Matabele Gold!

Talked with an old friend yesterday; via the internet. Gold miner, same as I used to be. Difference is, he’s still digging for gold and I’m just writing about it. He’s a little younger than me; by about twenty years and still sharp as a razor – lives in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) with his son, his woman and his motorbikes. Good man. Haven’t seen him for near on eighteen years. Must make a plan to get out there.

Gold mining gets in your blood and looking for it goes even deeper; an obsession – guess that’s why the old timers called it ‘gold fever’. Now that it’s late and everyone else in our house is asleep, an hour with some of my old books would be good; books about gold and the men who mined it, but reckon you worked that one out for yourselves.  Matabeleland is full of the stuff.

First though, before any more of my ramblings about lost mines and gold fever – time to pick up where we left off from our boy on the train...

... The sun was up; not quite half past six and already I could feel the heat. A corrugated iron sign said Thompson’s Junction – stuck on two iron poles so the termites couldn’t eat its legs off. The train had slowed down – I leaned out from my top bunk and craned my neck for a better view of outside. The bush had changed; everything looked dry and really thirsty. A flat-topped hill, like the one I had seen in Cape Town, but much smaller. The colours were all yellows and browns, the colours of Africa, colours that reached away as far as my scrunched up eyes could see.

‘Thought you were asleep?’

Shook my head and grinned at my mother. My Dad was snoring.

‘Too excited. Want to be first in our family to see Wankie. The man said seven o’clock so we can’t be far away from the station.’

‘Your aunt and uncle will be waiting for us. A friend of theirs is bringing his car; a shooting-brake I think?

The carriages rocked against their couplings; slowly now, a temperate, hinging snake between the cuttings – looking for somewhere to sleep the heat away. I looked down – at the ground alongside the train. Maybe I would see some animals.

‘Are there schools in Wankie?’

‘I should imagine so.’

‘What if they all speak African?’

‘What if you start making sense, Jeffrey.’

It was sense to me. African kids, seeing as they were from Africa would speak and write in African.

‘They might.’ How would my mother know?  Outside, there were no more trees now; just short bushes. The train had started to click and clack over points and joints in the rails. There was a road running alongside the railway line with a black Morris Minor on it; sunlight flashed off its chrome bumper. In England, our doctor had one just like it. On the ground all the rocks were black. The soil, if that’s what it was, was black as well. A black man on a bike smiled and waved to me...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

‘What about transport?’ Rhodes asked.

‘I can bring in a wagon,’ said Mathew.

‘Strong enough to carry your mill?’

Mathew nodded; ‘Piecemeal, that won’t be a problem,’

‘Then our Mister Morrish here will help you load. Now that the installation of the Sandycroft is complete, we have more men in our employ than is needed.’ He looked up at Mathew. Like all builders of great empires he was always one step ahead of whatever game had been set in motion.

‘You could do worse than taking some of our native labour for your Empress Deep – good workers; most of them.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘How do you stand financially?’

‘Low in the water,’ Mathew admitted.

Rhodes’ eyes glittered.

‘Then we will talk again, young man.’ He stood up from the table. ‘Now you must excuse us, there is urgent business in need of our attention.’

*

Alongside the wagon, Mathew rode Luke at a slow walk. He recalled the long trip up from Kimberley, loaded with chattels, guns and hundred-weight bags of maize-meal. Now the wagon was empty – stripped of its canvas tent and cots it was the bared bones of a transporter’s flat-bed. It took only eight muscled oxen to pull it the five mile distance to the Cotapaxi. Mhlangana, in khaki breeches and barefooted, coaxed his span with gentle words, for the strain on their yokes was light and the whip was seldom needed.

‘We need labour,’ Mathew called across to him.

‘There are many to pick from,’ answered Mhlangana. ‘Choose wisely – I have watched them. Some have only the worth of old baboons.’

‘There are good men amongst your baboons. Find me ten. Those who can use their brains as well as they swing their hammers.’

They reached the mine by mid afternoon; as before, the first sounds were those from iron stamps – men’s voices and the ring of hammers to rock and steel – that ubiquitous voice of the Sandycroft mill-site.

As some pagan idol, on concrete altars it towered above the ground – men on wooden platforms shovelled rock into the crusher’s iron jaws so that it fed and disgorged constantly. Against the skyline it was a monster; at its side its iron cohort – a hissing bitch of an engine, excited by flaming, waist-thick logs in her firebox. Through her power and gearing down of giant pulleys, inexorably, she turned the mammoth cam-shaft, imparting the strength of thirty Shire horses, all of them working in unison.

‘We’ve upped her tonnage!’ Morrish expounded, forced to shout above the din. ‘Twenty tons, yesterday – should be more today!’

Like a child to fire or running water, Mathew was drawn to the base of the giant crusher. Imprisoned by concrete and thick bolts the mill shook and thundered; a colossus – each of the ten stamps weighing in well over a thousand pounds. One by one they were lifted, then, disengaged in turn from rotating, cast iron cams they would free-fall, pounding the rock to gold-laden slurry.

From that constant beat of the crusher’s heart, a trained ear, even at a distance could gauge the prowess of his work force; whether or not the operators were slacking or overzealous with their shovels – to increase or reduce the feed, slacken or turn up the supply of water, rock or both to the mortar-box. If the iron shoes or dies were wearing down, when, to within a half day they would need replacing. Mathew knew it would take time; for him to grasp control of his own machines would take months of dedication. It made no difference. He relished the challenge; eager for his acquisitions to be loaded he shouted across to Morrish...