Around the time of this stamp, 40 % of the gold ever mined on earth had come from South African mines. Despite the artificially low prices of the metal due to being fixed to a basket of currencies, there was a class of Rand lords that had new fortunes. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
I love the image on this stamp. Having fought the earth to extract it, you now have the gold molten and pure and you can watch them being poured into the molds of those life changing gold bricks. The pits of Hell yielding to heaven.
Todays stamp is issue A113, a two cent, the currency was newly decimalized, stamp issued by South Africa on May 31st, 1961. It was a 23 stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The first large scale gold strike in South Africa was in Witwatersrand in 1884. There was a huge gold rush where the population of Johannesburg increased 10 fold in 4 years. There was quickly a financial system put in place to fund the capital needs of the new industry. It is thought that control over the industry was a contributing factor to the inter white Boer war at the turn of the century. As part of the compromise that ended it, 64,000 Chinese contract workers were brought in to do the hard work deep under ground. The gold rush expanded when technology advanced to allow gold to be extracted from pyritic ore by drowning it in a solution of cyanide. The government set up compensation for miners of all races suffering from mining related silicosis and pulmonary tuberculosis.
Starting around 1910 the gold mining industry changed as some of the early fields played out and management tried to cut cost. The contracts with the Chinese were not renewed and the Chinese went home. In their place were very low cost black miners not recruited locally but rather migrant workers from outside South Africa. White miners formed a union to, in addition to wage demands, tried to keep the migrant blacks only doing the old Chinese jobs. Though the miners were white, the South African government sided with management in order to keep up production. The black miners eventually formed a separate union to fight separately from the whites to improve their lot. South African gold output peaked in the mid 1970s at over 1000 tonnes per year.
The gold industry has gradually declined since. The change in government saw one change that proved beneficial. The migrant recruitment ended and all miners are now recruited locally. The relatively high pay has been one place where South African blacks have advanced economically.
Gold mining is still a very important industry in South Africa although it is now lower than China and Australia and accounts for only 4 percent of the world’s gold output. Employment in the industry has dropped to 100,000 from the peak of 360,000. There is hope that there is still much gold to find and that new technology can extract more gold from the tailings of played out former mines.
Well my drink is empty. What got me interested in this subject was recently watching the 1974 movie Gold. the movie stared Sir Roger Moore as a South African mine manager that has to deal with danger in the mine, ossified management and a plot from international finance types who want to flood the mine killing everyone to create a market moving event they can bet on because owning a freaking gold mine isn’t enriching them fast enough. Great locally shot movie! Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.
