Page 5 - Bulletin 14 2010

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THE EARLY MINES OF THE CAPE PENINSULA

P E Spargo

By no stretch of the imagination can the Cape Peninsula be classified as a mining area, yet
since its first European settlement by Jan Van Riebeeck in 1652 it has been the site of a

surprising number of mining ventures. In this paper we will describe the three most notable of
these mining operations, namely those related to silver, manganese and tin, as well as giving

an account of a fourth, the Lion’s Head gold mine. While generating little, if any, profit for
any of the investors, they nevertheless provide a particularly interesting insight into the

commercial acumen, self-confidence, drive and technical skills of a small colonial

community.

The Quest for Silver at the Cape

One cannot spend long in the Cape Peninsula without soon becoming aware of the existence

somewhere of a ‘silvermine’, associated as the name is with a pass, an academy, a retirement
village, a National Park and, most tantalising of all, the words ‘Old Silvermine Shaft’ next to

the Ou Kaapse Weg on the current road map.

The role of silver in the Colony commenced early in its history. Although the prime purpose

of the establishment in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company of the settlement at the Cape
was to provide its ships with fruit, vegetables and fresh water, no doubt Jan van Riebeeck, as

an employee of a huge commercial enterprise, would have been keenly on the lookout for any
source of income such as the discovery of any metal - but particularly a precious metal -

th
would bring. It therefore comes as no surprise to read that, on the 28 of January 1654, less
than two years after his arrival, his Journal records that:

Meanwhile we have put a silversmith to work at the fort to find out whether
silver could be extracted from a certain mineral that has been found; he has
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already managed to obtain a better metal than tin . … Before evening we went
out in person to the mountain, to the place where the aforementioned mineral
was found, taking some picks, mattocks and crowbars and breaking some