How I found Shadows in the Veldt

How I came to discover the history of the Cape Corps, the regiment of mixed race that fought in WW1 is a tale of searching for historical subjects itself. I had the idea of writing a book about mining scams, which have been plentiful in South Africa as well as in Mark Twain’s Nevada; there was the Ladies Mining Company, shares reserved for ladies of quality, The Moon Mining Company and one that had found a riich gold deposit but would give no details of it in case a rival company went to prospect the area. One scam had been perpetrated on the senior members of the Dutch East India Company in the Cape of Good Hope in the 1730’s at the time the company were growing desperate for precious metal. I eventually discovered the mine, a silver mine was on the side of a steep mountain above a village called Pniel. The mine story of how the scammers melted silver dollars to keep the things going was worth researching but the village was just as taleworthy. Some years after the British acquired the Cape Colony they decided to outlaw slavery, afraid their slave labour would rush off,three farmers got together and set aside a piece of ground on which their slaves could build houses. The ground included the mine site and to get permission to look it over I had to talk to their representative, a woman who turned out to be the village historian and whose father had fought with the Cape Corps in WW2. She had a book about the regiment’s history in WW1 which she gracefully lent me. The book led me to Smuts and the fighting in Tanzania in WW1 but the village had its own saga having ignored Apartheid and built its own business community, its own reservoir and slave bell memorial.
Great Expectation Silver Mine