One of the first immigrant communities was hired for the production of explosives: the Modderfontein dynamite factory was searching for skilled workers just as its equivalent in Avigliana was in financial difficulties.

So, more than half of the workers and their families were transferred from Piedmont to Johannesburg, where a city section was promptly named "Little Italy" and the suburb of Orange Grove also increased its Italian population.

Only a few of them accepted the harsh conditions of mining or living off the land; most were employed as stonemasons, bricklayers, artisans, cabinet makers, metal workers.

[1] When the "Transvaal and Diggers" newspaper published the words of the State Mining Engineer, who was convinced that foul play was intended, and later added that the failed Jameson Raid had also been followed by a similar dynamite explosion, it fueled the suspicion of Uitlander complicity.

Others, being expert in the handling of explosives, were tasked with blowing up bridges and railway lines to hamper the British retreat from Tugela to Komatiepoort on the Mozambiquean border.

A man who thrived on wars, he was implicated in the 1908 assassination of King Carlos of Portugal with a group of anarchists in an attempt to overthrow the Braganza Dynasty, which finally occurred in 1910.

[citation needed] Conversely, Peppino Garibaldi, Giuseppe's nephew, joined the British side and found himself fighting against Scout Pilade Sivelli, whose father was the youngest among the "One Thousand Redshirts" who had participated in the unification of Italy.