The Randlords (Afrikaans: randhere) were the capitalists who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries in South Africa from the 1870s to the First World War.
A small number of European financiers, largely of the same generation, gained control of the diamond mining industry at Kimberley.
They set up an infrastructure of financing and industrial consolidation, which they applied to exploit the discoveries of gold from 1886 in Transvaal at Witwatersrand, the "rand".
For example: Porgès and Eckstein's "Corner House" became Randgold Resources; Rhodes's Consolidated Gold Fields became Gold Fields Limited; George and Leopold Albu's General Mining and Finance Corporation became Gencor; Barney Barnato's Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company or "Johnnies" became JCI Limited.
A significant number overcame the prejudices against nouveaux-riches and Jews to gain entry to the English "establishment" and received knighthoods.