Neil Fraser
June 21, 2004
AFRICA has a mining tradition that stretches way back before 1886 and the beginning of large-scale gold extraction in Johannesburg.
The mining and processing of gold in Southern Africa, and even its beneficiation and export, can be traced to Mapungubwe - near the intersection of the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe - between AD1000 and AD1300.
There is clear evidence that southern Africa had been exporting gold from this early period. Prospecting and mining were very crude - inefficient but effective - and were to be totally overshadowed by the development of large-scale industrial mining from the late 19th century.
Little, if any, of the equipment used in the pre-colonial period still exists, but there still are a few survivors from the earliest colonial initiatives. One is the Langlaagte stamp battery.
A variety of historical sources lend some background:
From a contract between GC Oosthuizen, the owner of part of the farm Langlaagte, and George Harrison and George Walker. It is dated 12 April 1886:
"If they should find payable gold they will be entitled to stands and will also have the right to the use of water to work their gold or metal with machinery or without machinery."
From a letter to Paul Kruger, the president of the Boer republics, dated 9 June 1886:
"To His Honour, SJP Kruger, State President and Members of the Honble the Exec Council of the SA Republic.
Honourable Sir and Sirs,
The undersigned, GC Oosthuizen, declares with dutiful respect that he is the owner of one quarter of the farm Langlaagte, district Heidelberg. That he has given permission to two persons whose names are Walker and Harrison to prospect on that ground for gold and other metals, and that according to information received by him it appears that payable gold has been found."
Letter to Kruger dated 23 July 1886:
"Dear Sir,
I let you know hereby that Mr Sors Hariezon (sic) has been here to see me and has told me that the reef is payable and so I send him to you, then, Mr Kruger, you can talk to him yourself. I remain your friend and servant, GC Ooosthuizen"
Affidavit by George Harrison dated 24 July 1886:
"My name is Goerge (sic) Harrison and I come from the newly discovered goldfields Kliprivier especially from a farm owned by a certain Gert Oosthuizen. I have a long experience as an Australian golddigger, and I think it is a payable goldfield. George Harrison"
Letter from C von Brandis to President Kruger on behalf of the Diggers' Committee, dated 14 February 1887:
"Right Honourable Sir,
We the undersigned inhabitants of the Witwatersrand Goldfields and of the district of Heidelberg hail you with a greeting of Welcome...
We can only congratulate your Honour on the wonderful prospects that this country has in view, especially after the anxious time your Honour has gone through while the finances were in such a critical state. Your Honour will no doubt be surprised at the progress discernible on the Witwatersrand. These goldfields will possibly prove to be very important, if not the most important, once the machinery has been erected…"
And the machinery was erected and kept rolling in!
As AP Cartwright's 'The Gold Miners' says: "The orders that flowed from the Witwatersrand to the mining equipment firms caught those specialists completely unprepared. In three months they had more demands for batteries, cash on delivery, than had been entered on their books for 30 years. They sent desperate messages to their principals abroad. But there was a long frustrating delay before the orders could be met and until the day when every wagon on the road from Ladysmith and Kimberley carried some portion of a mill.
"A 100-stamp battery would be transported in 200 loads by ox wagon which took between 14 and 35 days to travel from Kimberley to Johannesburg dependent on the weather."
And C Biccard Jeppe's 'Gold Mining on the Witwatersrand' says: "In 1887 the crushing machinery which had been ordered by the many small companies began to arrive by mail cart and ox-wagon from the coast...
"By July 8 the first 50 stamps of the Witwatersrand Gold Mining Company Ltd had been erected and on August 23 the whole 100-stamp battery was ready. By the end of 1887, 1 038 stamps had been ordered or were in the course of erection."
By 1894 there were 2 642 stamps running and the total was expected to rise to 10 000.
So what is a stamp, a stamp battery or a stamp mill?
All refer to the same thing: a piece of equipment used to crush gold-bearing rock brought from the diggings. The ore was first crushed into pieces smaller than 5cm in size. The pieces were mixed with water and fed into an iron box at the base of the stamp. The heavy stamps were attached to a camshaft at the top of the mill and were raised by power generated from an attached steam engine. The stamps dropped into the iron box where they crushed the gold ore.
The resultant slurry - a mixture of fine rock and water - contained freed particles of gold. This slurry was then passed from the box, through a sieve and on to a copper plate that was covered with mercury. The heavier gold particles separated from the slurry and formed a mixture with the mercury, called an amalgam. From time to time this amalgam was scraped off the copper plates by hand and the gold separated from the mercury by heating.
Very few stamp batteries have survived but a particular 10-stamp example with an amazing history will be erected in Hollard Street this week. It went into operation at the Robinson Mine in Langlaagte in September 1886, which makes it one of the earliest stamp mills on the Witwatersrand.
In 1912 the mine owner, Sir Joseph Robinson, took an extraordinary decision - he ordered that the stamp be buried in the deepest slimes dam on the mine property. To ensure that his instructions were carried out, he personally attended the "burial". Seventeen years after his death the mine management decided that the battery should be recovered and mine officials were told to find it.
This was easier said than done: the only official involved in the burial of the stamp had died and the workers involved in the exercise had moved to other mines or had returned home. The mine's resident engineer, Jackie Lowes, was entrusted with the task of tracing at least one of the workers.
It took six years and thousands of interviews before someone was identified and brought back to Langlaagte. Despite many changes to the property over the years, the worker was able to identify which slime dam had probably held the battery.
The task now fell to one of the mine engineers, WJ Ross, to recover the equipment. He said the odds of finding it were a thousand to one but set about his task doggedly. Countless shafts were sunk and eventually the battery was found. It was salvaged, cleaned and restored.
In 1936 it was placed at the entrance to the Chamber of Mines Pavilion at the Empire Exhibition. When the exhibition closed, the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company donated the battery to the City.
The City erected the battery in the small George Harrison Park on Main Reef Road, a short distance from where the main reef was reputed to have been struck.
In 1963 The Star reported: "There are vandals about and as fast as the council puts up any form of notice, it is torn down. Even the bronze plaques on the gateposts have been stolen once or twice. Probably only the fact that the old stamp battery weighs 10 tons and would not fit on a hand cart has saved it from being chopped up as firewood."
In May last year, sections of the original timber were badly destroyed by fire and scavengers tried to remove as much as they could carry.
At the end of last year the Central Johannesburg Partnership received permission to remove the stamp mill and have it restored and re-erected in the Main Street redevelopment. The restoration work has been completed and the stamp mill will be erected this week, probably on Wednesday, on a concrete plinth that has been specifically constructed for the display of the historic equipment. It will stand, appropriately, between the Chamber of Mines and BHP Billiton buildings.
The stamp battery has spent 26 years on the mine, 23 years submerged in a slimes dam and nearly 70 years at George Harrison Park. It has been badly damaged by fire and vandalism.
Now it will become one of a number of mining artefacts that will celebrate the role of mining, not only in Johannesburg, but throughout Africa.
