Most of the mining sites that were pegged in Southern and Central Africa from the late nineteenth century onwards by European prospectors had been exploited by local miners long before. Excavations revealed that exploitation and smelting at the Kansanshi site and its associated smelting area were carried out at different times from the fourth to the nineteenth century.
1 Michael Bisson, ‘Pre-Historic Archeology of North-Western Province, Zambia’ in David S. Johnson (ed.), North-Western Province, Regional Handbook Series No. 8 (Lusaka: Zambia Geographical Association, 1980), pp. 61–3; Mwelwa C. Musambachime, Wealth from the Rocks: Mining and Smelting of Metals in Pre-Colonial Zambia (Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation, 2016), ch. 3. Sir Robert Williams, a friend and associate of Cecil Rhodes, founded the London-based Tanganyika Concessions Limited (Tanks) in 1899, obtained concessions from the British South Africa Company (BSAC) and King Léopold in Katanga, and charged his friend George Grey to lead a party to today’s Kansanshi mine.
2 Francis L. Coleman, The Northern Rhodesia Copperbelt, 1899–1962: Technological Development up to the End of the Central African Federation (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1971), pp. 7–8, 11–15; Lewis H. Gann, A History of Northern Rhodesia; Early Days to 1953 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964), pp. 121–2. There are at least two different explanations for how he found the Kansanshi deposits: he either relied on the help of the Kaonde Chief Kapijimpanga, or his group noticed the ancient workings of the Kansanshi copper mine with pits over a hundred feet deep.
3 J. Austen Bancroft, Mining in Northern Rhodesia: A Chronicle of Mineral Exploration and Mining Development (Salisbury: British South Africa Company, 1961), p. 106; Timo Särkkä, ‘The Lure of Katanga Copper: Tanganyika Concessions Limited and the Anatomy of Mining and Mine Exploration 1899–1906’, South African Historical Journal 68, 3 (2016), p. 325. Either way, the commercial exploration of the Kansanshi deposits depended on local actors rather than on Grey’s own mineralogical acumen.
With the railway running as far as Broken Hill (today Kabwe) in 1906, Grey had transported a small blast furnace by steam traction engine to start smelting high-grade oxide ores on the spot. In December 1908, the traction engine took back the first 50 tons of copper to Broken Hill. The ore’s high grade soon decreased, though. Nevertheless, by 1914, about 3,256 tons of high-grade copper had been produced at Kansanshi.
4 Bancroft, Mining in Northern Rhodesia, pp. 107–8; Jan-Bart Gewald, The Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890–2000 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 32. Under poor working conditions and with short contracts, Africans did the hard work, like shaft sinking, clearing vegetation and wood-cutting, building bridges and anti-malaria drainage projects. Taxation, which was introduced in 1907, was one attempt to secure a steady flow of labour.
5 P. G. D. Clark, ‘Kasempa: 1901–1951’, The Northern Rhodesia Journal 2, 5 (1954), p. 64. In 1913, Kansanshi employed 85 so-called ‘local’ Kaonde and 788 so-called ‘imported’ labourers, who were originally Ndebele, a fact indicating early labour migration between mining areas within the territory.
6 Gann, A History of Northern Rhodesia, pp. 123–4; Brian Siegel, ‘Bomas, Missions, and Mines: The Making of Centers on the Zambian Copperbelt’, African Studies Review 31, 3 (1988), pp. 61–84, p. 70. At Kansanshi, the problem of ‘desertion’ persisted during these early years and at least one case of an ‘anti-European movement’ was recorded.
7 Gann, A History of Northern Rhodesia, p. 124.While Kansanshi’s deposits had been interesting, they were soon overshadowed by the discovery of deposits in Congo’s Katanga, for whose exploitation the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) was formed in 1906. A combination of reasons led Tanks to focus on the Katanga deposits rather than Kansanshi’s: few and poor roads and high costs of steam-powered traction engines
8 Gewald, The Speed of Change. (meaning that transport had to be done by human porters), tsetse flies, the lack of food supply for African workers,
9 Tomas Frederiksen, ‘Unearthing Rule: Mining, Power and Political Ecology of Extraction in Colonial Zambia’ (PhD dissertation, University of Manchester, 2010), pp. 95–7. the failure to negotiate the quick advance of the railway to Kansanshi, BSAC’s high interest in any profits coming from the Kansanshi concession, the outbreak of war, the low value of Kansanshi’s ore, and the high costs of treating oxide ores in general.
To transport copper to the harbours, the Rhodesian Railway was extended from Bulawayo to the Congo border, for whose construction Tanks formed a new company, the Rhodesia-Katanga Junction Railway and Mineral Company. The latter took control of Kansanshi mine in 1909, which relieved Tanks from major interests in Northern Rhodesia and allowed it to fully concentrate on the Katanga deposits.
10 Bancroft, Mining in Northern Rhodesia, p. 108. Kansanshi remained a base for subsequent exploration into the Congo. Against a shortage of porters and labour for construction and development work at the Katanga mines, Kansanshi also served as a ‘minor collection and distribution point of Kaonde workers’ for UMHK’s Katangese mines in which Tanks held a 40% share between 1911 and 1931.
11 Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa: Industrial Strategies and the Evolution of an African Proletariat in the Copperbelt, 1911–41 (London: Heinemann, 1979), pp. 14, 34, 55, 72. Kansanshi mine’s closure during the Second World War is counter-intuitive given the rise of the London Metal Exchange copper price from a low of £52 in 1914 to a high of £171 in 1916. Williams was, however, focused on the Katangese mines, ‘determined to go for a quick return on capital, abandoning all exploratory work on unknown deposits and going instead for the rapid extraction of known high-grade deposits’.
12 Ibid., p. 33. The mine was left abandoned until 1927.
While Kansanshi’s deposits started to be explored and mined, ten kilometres south of Kansanshi mine, Solwezi was established as an administrative centre overseeing mining activities in what was then Kasempa District. Its history differs from the concurrent establishment of administrative and police camps in Kasempa and Mwinilunga. In Solwezi, prospectors, miners and administrators settled, and men in charge of the mine simultaneously served as representatives of BSAC. In 1905, a police post was opened in Shilenda, west of Solwezi.
13 Clark, ‘Kasempa: 1901–1951’, p. 63. By 1908, Kansanshi was the base for sixteen white miners and four labour recruiters, a medical doctor, a shopkeeper and three white farmers.
14 Siegel, ‘Bomas, Missions, and Mines’, p. 70. The number of farmers was reported at eighteen in 1910, but two years later, their cattle succumbed to tsetse flies and the farms were abandoned.
15 Frank H. Melland, In Witch-Bound Africa: An Account of the Primitive Kaonde Tribe and Their Beliefs (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), p. 23.The arrival of Western missionaries in the province followed rather than preceded urban development.
16 M.M. Maimbolwa, ‘Urban Growth in North-Western Province’ in David S. Johnson (ed.), North-Western Province, Regional Handbook Series No. 8 (Lusaka: Zambia Geographical Association, 1980), p. 175. The interdenominational group South African General Missionaries, later renamed the Africa Evangelical Fellowship, opened Chisalala mission in 1910, a day’s walk south-west of Kansanshi mine, ‘in Kaondeland, where it would also have a captive audience of mine laborers’.
17 Robert I. Rotberg, Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia 1880–1924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 77. In 1929, the thinly staffed mission moved to where it still is today, to Mutanda, and the mission started to offer an educational programme.
18 Paul David Wilkin, To the Bottom of the Heap: Educational Deprivation and Its Social Implications in the Northwestern Province of Zambia, 1906–1945 (PhD thesis, Syracuse University, 1983), pp. 112–19, 137, 222. Until the beginning of the First World War, Wilhelm Frykberg, a Swedish former sergeant-major turned trader, operated a store (shop) at Kansanshi.
19 S. Grimstvedt, ‘The “Swedish Settlement” in the Kasempa District’, The Northern Rhodesia Journal 3, 1 (1956), pp. 34–43, pp. 34–5.~
Figure 5.1 European residents in Solwezi Boma and Kansanshi Mine 1910–1931
Figure 5.1 shows the number of European residents living either at Kansanshi mine or in the Solwezi area. Unsurprisingly, the number of those Europeans connected to the mining operations immediately declined with the closure of the mine in 1914, leaving less than eleven colonial officers and missionaries and their families (including children, both in Solwezi and Kansanshi), and a few individuals presumably charged with minimal maintenance of the mine. The only constant European presence was the colonial administration. The officials, often only two or three men, were in charge of the entire district.
Indeed, the administration only gradually developed a presence in the region. From 1909, Kansanshi was a sub-district of Kasempa District and was renamed Solwezi Sub-District in 1912, when officials moved from the Shilenda post to present-day Solwezi.
20 African Affairs Northern Rhodesia, ‘Annual Report for the Year 1952’ (Lusaka: Government Printer, 1953), p. 17. In 1912, Solwezi
boma was small. It comprised the houses and compounds of the District Commissioner, the Native Commissioner and Assistant Native Commissioner, government offices and a store, the Native Clerk’s, Messengers’ and ‘Visiting Natives’’ compounds, the Medical Officer’s house and office, the Gaol (jail) and a Native Hospital.
21 NAZ KTB 3/1, Solwezi District Notebooks. Most of the time, government did not directly interfere with the running of the privately owned mine.
22 Gann, A History of Northern Rhodesia, p. 124; Maimbolwa, ‘Urban Growth in North-Western Province’, p. 178.~
Figure 5.2 Number of African residents, Solwezi, 1916–1929
The numbers of Africans living in the district are more difficult to ascertain. Figure 5.2 shows a steady increase in Solwezi (Sub-)District between 1916 and 1929. The trend is clear: a move to the district and an increase of the African population, despite the mine’s inactivity throughout. The majority did not live in the boma but spread across the district, with likely some increased density in peri-urban areas.
Kansanshi’s and Solwezi’s early development shows that commercial exploration and mining were dependent on local labour and expertise, making mining locally embedded rather than exogenous. The first phase of mining at Kansanshi (1905–14) – albeit brief and minimal compared with the subsequent developments in the Katangese Copperbelt – did have a political and demographic impact in the region.
23 Jan-Bart Gewald, Forged in the Great War: People, Transport, and Labour, the Establishment of Colonial Rule in Zambia, 1890–1920 (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2015). Apart from the fact that territorial European control of this part of Northern Rhodesia began to be established through the combat of slave raiding
24 Frederiksen, ‘Unearthing Rule’, pp. 204–10. and the introduction of taxation, Kansanshi contributed to the beginning of a regional African labour regime. Solwezi town was first founded due to the minerals at Kansanshi but it soon began to grow more or less independently from the mine’s status, by attracting Africans from the province, missionaries, traders and shop owners.