Posing on a Gold Mine Dump

Posing on a Gold Mine Dump

In 1952 the young Dolly Rathebe, who was to become a jazz singing legend, and a young, white German photographer, Jürgen Schadeberg, scrambled to the top of a mine dump for a Drum magazine photo shoot. The photograph looks like it was taken on some strange beach: Rathebe smiles, posing in a bikini. They were spotted by the police and arrested under the Immorality Act, which forbade extramarital intercourse between blacks and whites. This dump was in the Crown Mines, and is now the site of the Crown Mines Golf Course. Today there's a street in Newtown named after Rathebe.

Today you can see gold-mine dumps along the edge of town marching east and west along the seam of gold. Some are close to 300 feet high. Many people are fond of them—it's one of the city's defining characteristics—but those who live nearby are blinded by the dust, and little grows on them. Since they're also rich in minerals, they're slowly being chipped away and remined.