Description
Digging Deep explores South Africa’s great mineral revolution – the lucky strikes and the struggles of prospecting in the late 1800s, the rushes to boom-and bust towns in the Eastern Transvaal Goldfield, the dubious beginnings of the Witwatersrand, and the stories of the visionary men like Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, Sammy Marks and Hans Merensky who pioneered and shaped the industry on which modern South Africa was built.
This epic retelling is the only single-volume account of how South Africa’s gold, diamonds, platinum, coal and a host of other metals and minerals – the richest treasure trove ever discovered in one country – transformed a colonial backwater into the greatest industrialised power on the African continent.
In this second edition, Davenport adds two new chapters that closely examine the era since the advent of democracy, in which time the mining industry has gone through a profound and distressing transformation.
The author: JADE DAVENPORT is a seasoned mining commentator with more than 20 years’ experience, having worked as a journalist, columnist, researcher, historian and, most recently, a public relations and sustainability professional. She studied at the University of Cape Town and has an MA (cum laude) in Historical Studies. She lives in London.
