31-07-2025
Journey through Kimberley: Explore the legends, battlefields and vibrant life of the diamond city
Discover the secrets of Kimberley — a well-known, old city shaped by conflict, captivating characters and, most of all, diamonds.
When the first 20,000-odd fortune hunters arrived after many days of travel from Cape Town along the Diamond Way, they were met by vast empty plains and visited by horrendous dust storms and locust plagues.
The many tent bars stayed open all day and all night, as kopje-wallopers (the local name for diamond middlemen) slaked their giant collective thirst. And into all of this excitement and confusion came young Barney Isaacs, soon to be reincarnated as Barney Barnato, actor, prize-fighter, seller of smelly cigars and, initially, a kopje-walloper whose fortunes were about to change for the better.
Boutique hotel
The engine room of Kimberley was, of course, the Big Hole. It was once a respectable piece of geography called Colesberg Kopje. Then it disappeared and became The Big Hole, currently residing on Tucker Street in Kimberley.
In its time, it yielded 2,000-odd kilogrammes of diamonds from just more than 22 million tons of excavated earth.
The Big Hole has a wonderful museum around it, complete with an Old Town where you can still hear the old honky-tonk piano and visit Barney's Gym. At the entrance to the museum, you can check out the old steam fire engine in front of the Pulsator Building and then walk down a long gantry to peer down at the pea-green waters of The Big Hole.
Next up is the McGregor Museum, and the Duggan-Cronin Museum next to it. The building, which was once the Kimberley Sanatorium, is a grand old pile in Belgravia and the headquarters of a large museum complex.
This is where we learn about the Kimberley Siege, how people were buried in the Stone Age, the lives of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek, who translated the thoughts and words of the !Xam people, and many paleo-insights.
Next door, in the midst of other exhibitions, we learn about one Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, who spent more than 50 years on photographic field trips through southern Africa. He first took pictures of the black miners in Kimberley and was fascinated with where they came from. He ended up building a huge body of work in places like deep Mozambique, then southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland and Pondoland, earning the Matabele name of Thandabantu in the process. It means 'someone who loves people' — and it shows in his work.
The famous writer and activist Sol Plaatje once lived in Kimberley, and his home is now officially the Sol Plaatje Museum, full of books of historical significance. Pride of place in that extensive library belongs to a copy of Mhudi, published in 1930, considered to be the first novel by a black South African writer published in English.
An outfit called Native Minds Tours organises guided visits to Galeshewe Township, adjacent to Kimberley. You can tour the township on bicycles, visiting the cultural village, the Mural Arts Project, the Kgosi Galeshewe Art Gallery and round it all off by attending a performance of the Galeshewe Theatre Organisation, which specialises in Northern Cape community stories. Kgosi Galeshewe, after whom the arts gallery is named, led his Batlhaping people in what became known as the Phokwane Rebellion against the British colonial government in the 1870s.
Boers waiting in ambush
Heading south out of Kimberley, we visit the Magersfontein battlefield, where the Highland Brigade was decimated by Boer forces waiting in ambush on 11 December 1899.
We watch the short film reconstruction of the battle in the museum at Magersfontein, and then take a short walk up a hill to the looming Celtic cross that commemorates the fateful day.
In October, the nearby upmarket Magersfontein Memorial Golf Estate sees the start of the Battle of the Bikes Festival, a very popular outdoor family event that welcomes mountain bikers, e-bikers and gravel bikers over three routes.
The following day we dedicate to Mokala National Park, about 70km southwest of Kimberley. In this varying landscape of dolerite hills and grassy plains, expect to see breeding herds of everything from buffalo to blue wildebeest, with tsessebe and roan antelope included.
The birders among us will, of course, go for sightings of the black-chested prinia, blacksmith lapwing and the short-toed rock thrush, not to mention the cinnamon-breasted bunting or the freckled nightjar.
On our last day trip from Kimberley, we head north in the direction of Barkly West to Wildebeest Kuil and its famous rock engravings, presumably etched into the dolerite by people from the Later Stone Age. Wildebeest Kuil belongs to two San groups, the !Xun and the Khwe, and it is advisable to take a guide from the community to take you on an interpretive tour of the site.
Look out for Kousop's Rock, a memorial to a Khoe-San rebel who fought the colonists here and was killed, along with 130 of his clan, in 1858.
Know before you go
Kimberley is full of vivid stories and remarkable characters, and is rightly rich in museums. Visit them to imbibe the spirit and history of this fascinating diamond city. DM
