South Africa’s modern economy was built largely on the back of the exploitation of the extensive but low-grade goldfield that is the Witwatersrand basin. Such has been that sector’s sheer dominance that South African historiography, in general, has tended to focus on the narrative of the discovery and mining of that particular geological phenomenon to the large exclusion of other, albeit smaller-scale, gold mining narratives.

This has resulted in a general misperception that the discovery of the Witwatersrand was the ‘big bang’, if you will, of South Africa’s gold mining sector and, by extension, its modern industrial economy and that the history of gold, at least from a colonial perspective, dates from just 1886.

However, the country has a fascinating gold mining narrative that predates George’s epochal discovery by many decades.
In fact, the first gold rush occurred almost two decades earlier, in the Tati district, near what is today Francistown, in Botswana. (While you may point out that a gold rush in Botswana has little to do with our mining history, it will be explained that that particular event had a much greater impact on what was then the Transvaal Republic’s economy than it ever had in kick-starting a mineral revolution in our neighbouring State.)

The man credited with initiating the first gold rush was Karl Mauch, a German-born explorer, botanist and geologist, who spent much of the late 1860s exploring the extent of Southern Africa.

In late 1867, Mauch and his friend, Henry Hartley, one of the most celebrated elephant hunters of his day, went on an exploratory trip of Matabeleland, which was at the time widely thought to be the Land of Ophir, being studded with vast gold deposits barely exploited by the ancient miners.

It was while on this trip that they came across evidence of ancient mine workings indicating the presence of gold- and silver-bearing quartz in the area between the Shashi and Ramaquabane rivers, which was subsequently christened the Tati district.

Convinced that he had discovered an enormous goldfield, Mauch rushed back to Potchefstroom, which was then the main centre of the republic, to spread the word of his exciting discovery. In a letter printed in The Transvaal Argus on December 4, 1867, Mauch’s enthusiasm knew no bounds in his description of the vast extent of the new goldfield, of how countless thousands of people had found fortune on them in the past, and of how he was certain that countless more thousands would find wealth there in the future. Even his description of the landscape itself was the epitome of enthusiasm: “The vast extent and beauty of these goldfields are such that, at a particular point, I stood as if transfixed, riveted to the place, struck with amazement and wonder at the sight, and for a few minutes was unable to use the hammer.”

Inevitably, Mauch’s discovery caused an absolute sensation in Potchefstroom and the news soon spread like wildfire. Within weeks, European, American and Australian newspapers were reprinting the story as the rediscovery of King Solomon’s mines and a steady stream of fortune hunters began to flow to the new gold diggings. As Potchefstroom was the largest settlement nearest the Tati diggings, where the supplies and equipment necessary for the life of a gold digger could be bought, most of the hopeful prospectors naturally sojourned at that little Boer dorp. Consequently, Potchefstrrom boomed on the gold fever and soon every store was carrying advertisements for diggers’ clothing and utensils. (Given the fact that, at the time, the Transvaal was largely bankrupt, the flow of Uitlanders and their money through Potchefstroom was an economic lifeline and could hardly be grumbled at.)

The vanguard of the Tati gold rush was a party of nine Natal colonials led by a certain Captain George Black. Having raised some £250 towards the dig-ging expedition, they left Potchefstroom in an ox wagon draped with the British and Transvaal flags and bearing the motto Nil Desperandum. Behind this vanguard came an ever-increasing stream of British, German, Australian and American fortune hunters.

Interestingly, among that motley crew was Thomas Baines, a man who would, one day, become one of South Africa’s most renowned artists. (Baines was employed by another London-based company, the South African Gold Fields Exploration Company, to lead a prospecting expedition in the western section of Matabeleland but, given the poor results, soon abandoned the venture.)

Such was the excitement around the discovery and hope in the new goldfield’s prospects that a few companies were even floated in London to take advantage of the rush. The most prominent of these companies was the London & Limpopo Mining Company, formed in late 1868. Such was the serious intent of the company that it sent its principal manager, Sir John Swinburne, with a team of experts and miners and a fleet of mining machinery, to Tati to establish the first large-scale gold mining operation in Southern Africa. The party arrived at Tati in April 1869, erected Southern Africa’s first mechanically operated appliance to crush gold-bearing ores and started work at once.

However, the company soon realised, as did many of the other diggers (who did not number more than a 100) with quartz mining experience, that the gold was far too low-grade and irregularly distributed to prove even remotely payable. Disappointment set in quickly and, when news of the discovery of diamonds on the banks of the Vaal river reached the Tati district, most of the diggers abandoned their claims for more sparkly prospects down south. (Little did these men know that they had been traversing the land that would one day become one of the richest diamond-producing States in the world.)

In the end, the Tati goldfield did not produce precious metal of any real value and could hardly be considered the ‘big bang’ of gold mining in Southern Africa. However, it is a fascinating tale, with its significance lying more in the fact that Tati was the site of our first gold rush, short-lived and unsuccessful though it was.