Empire Cricket Booklet

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ORIGINS OF SEGREGATION AT THE CAPE

'pipe' of blue diamondiferous soil was discovered on De Beers farm in 1870 on the site of what was shortly to become Kimberley, and by 1871 the British government, had annexed the territory to 'protect' its Griqua owners from the independent Afrikaner republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In the same year, the first scratch games of cricket were underway in the red dust as diamond fever raged around the players. 21 Cricket was part of the cultural baggage carried by white prospectors, but seldom has a game owed so much to the efforts of one individual, William Ling, to root it in unpromising soil. 22 Besides being the father of cricket in what had become known as Griqualand West, Ling was also at the forefront of aggressive white diggers who challenged the rights of coloureds and Africans to hold claims, and led riots

often became the focus of African political initiatives when African access to the franchise came under significant attack in the mid 1880s. They were at the sharp end of the system on a daily basis and only too well aware of African grievances and the importance of an African voice in the political process. Africans, Cricket and the Diamond Fields, 1870-1894 The discovery of the aptly named 'Eureka' stone in 1866, on the banks of the Orange River, propelled an isolated and arid wasteland a thousand kilometres from Cape Town, peopled only by semi-nomadic pastoralists, into the nineteenth century. Prior to

Cricket played by black children near Aliwal North at the turn of the century

in 1872 which included the attempted lynching of an Indian suspected of illicit diamond buying. High Commissioner Sir Henry Barkly, while keeping up the appearance of equality before the law, conceded the substance of the rioters' demands by requiring all claims holders to be registered by magistrates as persons of good character, and set up a pass system by which all 'servants' had to hold a certificate of registration and have it endorsed on taking their discharge. 23

1871, the region was subject to intermittent feuding between Griqua chiefs (descendants of freed and escaped Malay slaves, renegade whites and Africans - primarily Khoi and San peoples), Afrikaner farmers who had left the Cape in disgust at the so-called racial 'liberalism' of the British colonial administration, African clan chiefs and competing missionaries. Into this sleepy, if occasionally volatile mix, diamonds brought adventurers, capital and cricket. The first main