DIAMONDS.GOLD.AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
few African and Coloured men as well as white men controlled claims and
competed for unskilled labor. In 1872 an all-white diggers' committee
drew up a set of rules designed to adapt the established racial order of
South Africa to the urban and industrial context, by eliminating black
diggers and making Blacks liable to be searched without a warrant and to
receive as many as fifty lashes if found to be in possession of diamonds they
could not account for.1 1
The British officials declined to endorse such overtly racial rules, but the
high commissioner issued proclamations
that had much the same effect
without being overtly racial. Any black person was de facto excluded from
owning diamond claims or trading in diamonds and was liable to impris-
onment or corporal punishment if found "in precincts of the camp without
a pass signed by his master or by a magistrate." 12 These proclamations
were intended to appease the antislavery lobby in Britain. Color-blind in
form, in practice they applied exclusively to blacks and divided ownership
and production of diamonds by color.
As the individual digger phase passed, mining personnel became struc-
tured into a complex hierarchy. The machines were worked by skilled