36
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
The
opening up of the Orange Free State gold-field posed three separate but
connected sets of issues: financial, socio-economic and technological.31
The opening up of the field in the immediate post-war period coincided
with a world-wide shortage of capital, of intensified world inflation
and therefore of rising costs, and with great political uncertainties.
The immediate problem of financing a mine could be met by
loan-finance provided by the parent mining houses, but the mining
houses themselves could not go on lending money without resort to the
capital market in one form or another. Quite apart from the actual
opening up of a mine, and its equipment, the mining houses were called
upon to provide housing for their workers and the amenities of
civilization in an area, which, though not remote and primitive as was
Northern Rhodesia, did not then possess adequate road or railway
facilities, lacked power and water installations, in short, was a rural
area which required to be altogether transformed. Co-operation with the
organs of government was imperative; but so was the provision of the
necessary finance—without finance nothing could be done.
From
the first Ernest Oppenheimer recognized both the opportunity for a
unified pohcy, and for a bold pohcy. What was being dealt with was not
a single mine, but a mine field.
The
opening up of the Free State mines requires a bold policy. The
companies there will require many services. I refer particularly to
railway connexions, roads, power, water and to the establishment of
townships to serve these new mines. All these problems can be dealt
with more easily if it is a question of catering not for one mine, but
for several, and for this reason it is to my mind important that that
part of the vast area being prospected, which has been proved to be
payable, should be opened up promptly, and that we should not wait
until a first mine has been established and is in production before
proceeding with other flotations.32
He
also realized that on the social side it was possible, as it had not
been in the past either at Kimberley or on the Rand, to plan for a high
standard of amenities: the tangible memorial to his work is the town of
"Welkom, surrounded by six mines, five of which are within the Anglo
American Corporation Group, a city of wide streets and pleasant houses,
the second largest city in the Orange Free State with a popula-
31 On these see below, p. 552 et seq. The
two main technical problems were de-watering of the mines and the
'geothermic gradient', i.e. the rise of temperature with depth, which
necessarily raised the issue of adequate ventilation.
32 Speech at the first annual general meeting of Orange Free State Investment Trust, 26 April 1945.
