Tin mining in the Valley of Heaven
Date
1987-03
Authors
Crush, Jonathan
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Abstract
Immediately to the south of the Swaziland capital of Mbabane lie the
Malegwane Hill and, at its feet, the Ezulwini Valley, geographical
heartland of the powerful nineteenth century Swazi state under the
military kings Sobhuza I and Mswati (Bonner, 1983) . The sacred places
of Swazi lore and the royal villages of successive Swazi kings and
queens dot the valley and the flanking granite outcrops of the Mdimba
Hills to the east. It was to one of these villages, Embekelweni, that
two Scots mining prospectors came in 1874 and acquired the first of over
fifty mineral concessions eventually granted by the Swazi king Mbandeni.
The concessions covered the entire country but only a handful were ever
profitably worked. Several of these were in the Ezulwini Valley itself.
Today the Valley is cluttered with the debris of a century of capitalist
penetration; canneries, casinos, campgrounds, cotton fields and much
more besides jostle one another for space on the increasingly crowded
valley floor. Possibly the most unsightly landscape markers of all are
the bright red slashes of gully erosion which punctuate the base of the
Lupohlo and Mantenga Hills on the west side of the valley. These scars
stand as silent testimony to an all but forgotten phase in the life of
the area and to a vibrant history of struggle on the valley floor. Here
(and in several localities around the town of Mbabane itself)
cassiterite tin was regularly mined between 1894 and 1948.
This paper is part of a larger effort to recover the shrouded history of
the Swaziland mining industry locked up in relict landscapes, archival
records and the memories of Swazi workers and peasants. The bigger
project will encompass the better-known, though equally unresearched,
mining of asbestos at Havelock and iron ore at Ngwenya (which like the
tin industry before it, is now defunct). To date my attention has
focussed on documentary sources for the period before 1920 and the light
which their study can bring to the veiled history of tin mining in the
Valley of Heaven.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March, 1987
Keywords
Tin mines and mining. Swaziland, Tin mines and mining. Africa