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.