People of Africa

by Edith A. How

People often come from very long distances to work in the diamond mines at Kimberley and in the gold mines at Johannesburg. Sometimes they walk, but in South Africa there are railways and trains to take people to all the large towns, and a person can travel in one day by train as far as he could walk in three or four days.

Very few people spend all their lives at the mines. Most of the workers come for six months or a year, because they want money for clothes or food, as well as to buy cattle to pay the dowry for the girls they wish to marry. When they arrive at the mines, after their long journey, their names are written in a book as miners, and they are given places where they can live. If the men are single they live together in a large compound, which is a place enclosed by walls and gates. In these compounds there are houses where the men sleep, and places where they can do their washing, and the European mine masters provide people to clean these houses and to do the cooking.

If the workman has a wife he is given a house in a mine village, called a "location." A location or a compound is like a village with a great number of houses placed close together along straight roads. The houses are sometimes built of stones or bricks, but more often of corrugated iron.

In each location there are hundreds of people who have come to work at the mines for a few months from different parts of South Africa. They are all strangers to each other and speak many different languages. Most of them try to copy the dress of Europeans; but as European clothes are very expensive to buy and soon wear out, the natives often look ragged and dirty in them.

These native workers in the mines are supplied with food, such as maize, corn, and meal; but there are shops in the locations and compounds where they can buy other food, such as tea, coffee, sugar, and bread, and where they can also get clothes and other European things.

There are hospitals with doctors and nurses at all the mines to attend to the sick and the injured. There are also schools for the children in the location. It is difficult to teach in these schools because the children speak different languages, and their parents only stay for a short time. But a great many do learn to read, write, to do sums, and to sew.

The country near the mines is very often dry and dusty. There are no fields nor trees, unless planted by Europeans.

There are many laws regulating the life and work of the native miner; for example, he must go to work every day unless the doctor says he is too ill to do so. At night every one must be in the location, unless he be given a letter, which is called a "pass," from his master giving the reason why he is not in the location.

5. Strict Laws for Miners

The reason for these laws is that all these people are far away from their homes, and often no one can speak their language. Their relations and chiefs are far away and cannot help them, and so the Government has to make laws to prevent bad people robbing and perhaps killing them. Wherever there is a great deal of money, there are always thieves and bad people. So the Europeans who own the mines and pay the workmen make these laws to protect their workmen, until their time on the mines is finished, and they can go home to their own chiefs again. There are police ready to see that everyone obeys the laws, and if they find bad people or thieves they take them to a police-court and lock them up.