The Gold Kings: Sonū Smugglers in Johannesburg, Durban and Lourenço Marques, 1890s–1920s

Abstract

This article opens up the 1914 case of smugglers Hira Naran and Dulabh Vira, to consider an illicit trade in gold between the eastern ports of southern Africa, east Africa and southern Asia. From a newly compiled database of two and a half thousand known gold dealers active in southern Africa between 1906 and 1926, it is evident that illicit gold dealing was a significant, if hidden, aspect of the region’s towns and ports. Gold was informally ‘exported’ from Johannesburg by an amorphous, diverse group of runners to Durban and Lourenço Marques. At the ports, Gujarati firms, increasingly marginalised by racial legislation, took a leading role in transmitting gold, or sonū, eastwards across the Indian Ocean. The article shows, rather than discusses in the abstract, how a transnational method can reveal hitherto obscure but important themes in southern African history. The article argues that a half-millennium-old indigenous gold trade between south-east Africa and India, in apparent decline by the 1870s, was invigorated by the growth of the Witwatersrand mining economy. Administrators saw the ports as important sites of regulation and restriction, but failed to rupture the old gold smuggling networks decisively, in ways that posed important, unresolvable questions about the institutional capacity of the South African state at its maritime gateways.

Notes

¹ Episode constructed from Transvaal Archives, Pretoria (hereafter TAB), Registrar of the Supreme Court, Transvaal Division (hereafter TPD) 379/1914. Rex. vs Raman Govan alias Hira Naran, and additional court evidence in South African National Archives (hereafter SAB), Agent of the Union of South Africa, Lourenço Marques (hereafter BAL) 12/A2161.

² Present-day values, not listed hereafter, may be calculated by multiplying sterling amounts by 84.

³ SAB/JUS 235-7 3/509/16 and SAB/SAP 50-76, Confidential Monthly Reports of Chief Inspector of the Gold and Diamond Detective Department (hereafter CRGDDD), 1906–22, and, for clarifications, Annual Reports of the South African Police1913–19 and Union Year Books 1910–25.

⁴ SAB, Indian Affairs (hereafter IND) 524 E/10006. Crown Prosecutor, Pretoria to Registrar of Asiatics, Pretoria, 3 December 1914. Unless otherwise stated, correspondence below is between offices in Pretoria.

⁵ SAB, Secretary to the Department of Mines and Industries (hereafter MNW) 258 MM/3489/14. M.K. Desai, Bombay to Minister of Mines (MM), 23 July 1914.

⁶ SAB, Commissioner of Immigration and Asiatic Affairs (hereafter CIA) 42 M172. D. Dhanjee, 7 August 1914.

⁷ SAB, South African Police (hereafter SAP) Conf6/246/14. UA-LM (Union Agent, Lourenço Marques) to COM SAP (Commissioner of South African Police), 29 September 1914.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ SAB, SAP Conf6/246/14. CDI, GDDD (Chief Detective Inspector, Gold and Diamond Detective Department) to Deputy SAP COM, 7 January 1915.

¹¹ TAB, Master of the Supreme Court Estates 494/47.Hira Naran, 1946.

¹² SAB, Governor-General (hereafter GG) 1479 48/730.Gov (Governor), Calcutta to GG (Governor-General), 28 June 1916.

¹³ SAB, Secretary of Justice (hereafter JUS) 245 4/435/16. Detective, Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Durban to Head Constable, CID, Durban, 30 November 1916.

¹⁴ SAB, GG 1822 52/221. Minute No. 1757, 15 November 1917.

¹⁵ For example, C. Noordstrom, Global Outlaws: Crime, Money and Power in the Contemporary World (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007); W. van Schendel and I. Abraham, Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders and the Other Side of Globalisation (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005).

¹⁶ For example, I. Phimister, ‘Alluvial Gold and Trade in Nineteenth-Century South Central Africa’, Journal of African History, 15, 3 (1974), pp. 445–56.

¹⁷ For example, E. Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2005).

¹⁸ B. Guest and J.M. Sellers (eds), Enterprise and Exploitation in a Victorian Colony: Aspects of the Economic and Social History of Colonial Natal (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1985), and Receded Tides of Empire: Aspect of the Economic and Social History of Natal and Zululand since 1910 (Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1994); J. Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995).

¹⁹ For recent returns to Hobsbawm’s pioneering work on ‘social banditry’, see G. Seal, Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History (London, Anthem Press, 2011), and C. van Onselen, Showdown at the Red Lion: The Life and Times of Jack McLoughlin, 1856–1910 (Johannesburg, Jonathan Cape, 2015).

²⁰ For new directions, see K. Breckenridge, Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014); I. Chipkin, ‘Whither the State? Corruption, Institutions and State-Building in South Africa’, Politikon, 40, 2 (2013), pp. 211–31.

²¹ D. Miller, N. Desai and J. Lee-Thorp, ‘Indigenous Gold Mining in Southern Africa: A Review’, Goodwin Series, Vol. 8 (2000), pp. 91–9. For figures, see M.N. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 49–51.

²² Phimister, ‘Alluvial Gold’.

²³ Miller, Desai and Lee-Thorp, ‘Indigenous Gold Mining’.

²⁴ For example, A. Isaacman and B. Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-CentralAfrica (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2004); L. Chewins, ‘Trade at Delagoa Bay: The Influence of Trade on Political Structures, 1721–1799’, MA dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 2015.

²⁵ C.R. Boxer, ‘A Portuguese El Dorado: Monomotapa and Mozambique’, Geographical Magazine, 33, 5 (1960), pp. 276–86.

²⁶ E.A. Alpers, ‘Gujarat and the Trade of East Africa, c. 1500–1800’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 9, 1 (1976), pp. 22–44; P. Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), especially pp. 30–67; M.L.N.P Texeira, ‘Trade and Commerce in Mozambique: Indian Enterprise in Zambezia, ca.1870–1900’, PhD thesis, Queen’s University, Canada, 2001.

²⁷ Ibid.; I. Habib, ‘Merchant Communities in Precolonial India’, in J.D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 371–99.

²⁸ Almost all traders and their employees remained Gujarati-speakers, but came from an expanded range of districts, towns and villages, many well inland. For a breakdown, see Goolam Vahed and Surendra Bhana, Crossing Time and Space in the Indian Ocean. Early Indian Traders in Natal. A Biographical Study (Pretoria, UNISA Press, 2015), pp. 32–5.

²⁹ W.F.W. Owen, Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar, Vol. 1 (London, R. Bentley, 1833), p. 191.

³⁰ Owen, Narrative, pp. 50, 56, 71–3, 419–20; J.E. Alexander, ‘Trade with the Portuguese Settlements in Eastern Africa’, The Colonial Magazine and Commercial-Maritime Journal, 2 (1840), pp. 339–40; F.L. Barnard, A Three Years’ Cruize in the Mozambique Channel (London, R. Bentley, 1848), pp. 81, 100, 275. See also asides in Texeira, ‘Trade and Commerce’, pp. 129, 195, 216; Machado, Ocean of Trade, pp. 73, 191, 226, 239; Chewins, ‘Trade at Delagoa Bay’, pp. 44–56.

³¹ Texeira cites 16 such families in deceased estate records of the 1850s; a British consul called such families ‘fairly numerous’ at the end of that century. Texeira, ‘Trade and Commerce’, p. 127.

³² P. Harries, Work, Culture, Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1994), pp. 89–90.

³³ Colony of Natal Blue Books, Annual Reports of the Protector of Immigrants, 1880–1899.

³⁴ Surendra Bhana and Joy Brain, Setting Down Roots: Indian Migrants in South Africa, 1860–1911 (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 1990), pp. 37–41.

³⁵ Ibid., pp. 84–91.

³⁶ Takashi Oishi, ‘Muslim Merchant Networks in Mozambique and South Africa: Intra-Regional Networks in Strategic Association with State Institutions, 1870s–1930s’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 50, 2/3 (2007), pp. 287–324.

³⁷ R. Morell and V. Padayachee, ‘Indian merchants and Dukawallahs in the Natal Economy, c. 1875–1914’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 1 (1991), pp. 71–102; G. Vahed, ‘Passengers, Partnerships, and Promissory Notes: Gujarati Traders in Colonial Natal, 1870–1920’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38, 3 (2005), pp. 449–79.

³⁸ R. Ally, Gold & Empire: The Bank of England and South Africa’s Gold Producers 1886–1926 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), pp. 12–28.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ A. Lezard, The Great Gold Reef: Being the Romantic History of the Rand Goldfields (New York, Bobbs-Merril Co., 1937), pp. 227–49; C. van Onselen, Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880–1899 (Cape Town, Zebra, 2010), especially pp. 45–138.

⁴¹ Chamber of Mines of South Africa, Annual Report (hereafter COMAR), 1891, p. 44.

⁴² COMAR, 1892, pp. 58–9.

⁴³ This oft-repeated figure received its widest publicity in Mining Industry: Evidence and Report of the Industrial Commission of Enquiry (Johannesburg, Chamber of Mines, 1897), p. 26.

⁴⁴ COMAR, 1892, p. 62.

⁴⁵ COMAR ,1894, p. 123.

⁴⁶ COMAR, 1897, p. 356.

⁴⁷ COMAR, 1891–99.

⁴⁸ T. Froes, Kruger & Co., Limited, the Pretoria Illicit Gold Buying Firm and the Africander Bond’s Connexion Therewith (Cape Town, Colonial Publishing Co., 1900), p. 12.

⁴⁹ COMAR, 1895, pp. 90–91.

⁵⁰ TAB, Secretary to the Law Department (hereafter LD), 453 AG2636/03, COM SAP to SLD (Secretary for the Law Department), 22 August 1903.

⁵¹ SAB, SAP 65 CONF8/609, Chamber of Mines, Johannesburg to MM, 19 December 1911.

⁵² CRGDDD, 1906–22.

⁵³ 1911 census data on numbers of individuals employed in skilled urban occupations (outside the mines and the large domestic service sector) shows that, around this time, Transvaal towns supported 5,297 cab and wagon drivers, 3,493 laundry workers, 3,275 teachers, 2,418 hawkers, 1,684 accountants, 1,559 tailors, 657 nightmen, 535 hotel keepers, 475 trained nurses, 421 general merchants, 338 professional beggars, 189 civil engineers, 141 booksellers, 134 rickshaw pullers and 104 capitalists and financiers, to pick a representative sample of callings.

⁵⁴ Amid 43 Jims, 39 Johns, 33 Williams and 24 Charlies, emerge aptly named dealers such as Bye & Bye, Jack Diamond, Jim Crow, Whiskey, Whistle, Show-Show and Half-Pat-Two.

⁵⁵ For example, Antonio Da Silva, Arman Mahomed, Baptine N’Yambaan, Salimo Moni and Hassan Ahmet.

⁵⁶ For example, Anthony Francis, James Naidoo, Sayed Mohamed, Kara Desai, Ellopa Padiachy, Bhavan Kanjee Patel, Sam Samuels, Shiekh Fourie, Fatima Moosa, Mini Sammy, Kamaladien, and Kayalam Ranchod.

⁵⁷ Constructed from CRGDDD 1906–22. For a useful single-source overview, see TAB, CT 183 T48/6. Memorandum re: Thefts of Gold from the Mines, July 1908; SAB, SAP 65 Conf 8/609, Acting SAP COM to Acting SJ (Secretary for Justice), 28 and 29 August 1911.

⁵⁸ CRGDDD, 1906–22.

⁵⁹ CRGDDD, 1906–22. 28 cases indicated dop brandy formed part of the transaction; 39 gold dealers had liquor law convictions.

⁶⁰ White surface workers earned, on average, 17 shillings per shift, Africans 2–6 shillings per shift. White men in skilled urban trades could command around 24 shillings per day, Africans and Indians 21 shillings. C.W. Harrison, Harrison’s Business and General Yearbook 1923 (Woodchester, Arthur’s Press, 1924).

⁶¹ CRGDDD, 1906–22.

⁶² SAB, Department of the Interior (hereafter BNS), 1/1/245 120/73, PIO (Principal Immigration Officer), Durban to SI (Secretary for the Interior), 28 November 1916.

⁶³ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19.Part 2.SF to UA-LM, 9 August 1918, and reply, 12 August 1918.

⁶⁴ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19.Part 1.ComC (Commissioner of Customs) to SF, 6 December 1916.

⁶⁵ Gold ‘Export’ Explained’, Beira News (hereafter BN), 4 November 1919.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. SF to UA-LM, 20 August 1919; GM, National Bank, Lourenço Marques to ST (Secretary for Treasury), 8 September 1919; ComC to SF, 22 August 1919; SAB, GG 640 9/67/24, Imperial Secretary, London to BCG–LM (British Consul General, Lourenço Marques), 27 October 1919; ‘Gold Smuggling at Beira’, BN, 31 October 1919.

⁶⁸ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. Anonymous intelligence to BCG–LM, 14 June 1918.

⁶⁹ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. Letters from General Managers of National Bank and Standard Bank to Secretary of Finance, 22 August–15 September 1919.

⁷⁰ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. GM, National Bank, Lourenço Marques to ST, 12 September 1919.

⁷¹ Ibid., and SAB, GG 640 9/67/24. BCG–LM to Governor-General, Cape Town, 11 September 1919.

⁷² SAB, GG 640 9/67/24. BCG–LM to GG, Cape Town, 11 September 1919.

⁷³ ‘King of Gold Kings’, Rand Daily Mail (hereafter RDM), 25 January 1918.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ SAB, SAP 32 Conf6/266/14, CDI, GDDD to Deputy SAP COM, 12 December 1914; ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 17 January 1917.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ ‘Gold in Gauds’, RDM, 2 March 1919; ‘Gold in Tins of Jam’, RDM, 4 April 1920; SAB, CIA42 M172, ‘Smuggling of Gold’, unattributed clipping, [RDM, 1920?]; ‘Wily Smugglers’, Cairns Post, Australia, 25 January 1921.

⁷⁹ ‘Gold Stealing’, Wagga Wagga Express, Australia, 17 October 1908.

⁸⁰ ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 31 October 1919.

⁸¹ SAB, CIA 42 M172. ‘Smuggling of Gold’, unattributed clipping [RDM, 1919?] and ‘Smuggling of Gold Coin’, RDM, 27 March 1920.

⁸² For the most authoritative statement of many indicating the primacy of India, see Report of the Select Committee on the Embargo of the Export of Specie (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1920), p. vii.

⁸³ A.G. Chandavarkar, ‘Money and Credit, 1858–1947’, D. Kumar and M. Desai (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2, c. 1757 to c. 1970 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 762–802.

⁸⁴ ‘Gold in India’, Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Australia, 17 March 1913.

⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 766; Report on the Sea-Borne Trade and Customs Administration of the Bombay Presidency 1910 (Bombay, Government Central Press, 1910), pp. 2–3.

⁸⁶ See SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 1. Memorandum on Conference between E. MacDonnel and National and Standard Banks, 18 June 1918.

⁸⁷ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 1. Anonymous intelligence to BCG–LM, 14 June 1918; ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 3 October 1919.

⁸⁸ See shipping statistics in the quinquennial Review of the Trade of British India with British Possessions and Foreign Countries (London, HMSO, 1902 to 1918) (hereafter RTBI).

⁸⁹ SAB, GG 1823 52/257, GOV, Nairobi to GG, 7 November 1919; SAB, GG 640 9/67/18. Minute No. 347.

⁹⁰ For Transvaal–Burma routes, see SAB, GG 1479 48/730. GOV, Calcutta to GG, 28 June 1916; ‘Wily Smugglers’, Cairns Post, 25 January 1921; ‘Smuggled Gold’, The World’s News, 7 August 1920. For Colombo, see SAB, GG 1823 52/266. GOV, Colombo to GG, 22 October 1919.

⁹¹ ‘Gold Smuggling Profits’, Mafikeng Mail & Protectorate Guardian, 8 July 1920; ‘Gold Smuggling’, Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 23 January 1920 ; ‘Gold Coin Smuggling’, Straits Times, Singapore, 19 May 1920.

⁹² ‘Highly Profitable’, BN, 17 June 1921.

⁹³ TAB, LD 307 AG303/03. AG (Attorney-General) to SLD, 30 January 1903.

⁹⁴ ‘Gold Swindles’. RDM, 20 July 1908, and TAB, Colonial Treasurer (hereafter CT) 183 T48/6. Memorandum Re: Thefts of Gold, July 1908, p. 4.

⁹⁵ See SAB, Secretary of the Treasury (hereafter TES) 7029 F61/19. Part 1. GG, Pretoria to SF (Secretary of Finance), Pretoria, 7 March 1916; Deputy GM (General Manager), Standard Bank, Lourenço Marques to SF, Pretoria, 27 November 1916; GM, National Bank, Lourenço Marques, Memorandum on Leakage of Gold Coin for India, 30 November 1916; ‘Gold ‘Export’ Explained’, BN, 4 November 1919.

⁹⁶ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. Deputy Controller for Imports and Exports, Durban to SF, 5 September 1918.

⁹⁷ ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 7 November 1919.

⁹⁸ SAB, GG 1823, 52/282. Minute No. 2, 7 January 1920; ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 30 March 1920.

⁹⁹ ‘Smuggling Gold from Africa to India’, Morning Bulletin, 3 April 1920.

¹⁰⁰ See “Imports of Treasure” tables in RTBI, 1902–1918.

¹⁰¹ ‘Gold Smuggling’, BN, 3 October 1919.

¹⁰² Colony of Natal Statistical Year Books, 1900–1909, 9 vols, (Pietermaritzburg, Government Printer); Official Year Books of the Union of South Africa, 1910–25, 6 vols (Pretoria, Government Printer).

¹⁰³ Worth a yearly average of about £81 million at this time (33% imports, 66% exports).

¹⁰⁴ Worth a yearly average of about £11 million (69% imports, 21% exports).

¹⁰⁵ Worth a yearly average of about £9.9 million (74% imports, 26% exports).

¹⁰⁶ The sum of South Africa’s trade with the economies of the Indian Ocean, if taken as a single zone, was worth a yearly average of about £3.6 million (78% imports, 22% exports). This made it more significant than that with East Asia (£2.3 million p.a.), Australasia (£2.1 million), South America (£1.2 million), Central Africa (£1.1 million), the Mediterranean basin (£850,000), Central Europe (£500,000), West Africa (£300,000), Russia & Persia (£60,000) and the Caribbean (£50,000).

¹⁰⁷ South Africa’s exports to the Indian Ocean ports listed in the tables were mostly mineral, agricultural and pastoral (primarily coal, tin, beer and maize), with a much smaller range of manufactured items (primarily agricultural machinery, cotton goods and cutlery). South Africa’s imports from the same regions were diverse: textiles (primarily jute and hessian bags, cotton goods, apparel, and canvas), oils (paraffin, copra, oilseed and wax), foodstuffs (bean, coffee, groundnuts, rice, and sugar) and some ‘fancy goods’, teak, glassware and toys.

¹⁰⁸ TAB, TP 83 Conf14/180. Brink to COM SAP, 17 August 1908.

¹⁰⁹ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. GM, Standard Bank to SF, 3 September 1919.

¹¹⁰ TAB, CT 183 T48/6. Memo re: Thefts of Gold, July 1908; SAB, SAP 65 Conf8/609, Acting COM SAP to Acting SJ, 28 and 29 August 1911; Acting Secretary, Chamber of Mines to MM, 19 December 1911; SAB, TES 7029 F61/19. Part 2. ‘Memorandum’ [undated, c. 1919].

¹¹¹ SAB, BNS 1/1/245 120/73, PIO, Durban to CC (Collector of Customs), Durban, 18 February 1918. Portuguese ordinances filed throughout SAB, TES 7029 F61/19, parts 1–2.

¹¹² SAB, SAP 32 Conf6/266/14, CI, GDDD to Deputy COM SAP, 8 January 1915.

¹¹³ SAB, SAP 65 Conf8/609, Acting COM SAP to Acting SJ, 29 August 1911.

¹¹⁴ ‘IGB Scandal’, Transvaal Critic, 23 February 1906.

¹¹⁵ CRGDDD, 1906–22.

¹¹⁶ SAB, BNS 1/1/245 120/73, PIO, Durban, 7 February 1917.

¹¹⁷ CIA 42 172. ‘Smuggling of Gold’, RDM, undated clipping [1918?].

¹¹⁸ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19, part 1, Collector of Customs, Durban to Commissioner of Customs, 19 March 1918.

¹¹⁹ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19, part 1, ‘Memorandum’ [undated, c. 1919].

¹²⁰ SAB, TES 7029 F61/19, part 1, UA-LM to ST, 22 April 1918.

¹²¹ SAB, GG 52/- series covers co-operative agreements with foreign administrations.

¹²² Even if this had been overstated fivefold, this would still amount to £1 million a year.

¹²³ ‘Stolen Gold’, Geraldton Guardian, 10 June 1926; ‘Million in Gold Stolen Every Year’, The Register-News Pictorial, 25 October 1930; ‘Secrets of Gold Thieves’ The World’s News, 18 July 1934; ‘Smuggling of Gold Increases’, Daily News, 30 August 1947; South Africa’s contemporary informal gold miners – the so-called zama-zama – and their wider networks are only just beginning to receive scholarly attention.