around the hills, and reaching a disconsolate end within a stone’s throw of the modern road down Ross Hill to the town of
Sabie.
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